科学史笔记

我不相信自己有能力或者应该写一篇科技史的论文。我想写的是一系列小品和笔记，并且主要是笔记，算是为自己写吧。我首先要说的是我对科技史的认识的来源。

父亲至今都津津乐道他在八十年代买的那些书，包括大家熟悉的《五角丛书》和《世界之窗》。另有一套丛书，叫《走向未来》，却是对我影响最大的。记得是96年初三的暑假，我在书橱里发现了金观涛、刘青峰合著的《让科学的光芒照亮自己——近代科学为什么没有在中国产生》，一气读完之下，引发了我对“李约瑟”问题的不断探究。也许是读金观涛的时机太重要了，十年后我仍然无法摆脱他的“超稳定结构”理论。我对金、刘的态度很复杂：从最初读《让》时的如闻天籁，到之后读他其它著作时的困惑和怀疑，到今天读《公开的情书》后对其中隐隐显露出来的精英思维的反感。呵，还有《河殇》和六四...

说到李约瑟问题，就不能不提Joseph Needham本人。 他的七卷巨著《中国科技史》不可不读，却实在没有可能全读。说实话，我在NIE图书馆里硬着头皮啃了前三卷的主要章节，结果很有些失望。李在中国史料的收集整理上似乎下了太多功夫，却没有让我看清他对科学本身的理解。

归结到对科学本身的理解，对我而言最重要的就是孔恩（T. Kuhn）的《科学革命的结构》。我一直都在孔恩和传统的对科学革命的解说之间摇摆不定。期间也试着读伽利略、阿奎那和康德的原著，但仍然无法找到自己的位置。十月在国内看到了一些科学经典的译本，激动之余，只买了伽利略的《两大世界体系的对话》和哥白尼的《天体运行论》。原本打算去Monterey的沙滩上读的，结果碰上大雨，变成了在汽车旅馆里读。读完之后，意犹未尽，计划回来接着读开普勒和亚里士多德，却只开了个头就被实验室里的课题打断了。这些阅读仍然无法让我决定我对孔恩的取舍，因此我将继续摇摆下去。但是由此我已经决定尽一切可能读原著，而不是后人出于“六经注我”的解说。

深挖思想根源之后，回到计划中的小品和笔记上来。我的初步计划是这样的：
1.托勒密、哥白尼、第谷和开普勒的世界体系。我将试图说明，从运动学而言，地心说和日心说并无本质不同。16世纪的天文学家“正确地”否定了哥白尼模型。
2.伽利略的望远镜、摆和斜面。我将试图说明，伽利略的观察（或经验）和亚里士多德的有什么不同。
3.伽利略的运动和亚里士多德的运动。亚里士多德对运动的理解是多么富有哲理啊...
4.亚里士多德发明了逻辑学，他的推论会错吗？这是对以上2、3两篇的总结。
5.伽利略的谬误。伽利略对行星轨道形状的认识很含糊，对潮汐的解释是错误的，对光速的测量是失败的。
6.神秘的开普勒。提出行星三大定律的伟大著作和刘子华的八卦宇宙论何其相似...
7.亚里士多德与哥白尼的对话。孔恩认为这样的对话是不可能的。我们来试一试。
8.创世纪与牛顿。牛顿的天才和古怪使我们很难了解他的“心路历程”。

Finally, quotes from Albert Einstein and Richard Feynmann, on their understanding about science.

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery -- even if mixed with fear -- that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man... I am satisfied with the mystery of life's eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence -- as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.
--Albert Einstein (The world as I see it)

If you expected science to give all the answers to the wonderful questions about what we are, where we’re going, what the meaning of the universe is and so on, then I think you could easily become disillusioned and then look for some mystic answer to these problems. How a scientist can take a mystic answer I don’t know because the whole spirit is to understand-well, never mind that. Anyhow, I don’t understand that, but anyhow if you think of it, the way I think of what we’re doing is we’re exploring, we’re trying to find out as much as we can about the world. People say to me, “Are you looking for the ultimate laws of physics?” No, I’m not, I’m just looking to find out more about the world and if it turns out there is a simple ultimate law which explains everything, so be it, that would be very nice to discover.
If it turns out it’s like an onion with millions of layers and we’re just sick and tired of looking at the layers, then that’s the way it is, but whatever way it comes out its nature is there and she’s going to come out the way she is, and therefore when we go to investigate it we shouldn’t predecide what it is we’re trying to do except to try to find out more about it. If you say your problem is, why do you find out more about it, if you thought you were trying to find out more about it be- cause you’re going to get an answer to some deep philosoph- ical question, you may be wrong. It may be that you can’t get an answer to that particular question by finding out more about the character of nature, but I don’t look at it [like that]. My interest in science is to simply find out about the world, and the more I find out the better it is, like, to find out.
There are very remarkable mysteries about the fact that we’re able to do so many more things than apparently animals can do, and other questions like that, but those are mysteries I want to investigate without knowing the answer to them, and so altogether I can’t believe these special stories that have been made up about our relationship to the universe at large because they seem to be too simple, too connected, too
local, too provincial. The earth, He came to the earth, one of the aspects of God came to the earth, mind you, and look at what’s out there. It isn’t in proportion. Anyway, it’s no use arguing, I can’t argue it, I’m just trying to tell you why the scientific views that I have do have some effect on my belief. And also another thing has to do with the question of how you find out if something’s true, and if all the different religions have all different theories about the thing, then you begin to wonder. Once you start doubting, just like you’re supposed to doubt, you ask me if the science is true. You say no, we don’t know what’s true, we’re trying to find out and everything is possibly wrong.
Start out understanding religion by saying everything is possibly wrong. Let us see. As soon as you do that, you start sliding down an edge which is hard to recover from and so on. With the scientific view, or my father’s view, that we should look to see what’s true and what may be or may not be true, once you start doubting, which I think to me is a very fundamental part of my soul, to doubt and to ask, and when you doubt and ask it gets a little harder to believe.
You see, one thing is, I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I’m not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don’t know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we’re here, and what the question might mean. I might think about it a little bit and if I can’t figure it out, then I go on to something else, but I don’t have to know an an- swer, I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is so far as I can tell. It doesn’t frighten me.

-- Richard Feynman (The pleasure of finding things out)