Edge 2017 年度问题选读（1）
这是Edge.org网站2017年的年度问题。首先看看编辑对这个问题的解释：
Richard Dawkins' “meme” became a meme, known far beyond the scientific conversation in which it was coined. It’s one of a handful of scientific ideas that have entered the general culture, helping to clarify and inspire.
The Edge 20th Anniversary Annual Question
"WHAT SCIENTIFIC TERM OR CONCEPT OUGHT TO BE MORE WIDELY KNOWN?"
Of course, not everyone likes the idea of spreading scientific understanding. Remember what the Bishop of Birmingham’s wife is reputed to have said about Darwin’s claim that human beings are descended from monkeys: "My dear, let us hope it is not true, but, if it is true, let us hope it will not become generally known."
INTRODUCTION: SCIENTIA
Of all the scientific terms or concepts that ought to be more widely known to help to clarify and inspire science-minded thinking in the general culture, none are more important than “science” itself.
Many people, even many scientists, have traditionally had a narrow view of science as controlled, replicated experiments performed in the laboratory—and as consisting quintessentially of physics, chemistry, and molecular biology. The essence of science is conveyed by its Latin etymology: scientia, meaning knowledge. The scientific method is simply that body of practices best suited for obtaining reliable knowledge. The practices vary among fields: the controlled laboratory experiment is possible in molecular biology, physics, and chemistry, but it is either impossible, immoral, or illegal in many other fields customarily considered sciences, including all of the historical sciences: astronomy, epidemiology, evolutionary biology, most of the earth sciences, and paleontology. If the scientific method can be defined as those practices best suited for obtaining knowledge in a particular field, then science itself is simply the body of knowledge obtained by those practices.
Science—that is, reliable methods for obtaining knowledge—is an essential part of psychology and the social sciences, especially economics, geography, history, and political science. Not just the broad observation-based and statistical methods of the historical sciences but also detailed techniques of the conventional sciences (such as genetics and molecular biology and animal behavior) are proving essential for tackling problems in the social sciences. Science is nothing more nor less than the most reliable way of gaining knowledge about anything, whether it be the human spirit, the role of great figures in history, or the structure of DNA.
It is in this spirit of scientia that Edge, on the occasion of its 20th anniversary, is pleased to present the Edge Annual Question 2017. Happy New Year!
—John Brockman, Editor, January 1, 2017
虽然我不一定能准确的了解答者所想表达的意思，但还是想尽量用简短的语言描述一下我的理解。希望能坚持下去，毕竟能和这些不同领域的先驱者或思考者“对话”，本身就是个享受。
“The Genetic Book of the Dead”
Richard Dawkins
Evolutionary Biologist; Emeritus Professor of the Public Understanding of Science, Oxford; Co-Author, with Yan Wong, The Ancestor’s Tale (Second Edition); Author, The Selfish Gene; The God Delusion; An Appetite For Wonder
如果环境的变化给基因打上了烙印，那么基因就是一本关于我们祖先的书。如果我们能够读懂这本书，也许我们就能还原祖先，或者祖先的祖先生活的世界。“Given a key, you can reconstruct the lock that it fits. Given an animal, you should be able to reconstruct the environments in which its ancestors survived.”
正好最近看完了他的书《自私的基因》，很有意思，推荐大家看看。
“The Premortem”
Richard H. Thaler
Father of Behavioral Economics; Director, Center for Decision Research, University of Chicago Graduate School of Business; Author, Misbehaving
直译过来是“事前验尸”的意思。实际当然没有这么血腥，是说在计划或者执行一项任务的时候，在发生灾难性后果之前，先假定灾难已经发生，然后问自己“How？”。“Laboratory research shows that by asking why did it fail rather than why might it fail, gets the creative juices flowing. (The same principle can work in finding solutions to tough problems. Assume the problem has been solved, and then ask, how did it happen? Try it!) ”
“The Principle of Least Action”
Janna Levin
Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Barnard College of Columbia University; Author, Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space
最小作用量原理。说实话，虽然答者的文笔挺好，但我没太理解她要说东西。也许复杂世界的秘密可以用一个single line的公式或文字来揭示。希望真能像答者所说，“Take that one mathematical sentence and calculate the shortest paths allowed in the space of possibilities and you will find the story of the origin of the universe and the evolution of our cosmological ecosystem. ”
“Neurodiversity”
Joichi Ito
Director, MIT Media Lab; Coauthor (with Jeff Howe), Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future
当我们能够改造基因来“治愈”某些“疾病”（比如自闭症）的时候，我们是否应该先弄清楚它倒底是基因的“error”，还是我们人类宝贵的多样性。爱因斯坦，莫扎特和特斯拉如果活到今天，很可能被诊断为“autistic spectrum”，设想他们被治愈。。。然后就没有然后了
“The Second Law of Thermodynamics”
Steven Pinker
Johnstone Family Professor, Department of Psychology; Harvard University; Author, The Sense of Style
热力学第二定律：一个孤立系统的熵（即“总混乱度”）不会减小。换句话说就是一个封闭系统的发展趋势就是“less structured, less organized, less able to accomplish interesting and useful outcomes”。所以，当我们说，shit happens，这就是第二定律。我们为什么敬畏第二定律？按答者的说法是“The Second Law defines the ultimate purpose of life, mind, and human striving: to deploy energy and information to fight back the tide of entropy and carve out refuges of beneficial order. ”从第二定律出发，生活中出现问题是自然而然的事情。所以“it’s better to figure out how to solve them—to apply information and energy to expand our refuge of beneficial order—than to start a conflagration and hope for the best.”
“Reciprocal Altruism”
Margaret Levi
Sara Miller McCune Director, Center For Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences, professor, Stanford University; Jere L. Bacharach Professor Emerita of International Studies, University of Washington
虽然答者高度评价互利主义，特别是具有远见的互利主义对人类社会和文化的发展的作用。但似乎还是对这个词条没太多感觉。
“Complementarity”
Frank Wilczek
Physicist, MIT; Recipient, 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics; Author, A Beautiful Question
最近正好在看量子力学的发展史的时候看到过这个概念。对象具有一些互补的特性，是无法同时观测的，比如粒子的位置和速度。这和量子现象的哥本哈根解释有密切的关系。当然，答者并不是单纯从物理的角度看待这个词汇。他认为这个概念的含义在于，“Complementarity is the idea that there can be different ways of describing a system, each useful and internally consistent, which are mutually incompatible. ”对于量子力学，或者是现实世界，可能会有很多不同的角度的解释。比如我们在法律上说一个孩子没有行为能力，但他的行为都是物理法则控制的，没有人真正“自己”控制自己的行为。在这个例子里，物理法则似乎不是描述人类社会关系的很好的视角。所以，“Understanding the importance of complementarity stimulates imagination, because it gives us license to think different. It also suggests engaged tolerance, as we try to appreciate apparently strange perspectives that other people have come up with. We can take them seriously without compromising our own understandings, scientific and otherwise.”
“Relative Information”
Carlo Rovelli
Theoretical Physicist; Aix-Marseille University, in the Centre de Physique Théorique, Marseille, France; Author, Reality Is Not What It Seems
说到信息，往往是和人的感知联系在一起的。那么是否有独立与我们的感知的信息呢？答者认为是有的，就是“relative information”。“We say that there is "relative information" between two systems anytime the state of one is constrained by the state of the other. In this precise sense, physical systems may be said to have information about one another, with no need for a mind to play any role. ”更进一步，答者认为这种相互关联的信息是组成物理世界的重要元素，“This is why saying that the physical world is just a collection of elementary particles does not capture the full story. The constraints between them create the rich web of reciprocal information. ”答者还用一段“排比”举了例子“The light that arrives at our eyes carries information about the objects which it has played across; the color of the sea has information on the color of the sky above it; a cell has information about the virus attacking it; a new living being has plenty of information because it is correlated with its parents, and with its species; and you, dear reader, reading these lines, receive information about what I am thinking while writing them, that is to say, about what is happening in my mind at the moment in which I write this text. What occurs in the atoms of your brain is not any more independent from what is happening in the atoms of mine: we communicate. ”。最后“The world isn’t just a mass of colliding atoms; it is also a web of correlations between sets of atoms, a network of reciprocal physical information between physical systems.”
“Mysterianism”
Nicholas G. Carr
Author, Utopia is Creepy
这个词作为scientific terms还是挺有意思的。答者的主要意思是说人类在科学的发展上可能过于自信，认为随着时间的推移，我们总能解决所有的问题。“Through observation and experiment, and lots of hard thinking, we will come to explain even the murkiest and most complicated of nature’s secrets: consciousness, dark matter, time, the full story of the universe.”可是，如果这种感觉只是幻想呢？如果人类的大脑和动物一样是进化的产物，那么是否也和动物一样是有“boundary”呢？也许我们不知道的会远比我们知道的和将会知道的要多的多。当然，这个词更重要的意义在于：“Mysterianism teaches us humility. Through science, we have come to understand much about nature, but much more may remain outside the scope of our perception and comprehension. If the mysterians are right, science’s ultimate achievement may be to reveal to us its own limits.”
“Effective Theory”
Lisa Randall
Physicist, Harvard University; Author, Warped Passages, Knocking on Heaven's Door, and Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs: The Astounding Interconnectedness of the Universe
如果我们要把卫星送到太阳系的边缘，或者修建一座坚固的大桥，牛顿的物理定律可以很好的帮助我们。但我们也知道，量子理论和相对论更为揭示了更为深刻的原理。但在低速运动的宏观世界，牛顿的力学原理是effective的。“We find descriptions that match what we actually see, interact with, and measure. The fact that a more fundamental description can underlie what we observe is pretty much irrelevant until we have access to any effects that differentiate that description. ”在我们无法同时深入探究很多问题的答案的时候，限定一个有效性的边界是很有帮助的。当然，“This notion is practical and valuable. But we should be wary since it also makes us miss things in the world—and in science. What’s obvious is what’s in our effective theory. What lies beyond might be the more fundamental truth. Sometimes it’s only a little prodding that takes us to a richer, more inclusive understanding. Getting outside our comfort zone is how science and ideas advance and what ultimately yields a richer understanding of the world.”
To be continued...