【菜菜新论】浅谈当代中国的科学人文精神

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撰文 | 蔡一夫（中国科学技术大学）

翻译 | 金庄维、张建东

背景介绍：5月3号，意大利驻上海领事馆在上海历史博物馆举行了一场“科学与艺术”对话沙龙。这一活动旨在探讨：一、探索科学与艺术之间的联系；二、科学、声音和音乐之间的联系；三、科学和文学；四、创造力和人工智能；五、科学、艺术和设计。作为科学方面的代表，受邀嘉宾有：中国科学院高能物理所所长、中科院院士王眙芳，梁次震宇宙学中心主任、台湾大学教授陈丕燊，意大利罗马大学教授Giovanni Amelino-Camelia，北京大学教授马伯强，中国科学技术大学教授蔡一夫，等。以下是蔡一夫演讲的整理稿。

Scientific Humanism in modern China

浅谈当代中国的科学人文精神

Following the above introduction, we would like to focus our attention on the scientific humanism in modern China. At present, the scientific community of modern China is devoting itself into playing the leading role in the research of various frontiers of fundamental and applied sciences. For example, among the many scientific exploration satellites we have sent in the past few years, two of them are particularly "eye-catching", which are "Wukong" and "Micius" (or "Mozi"). The former is used for the detection of high energy gamma rays, electrons, and cosmic ray ions, to aid in the search for dark matter, while the latter is designed to facilitate quantum optics experiments over long distances to allow the development of quantum encryption and quantum teleportation technology.

接着前面的活动内容，我们接下来希望将注意力集中在当代中国的科学人文主义上。目前，中国的科学界正致力于在基础科学和应用科学等的多个领域中发挥出引领前沿研究的领导作用。例如，在过去几年里我们发射了若干枚科学卫星，其中“悟空”和“墨子”这两颗科学卫星格外引人注目。前者基于探测高能宇宙射线包括伽马射线、电子、正电子以及其他宇宙射线粒子的科学原理来试图解答暗物质这一宇宙的谜团，而后者则被成功应用于推动长距离的量子光学实验，从而大大发展了量子加密和量子传输技术这些国际最前沿的科技领域。

As we all know, that China fell behind in technology in 1950s, hence in order to develop our technology as fast as possible, the knowledge about science and arts were categorized into two independent sections in education in the past several decades, and most of the country was devoted to the development of science and engineering, which caused a sharp decline in employment opportunities for arts students and rapid drop of number of enrollments at college, making it harder and harder for arts students to "make their lives". As a result, people gradually developed the idea that "Learn mathematics, physics and chemistry well, not afraid to travel all over the world", but if you choose arts as your major, you won’t become successful.

众所周知，由于历史原因，20世纪50年代的中国尽管百废待兴，在技术上完全处于滞后的水平。因此，为了尽快发展我们（中国）的技术水平，在过去的几十年里，有关科学和艺术的知识在教育中被强行分割为两个独立的部分，也就是理科文科之分。并且，大部分地区都致力于理科和工科的发展，这导致了从事文学和艺术的所谓文科生的入学人数和就业机会急剧下降。曾几何时，人们还曾逐渐形成了“学好数物化，走遍天下都不怕”的想法——如果你选择文科专业就无法获得同等的成功。

Recently, some visionary educators recognized that it is outdated to continually separate arts and science, and they have been taking efforts to combine the education of arts and science together. What’s more, quite a lot of scientists are also trying to seek the connection between science and arts. Namely, the famous theoretical physicist C.N. Yang is the one who pursuing the beauty of (a) symmetry in the frame of fundamental physics, which well demonstrates the cross-fertilization between art and science; the famous mathematician S.T. Yau seeks for the inspiration of mathematics upon modern poetry, which perfectly illustrates the key role of mathematics in characterizing reality and virtualization. It is under the great efforts of them, that China’s arts development regains its vitality, and the education environment in modern China has been improved significantly.

近些年来，一些有着真知远见的教育先行者们认识到，文理分科已经过时了，他们正在努力将艺术和科学教育重新结合起来。更为激励人心的是，越来越多的科学家们也在试图寻找科学与艺术之间的关联。比如说，著名的理论物理学家杨振宁就是一位在基础物理学框架中追求对称（不对称）之美的科学艺术家，他的重要科学发现充分体现了艺术与科学的相互交融；著名的数学家丘成桐则经常通过现代诗来抒发对数学之美的欣赏和研究，这也完美说明了数学在表征现实和虚拟化方面所扮演的关键角色。正是在这样的一些科研和教育的先行者们不断努力之下，中国的文理教育重新恢复了活力，并且现代中国的教育环境也得到了前所未有的显著发展。

Nowadays, scientists are planning to establish/have established a number of new scientific instruments that shall play a leading role in the forthcoming scientific research and provide feedbacks to the developments of technology for the daily life of the society.

现如今，科学家们已经建造了或者正在建设大量的新科学设备，而这些仪器会在不久将来的科学研究当中发挥主导作用，并有望为我们日常生活中所需要的技术发展提供相应的反馈。

CFETR (China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor), a proposed tokamak nuclear fusion reactor in China, whose construction is planned for the 2020s as a demonstration of the feasibility of large-scale fusion power generation. Although CFTER will cost much money and the construction of it does not guarantee that we can develop commercial nuclear fusion devices in next few years; obviously, successful construction and application of CFETR will definitely lead to a big step towards controllable nuclear fusion, and will make a great contribution to solving the energy shortage problem.

CFETR（中国聚变工程实验堆）是中国提出的一项托卡马克核聚变反应堆工程，中国科学家计划通过建设这一高科技装置来论证大规模聚变发电的可行性。尽管建造CFTER的投资巨大，而且不能保证我们在未来几年内就一定可以开发出商用核聚变装置，但是CFETR可期待的成功建设和应用必将带领我们（中国）在可控核聚变这一领域迈出一大步，并为未来人类解决能源短缺问题做出潜在的巨大贡献。

We also have proposed the project of CEPC (Circular Electron Positron Collider), but so far, we are not sure what kind of results would be presented to us since it is still under debate. However, if we look back into the successes brought by the BEPC (Beijing Electron Positron Collider), we can find that: in addition to continually produced fruitful scientific research results, the construction of synchrotron radiation light source on it in response not only greatly advanced the development of modern medical science, chemistry, material, condensed matter physics in China, but also accelerated the development of smartphone industry. Also, the regular open day events at BEPC help popularizing the knowledge of particle physics to the general public. While hopefully, theconstruction of CEPC would maintain China’s potentially leading position notonly in academic field such as experimental particle physics, but also in applicable technology such as precision machinery, automatic control, data acquisition and processing, computer and network communication for the next few decades.

中国也提出了CEPC（环形正负电子对撞机）这一有趣的高能物理实验项目，但是截至目前，它仍然存在巨大争议，并且我们尚不能完全确定这一项目的实施会为我们带来怎样的成就。不过，不妨回顾一下已经建成的BEPC（北京正负电子对撞机）所带来的丰硕成果吧，这样大家就不难发现：除了持续产生丰硕的科研成果以外，伴随它而建设的同步加速器辐射光源不仅在很大程度上促进了现代医学、化学、材料、凝聚态物理在中国的迅速发展，大量的数据处理计算也无形中促进了当前中国的智能手机产业的发展。此外，BEPC日常的科技开放活动有助于向公众普及粒子物理知识，从而提高了公众的科学素养。一些科学家相信建设CEPC不仅有望使中国在粒子物理实验等学术领域保持潜在的领先地位，而且在此后几十年内很有可能引领中国精密机械、自动化控制、数据采集和处理、计算机和网络通信等实用技术的发展。

Moreover, several Giant Telescopes, are expected to be built; more science satellites such as gravitational wave satellites are planned to be launched. One project that deserves to be introduced is that, the world’s highest observatory is under construction at the Ngari of Tibet, China, which is designed to seek for primordial gravitational waves (PGWs) through the window of cosmic microwave background polarizations. This so-called AliCPT (Ali CMB Polarization Telescope) project has been fully funded and the construction of the observatory include two stages, the first one is to build a telescope at the 5250m site (AliCPT-1, already done) and the second one is to have a more sensitive telescope at a higher altitude of about 6000m (AliCPT-2). Different from the celestial sourced gravitational waves, the PGW which is the production from the quantum fluctuations of space and time at the most beginning of universe remains to be undiscovered yet. PGWs have been imprinted in the CMB B modes polarization pattern, thus, the detection of PGWs provides us an efficient way for exploring the early universe.

此外，几个巨型望远镜正在计划建造中，更多诸如引力波卫星的科学卫星也在发射计划之中。值得一提的一个项目是正在中国西藏建造的世界上最高的天文台，其目的是通过宇宙微波背景极化窗口来寻找原始引力波。这个项目被称为AliCPT（阿里宇宙微波背景偏振望远镜），目前已经获得了国家资助。与天体源的引力波不同的是，原初引力波是宇宙诞生初期时空的量子涨落产生的，而且它还未被发现。原初引力波被封印在宇宙微波背景辐射B模式的偏振图案中，因此，探测原初引力波为我们提供了探索宇宙起源的有效方法。

Besides, we also have the TianQin Project, a proposed space-borne gravitational-wave observatory consisting of three spacecrafts in Earth’s orbit, aimed at detecting gravitational waves at low frequencies. TianQin is expected to provide crucial information to help better understand not only the history of stars and galaxies but also the nature of gravity and black holes. Interestingly, the name "TianQin" reveals the way how it works: "Tian" means "sky" or "space", and "Qin" means stringed instrument. Gravitational waves from thousands of light years away will "pluck the strings(which are lasers)" of TianQin, and we can study the characteristics of gravitational waves via the way that "strings" vibrate. Similarly, we even put forward another ambitious project of space-borne gravitational-wave observatory, which is called Taiji.

此外，中国还有天琴计划，这是一个由地球轨道上的三个航天器组成的星载引力波天文台，旨在探测低频引力波。按照预期，天琴可以为科学家提供大量的信息，能帮助我们更好地了解恒星和星系的历史以及引力和黑洞的本质。有趣的是，“天琴”这个名字揭示了它的运作方式：“天”意味着“天空”或“太空”，“琴”则意味着弦乐器。来自数千光年以外的引力波将拔动”天琴的弦（激光）"，而我们通过“弦”振动的方式就可以研究引力波的特性。类似于此，中国还提出了另一个雄心勃勃的星载引力波天文台项目，被称为太极计划。

Furthermore, we also propose to build the WFST (Wide Field Survey Telescope), which is a 2.5-meter optical telescope and shall become the most advanced optical instrument for time domain survey in the Northern hemisphere. The development of these scientific instruments could also facilitate technological progress for our daily life; not to mention the scientific value is invaluable, which is to help human being to know more about the early history of our universe and important processes happened in our universe. At the same time, a large number of talents would be introduced and trained.

此外，中国还建议建造WFST（大视场巡天望远镜），这是一台中国科学技术大学计划建设的2.5米口径光学望远镜，它将成为北半球最先进的用于时域巡天的光学仪器。这些科学仪器的发展还会促进我们日常生活的技术进步；更不用说其难以衡量的科学价值了，这些仪器会帮助人类更多地了解宇宙的早期历史和宇宙中发生的重要过程。与此同时，一大批相关领域的人才也会被培养起来或者被引入。

Except for practical usage, they can also satisfy our curiosity about the universe, while curiosity itself, plays acritical role in promoting the development of human society. Actually, if we were not yearning for seeing tiny objects, microscopes won’t be invented, and medical science would not progress. If we were not eager for flying in the sky as birds do, we won’t be able to create airplanes, which greatly reduce the time we travel for long distances. If we were not curious about the magical power in thunderstorms, it would be impossible for us to enter the electric era. There are many such examples, and I will not introduce them one by one here. In fact, it was always that curiosity itself first expedited scientific and technological progress and innovation, then the advanced technology would in return gave back to our society.

除了实际用途外，科学仪器的发展还能满足我们对宇宙的好奇心，而好奇心本身则在促进人类社会发展方面起着批判性作用。实际上，如果我们不渴望看到微小的物体，显微镜就不会被发明，医学科学也不会得到发展；如果我们不像鸟儿那样渴望在天空中飞行，我们将无法制造出飞机，也无法减少我们长途旅行的时间；如果我们对雷暴中的神奇力量并不感到好奇，那么我们就不可能进入电力时代。这类例子还有很多。事实上，好奇心本身始终都是先加速科技进步和创新，再将先进技术回馈给社会。

Finally, I would like to introduce an interesting phenomenon, that the cosmic map of the CMB polarization, which looks extremely like the famous painting "Starry Night" by Vincent van Gogh, hides the evidence of gravitational waves of our Universe at her birth. It turns out that, such a scientific behavior of seeking for primordial gravitational waves is aimed at unveiling the mysterious origin of our Universe and carries out the humanistic dream of intelligent beings of understanding the Universe.

最后，我想介绍一个十分有趣的自然现象，那就是宇宙微波背景辐射的极化图看起来像极了伟大的荷兰艺术家文森特·梵高的著名画作“星夜”，而这幅宇宙天图中隐藏了我们的宇宙诞生时引力波的存在证据。寻找原初引力波，这一科学行为，目的不仅仅在于要试图揭开宇宙起源的神秘面纱，而且也承载着我们人类这一智慧生命想要认知宇宙的科学人文梦想。

Questions for discussion:

1) What is the relationship between the scientific and the artistic intuitions? What is the role of analogies between arts and natural sciences and social sciences?

2) Is there any relation between intelligent beings and the universe? How can the universe be comprehensible? What is the role of mathematics in the comprehension of nature?

3) What is the social role of science and arts today in the society, and what should be? Can we develop a scientific humanism, based on the cross fertilization between sciences and arts?

4) To what extend do we expect the scientific humanism can change our minds and lives within the background of fast developments of modern China?

5) It seems that so far, all changes of scientific humanism are made spontaneously, but shall it be more systematical and how can this accommodate with the background of traditional Chinese culture?

有待探讨的问题：

1）科学与艺术直觉之间的关系是什么？艺术、自然科学和社会科学之间类比的作用是什么？

2）智慧生物与宇宙之间有怎样关系？宇宙是怎么可以被理解的？数学在理解自然时的作用是什么？

3）当今社会科学和艺术的社会角色分别是什么，我们期待它们应该是什么？我们能否在科学与艺术的交叉融合的基础上发展科学的人文主义？

4）在当代中国快速发展的背景下，科学人文主义能够在多大程度上改变我们的思想和生活？

5）到目前为止，科学人文主义的所有变化似乎都是自发的，是否我们期待更为系统化的发展呢？这一过程如何适应中国的传统文化背景？

注：蔡一夫教授首发此文于本公众号，转载请联系“蔻享科普”公众号。

—— ——往期精彩回顾—— ——

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