1998年Text 3

Science has long had
an uneasy relationship with other aspects of culture. Think of
Gallileo’s 17th-century trial for his rebelling belief before the
Catholic Church or poet William Blake’s harsh remarks against the
mechanistic worldview of Isaac Newton. The schism between science
and the humanities has, if anything, deepened in this
century.

科学与文化的其他方面的关系一直都很紧张。试看，17世纪伽利略为他离经叛道的信仰而遭受天主教会的审判，还有诗人威廉•布莱克也尖锐地批判了艾萨克•牛顿的机械世界观。在本世纪，（自然）科学与人文科学之间的裂痕更深了。



Until recently, the
scientific community was so powerful that it could afford to ignore
its critics -- but no longer. As funding for science has declined,
scientists have attacked “anti-science” in several books, notably
Higher Superstition, by Paul R. Gross, a biologist at the
University of Virginia, and Norman Levitt, a mathematician at
Rutgers University; and The Demon-Haunted World, by Carl Sagan of
Cornell University.

在前些年，科学界势力强大，可以对批评者置之不理——但现在不同了。由于科研经费的减少，科学家出了几本书来抨击“反科学”势力。其中值得注意的有弗吉尼亚大学生物学家保罗•R•格罗斯和拉特格斯大学的数学家诺曼•莱维特合著的《高级迷信》及康奈尔大学的卡尔•萨根撰写的《鬼怪世界》。



Defenders of science
have also voiced their concerns at meetings such as “The Flight
from Science and Reason,” held in New York City in 1995, and
“Science in the Age of (Mis) information,” which assembled last
June near Buffalo.

科学的捍卫者们也在一些会议上表达了他们的担忧。例如，1995年在纽约城举行的“远离科学和理性”大会，以及去年6月在布法罗附近召开的“信息（迷信）时代的科学”大会。



Anti-science clearly
means different things to different people. Gross and Levitt find
fault primarily with sociologists, philosophers and other academics
who have questioned science’s objectivity. Sagan is more concerned
with those who believe in ghosts, creationism and other phenomena
that contradict the scientific worldview.

显然，反科学对不同的人有不同的含义。格罗斯和莱维特主要挑那些质疑科学客观性的社会学家、哲学家和其他学者的毛病。而萨根则更关注那些相信鬼怪、上帝造物论以及信封其他与科学世界观相左的人。



A survey of news
stories in 1996 reveals that the anti-science tag has been attached
to many other groups as well, from authorities who advocated the
elimination of the last remaining stocks of smallpox virus to
Republicans who advocated decreased funding for basic
research.

1996年对新闻报道的调查表明，反科学的标签也贴在了许多其他群体上，从提倡消灭所有现存的天花病毒的官员到鼓吹削减基础研究基金的共和党人。



Few would dispute
that the term applies to the Unabomber, whose manifesto, published
in 1995, scorns science and longs for return to a pre-technological
utopia. But surely that does not mean environmentalists concerned
about uncontrolled industrial growth are anti-science, as an essay
in US News & World Report last May seemed to
suggest.

将该词用在反原子弹组织上也不会引起多大争议，该组织在1995年公开发表蔑视科学、渴望回到前技术时代理想社会的声明。当然，这并不意味着，对不加控制的工业发展表示担忧的环境主义者也是反科学的，而去年5月份刊登在《美国新闻和世界报导》的一篇文章似乎有此暗示。



The
environmentalists, inevitably, respond to such critics. The true
enemies of science, argues Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University, a
pioneer of environmental studies, are those who question the
evidence supporting global warming, the depletion of the ozone
layer and other consequences of industrial growth.

毫无疑问，环境主义者要对这些批评做出反应。作为环境研究的先驱者，斯坦福大学的保罗•埃利希认为，科学的真正的敌人是那些对全球变暖、臭氧层稀薄和工业增长带来的其他后果的证据提出质疑的人。



Indeed, some
observers fear that the anti-science epithet is in danger of
becoming meaningless. “The term ‘anti-science’ can lump together
too many, quite different things,” notes Harvard University
philosopher Gerald Holton in his 1993 work Science and
Anti-Science. “They have in common only one thing that they tend to
annoy or threaten those who regard themselves as more
enlightened.”

的确，一些观察者担心反科学这个词会失去意义。“‘反科学’一词可以涵盖太多截然不同的东西”，哈佛大学的哲学家杰拉尔德•霍尔顿在其1993年的著作《科学和反科学》中写道：“它们惟一的共同点就是会激怒或威胁那些自以为比别人更高明的人。”