南航研究生英语课文翻译(3)

方面，你在这方面会变得更加充实。你对政治的见解会深化，你对戏剧的鉴赏力会更加敏锐，你对美食和美酒的品尝会更尽兴，你对某项运动的爱好会加强。

法国式的友谊有具体的分工。一个人可能与一位朋友下了三十年的棋而不知道他的政治观点，也可能与他谈论了三十年的政治，而不了解他的私人生活。不同的朋友在每个人的生活中有不同的作用。他们不介入家庭生活。而必尽的义务主要由家属承担。几个男性朋友会聚在咖啡馆里；有学识的朋友会发起更大的聚会谈上数个晚上；工人们会聚在远离家庭的小酒吧里，喝酒、闲侃。这种友谊不受婚姻的影响，而且建立友谊时不必考虑妻子的情况。

在从前的法国，这种友谊只接纳知识妇女，很少接纳其他妇女。因为大多数妇女的生活是以家庭为中心，她们与其他女性的亲密关系通常是从少女时代就建立起来的。友谊这种特殊的关系的基础是法国人最为珍视的东西——是思想，是观点的一致，是对生活中某一方面的鲜明的意识。

In Germany, in contrast with France, friendship is much more articulately(清晰地) a matter of feeling. Adolescents, boys and girls form deeply sentimental attachments, walk and talk together – not so much to polish their wits as to share their hopes and fears and dreams, to form a common front against the world of school and family and to join in a kind of mutual discovery of each other’s and their own inner life. Within the family, the closest relationship over a lifetime is between brothers and sisters. Outside the family, men and women find in their closest friends of the same sex the devotion of a sister, the loyalty of a brother. Appropriately, in Germany friends usually are brought into the family. Children call their father’s and their mothers friends “uncle” and “aunt”. Between French friends, who have chosen each other for the congeniality(意气相投) of their point of view, lively disagreement and sharpness of argument are the breath of life. But for Germans, whose friendships are based on mutuality of feeling, deep disagreement on any subject that matters to both is regarded as a tragedy. Like ties of kinship, ties of friendship are meant to be irrevocably(不能取消的) binding. Young Germans who come to the United States have great difficulty in establishing such friendships with Americans. We view friendship more tentatively, subject to changes in intensity as people move, change their jobs, marry, or discover new interests.

与法国截然不同，在德国，友谊更明确地说是个感情问题。少男少女之间建立起深厚的感情，他们一起散步，一起聊天。这一切不是为了提高自己的智慧，而是相互分享彼此的愿望、忧患和梦想，共同对付学校和家庭组成的世界，发现彼此的内心世界。家庭之内，一个人一生最亲密的关系是兄弟姐妹之间的关系。家庭之外，同性挚友之间像姐妹一样亲密，像兄弟一样真诚。大致说来，在德国，朋友经常被带到家里。孩子们称呼父母的朋友为叔叔和阿姨。观点相投而成为朋友的法国人之间，鲜明的分歧和激烈的争论是这种关系所不可少的。但是德国人的友谊是建立在相互感情的基础之上的。对他们来说，如果在双方都认为重要的问题上亲生了尖锐的分歧，那就是极大的不幸。朋友关系与亲缘关系一样具有绝对的约束力。来到美国的年轻的德国人，很难与美国人建立起这样的友谊关系。我们不把友谊看得那样一成不变，友谊的深浅随着人们的搬迁、调换工作、婚嫁，或兴趣的改变而变化。

English friendships follow still a different pattern. Their basis is shared activity. Activities at different stages of life may be of very different kinds – discovering a common interest in school, serving together in the armed forces, taking part in a foreign mission, staying in the same country house during a crisis. In the midst of the activity, whatever it may be, people fall into step – sometimes two men or two women,

sometimes two couples, sometimes three people – and find that they walk or play a game or tell stories or serve on a tiresome and exacting committee with the same easy anticipation(希望，预感) of what each will do day by day or in some critical situation. Americans who have made English friends comment that, even years later, “you can take up just where you left off.” Meeting after a long interval, friends are like a couple who begin to dance again when the orchestra strikes up after a pause. English friendships are formed outside the family circle, but they are not, as in Germany, contrapuntal to the family nor are they, as in France, separated from the family. And a break in an English friendship comes not necessarily as a result of some irreconcilable difference of viewpoint or feeling but instead as a result of misjudgment, where one friend seriously misjudges how the other will think or feel or act, so that suddenly they are out of step.

英国式的友谊模式又不尽相同。这些友谊的基础是共同的活动。人生不同阶段的活动是不同的——在学校发现共同的兴趣，同在部队服役，参加同一个外交使团，在某场危机中共同暂住在一个农舍。在活动中（不管是什么活动），人们开始步调一致（有时是两个男人，有时是两个女人，有时是两对夫妇，有时是三个人），他们发现，无论是走路、做游戏、讲故事或是在同一居委会任职，他们都觉得能很自然地估计出每个人平时如何行事，在紧急情况下如何反应。与英国人交过朋友的美国人评论说，即使是多年以后，“你的友谊也可以在哪里中断就在哪里重新开始。”长期没有往来又重新见面的朋友，就好像一对伴侣，在乐队停止演奏时暂时分开，一旦乐曲一响，就又开始翩翩起舞。英国式的友谊建立在家庭之外，但是不像德国那样对朋友的家庭承担义务，也不像法国那样把友谊与家庭截然分开。英式友情的破裂不一定是因为观点产生了分歧或是感情发生了变化，相反是因为判断错误所致，一方严重错误地判断对方的思想、感情或行为，分歧就由此而产生。

What, then, is friendship? Looking at these different styles, including our own, each of which is related to a whole way of life, are there common elements? There is the recognition that friendship, in contrast with kinship(亲属关系), invokes freedom of choice. A friend is someone who chooses and is chosen. Related to this is the sense each friend gives the other of being a special individual, on whatever grounds this recognition is based. And between friends there is inevitably a kind of equality of give-and-take. These similarities make the bridge between societies possible, and the American’s characteristic openness to different styles of relationship makes it possible for him to find new friend abroad with him he feels at home.

那么，到底什么是友谊呢？既然友谊的模式——包括我们自己的——各不相同，且每种模式完全与一定的生活方式相关，那么还有共同之处吗？不同模式的友谊的共同点，是都承认友谊与亲缘关系的不同之处是能够自由选择，朋友能够选择，也能被别人选择。与此相关的是，朋友之间彼此使对方感到与众不同，无论这种感觉的依据是什么。此外，朋友之间必要要有来有往、互谅互让。有了这些相同之处，不同的社会之间才能相互沟通；美国人的特点是不拒绝其它模式的人际关系，因此，他们在国外就有可能与那些在一起感到自在的人交上朋友。

We Need aDug-out Canoe to Navigate the Net

In 1953, when the Internet was not even a technological twinkle(闪烁) in the eye, the philosopher Isaiah Berlin famously divided thinkers into two categories: the hedgehog(刺猬) and the fox: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”

Hedgehog writers, argued Berlin, see the world through the prism(棱镜) of a single overriding(高于一切的) idea, whereas foxes dart(疾驶，飞奔) hither(向这里) and thither(到那里), gathering inspiration from the widest variety of experiences and sources. Marx, Nietzsche and Plato were hedgehogs; Aristotle, Shakespeare and Berlin himself were foxes.

Today, feasting on the anarchic(无政府的), ubiquitous(无处不在的), limitless and uncontrolled information cornucopia that is the web, we are all foxes. We browse and scavenge(除去) thoughts and influences, picking up what we want, discarding(抛弃) the rest, collecting, linking, hunting and gathering our information, social life and entertainment. The new Apple iPad is merely the latest step in the fusion(融合) of the human mind and the Internet. This way of thinking is a direct threat to ideology(意识形态). Indeed, perhaps the ultimate(最终的) expression of hedgehog-thinking is totalitarian(集权主义者) and fundamentalist(原教旨主义者). The hedgehogs rightly fear the foxes.

Edge (www.edge.org), a website dedicated(专用的) to ideas and technology, recently asked scores of philosophers, scientists and scholars a simple but fundamental question: “How is the internet changing the way you think?” The responses were astonishingly varied, yet most agreed that the web had profoundly(深刻地) affected the way we gather our thoughts, if not the way we use that information.

For both better and worse, fox-thinking is dominant(占优势的). At its worst, it means shorter attention spans(集中注意力的时限), shallower(浅的) memories, fragmented(片段的), unsustained(无支撑的) argument, the undermining(淘空) of intellectual property rights(知识产权) and a tendency to mistake anecdote(轶事) for fact. At its best, the Internet represents an intellectual revolution, fostering(养育) free collaboration as never before, with dramatically improved access to boundless information, the great store of the world’s knowledge just a few keystrokes and clicks away.

The nimble(敏捷的)Internet fox is both an extraordinary time-saver, nipping from one place to another on instant mind-journeys that would once have taken years. But he is also a prodigious(惊人的) time-waster, wandering down distracting(分散注意力的) avenues of celebritygossip, pornography(色情文学), invective(恶言谩骂) and the minutiae(细枝末节) of other peoples’ lives.

The Internet is changing the very nature of human memory. Erudition(博学) and experience, the store of knowledge built up by an individual over years, is becoming less important than the ability to focus and edit: extracting(提取) information from the machine has superseded(取代) the ability to recall it unaided.

In Internet-driven thought, the point is not on what you know, but what you can discover. We do not watch or absorb the Internet, but scour(搜索) it for what is useful. This requires a particular sort of mind, and as the digital world continues its colonization(殖民地化) of our own, fox-like minds will increasingly dominate the workplace. As David Dalrymple of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, puts it: “The bottom line is that how well an employee can focus might now be more important than how knowledgeable he is.” How the Internet teaches us to think depends on whether we treat it as a primary school playground, a place for puerile(幼稚的) fights, shallow entertainment, chatter and self-absorption(聚精会神), or a forum(论坛) of higher learning, packed with delights and discovery,

offering unprecedented(空前的) opportunities for exchanging ideas. Most of us, of course, treat it as both simultaneously.

Reading the web usefully requires a new form of literacy(读写能力), the ability to sift(筛选) from the abundance of information what is helpful from what is pointless or merely distracting. Many feel overloaded by the onslaught(猛攻) of information: too many websites, too many messages, a deafening(极喧闹的) chorus of tweets(小鸟叫声) and texts. Internet thinking is not just about browsing and gathering, but choosing and rejecting. The Internet fox knows many things, but while hungrily searching tit-bits(珍闻) from every corner, he must also know what is indigestible(难消化的), what is nourishing(有营养的) and what is poisonous.

A few hundred years ago literacy was rare and extremely valuable. Today anyone with an Internet connection and a keyboard is a publisher. A generation ago knowledge had to be actively sought out; today we are bombarded(被轰击) with information, much of it bad, biased or simply irrelevant.

The fundamental way we think has not changed, but the way we access information, and the sheer volume of that informationhas altered in ways that are both inspiring and daunting(令人气馁的). Chipping away(凿下碎片) the rotten wood is, perhaps, the most fundamental skill for the online brain: the discipline of allocating(分配) attention, filtering(过滤), questioning.

This is where the Indian canoe comes in. According to the science historian George Dyson, the Indians of the Pacific North West had two, very different methods of boatbuilding. The Aleuts, living on treeless islands, constructed kayaks from what they could find on the beaches, skins stretched across a framework of driftwood(浮木). The Tlingit, by contrast, cut down huge trees, and hollowed(挖空) out an entire canoe, cutting and burning away the excess wood.

“We used to be kayak builders, collecting all available fragments(碎片) of information,” writes Dyson. “Now, we have to learn to become dug-out canoe builders, discarding unnecessary information to reveal the shape of knowledge hidden within.” As the intellectual torrent(知识的洪流) of the Internet swells with(膨胀，充满) each technological advance, there is only one creature who can be confident of(确信) staying afloat: the fox, paddling(划桨) in the dug-out canoe.

On Becoming a Scientist

One normally becomes a scientist through a series of apprenticeships(学徒), pursuing research in laboratories directed by established scientists. My own scientific mentors were Jacques Fresco and Paul Doty at Harvard, where I learned not only technical skills but also how to think and function as a scientist. Both from them, and by making my own mistakes, I learned how to identify important problems, how to think critically, and how to design effective research strategies. Because so much of one's scientific future is shaped by early experiences, it is critical that beginning scientists select their mentors wisely. Unfortunately, what constitutes a \to help young scientists make these tough decisions wisely.

The exact project pursued for a Ph.D. degree is not nearly as important as finding the best place for learning how to push forward the frontier of knowledge as an independent investigator. My first piece of advice for graduate students is to begin research training in a laboratory led by a person with high

scientific and ethical standards. It is by talking to people in that lab or those who have previously trained there, and by consulting other scientists in the same field, that one can gain this important insight.

It is also important to find an adviser who will pay close attention to your development as a scientist. Brilliant scientists sometimes make poor mentors. Often, an established leader who has no more than about a dozen people to manage can best nurture a creative, exciting, and supportive place to work. But carrying out research with an outstanding new professor with a very small group can frequently provide even better training.

Students enter graduate school both to learn how to do science well and to discover where their talents and interests lie. Success at either task requires that they be empowered to create new approaches and to generate new ideas. In my experience, beginning scientists will only gain the confidence needed to confront the unknown successfully by making discoveries through experiments of their own design. The best research advisers will therefore provide their graduate students with enough guidance to prevent them from wasting time on nonproductive pursuits, while giving them the freedom to innovate and to learn from their own mistakes.

In my field of biology, two apprenticeships are standard for beginning scientists: first while earning a Ph.D. degree and then in a second laboratory in a postdoctoral position. The choice of a postdoctoral laboratory is best made with a long-term career plan in mind. Scientists at this stage should intentionally try to choose a laboratory where they can acquire skills that complement those they already have. For example, a student whose Ph.D. thesis gave her strong skills as a yeast geneticist might choose to do postdoctoral research with an expert protein biochemist, planning to later use a combination of powerful genetic and biochemical tools to attack a biological problem in an area where very few scientists have the same abilities.

But success as an independent scientist will require much more than technical skills. It is critical to be able to design research strategies that are ambitious enough to be important and exciting, innovative enough to make unique contributions likely, and nevertheless have a good chance of producing valuable results. An enormous number of different experiments are possible, but only a tiny proportion will be really worthwhile. Choosing well requires great thought and creativity, and it involves taking risks.

Senior scientists have the responsibility of maintaining a system that provides talented young scientists with the opportunity to succeed in whatever career they choose. My next editorial addresses the importance of ensuring that innovation and risk-taking are rewarded for those pursuing a life of independent research. Also, a new series in Science Careers highlights conversations with audacious scientists who give their own advice about selecting institutions, mentors, and projects.

百度搜索“77cn”或“免费范文网”即可找到本站免费阅读全部范文。收藏本站方便下次阅读，免费范文网，提供经典小说综合文库南航研究生英语课文翻译(3)在线全文阅读。