译:The Look and Feel of 21st Century Science

原作者:Joe Brewer   翻译 :山中老者  

已通过Facebook联系到Joe Brewer,并获其授权。

原文链接:The Look and Feel of 21st Century Science

In this time of disruptive change, we need to rethink the basic structures of knowledge.        在发生颠覆性改变的时刻,我们需要重新思考基本的知识结构

Humanity is going through unprecedented global change. The systems that arose to organize societies in the last 400 years are breaking down — and now is the time to envision what will come next.

人类正在经历全球性的前所未有的改变。在过去400年间,组织社会的系统正在崩塌——现在是设想未来的时刻。

I recall a talk that inspired me several years ago by the eclectic scholar, Dougald Hine where he explained that knowledge systems change in a nested manner. Some things (like the way we get news on a daily basis) can evolve quickly as new technologies alter media institutions on timescales of a few years or decades. Other things move more slowly.

我回想起几年前,一位广博的学者Douglad Hine的一次激起我灵感的讲话,他解释说,知识系统以嵌入的方式改变。一些事情(比如每天我们获取新闻的方式)能够迅速地演变,因为新的技术在几年或几十年的时间里改变了媒体机构。其他事情则变化得十分缓慢。

An example he gave for these historic sloths was the organization of academic disciplines at universities — some of which have been very slow to change in a hundred years (think about the presumed boundary between “hard” and “soft” science that is so resistant to leaving). Yet the slowest of all is in the archival institutions that we call libraries. It is to changes in these modes of information storage for long periods of time that we must look when paradigmatic change is upon us. Such a change is now upon us right now.

他说明这些历史性慵懒的一个例子是大学里的学术性组织 ——一些组织在100年的时间里变化非常缓慢(顽固地思考“软”,“硬”科学的假定边界)。然而,最慢的是档案机构,我们把它们叫做图书馆。我们必须要看到,当有代表性的改变走向我们时,这些长时间保存信息的方式将会改变。这样的改变立刻就会来到我们身边。

The oldest libraries were storehouses of pottery. Data was painted onto clay pots to record important information about crop yields that go back thousands of years in places like Mesopotamia and ancient China. Later it was scrolls like those famously burned in the Great Library of Alexandria. More recently it has been bounded paper volumes that we call books, as the printing press gave rise to literate societies in the last few hundred years.

最古老的图书馆是存放陶器的仓库。数据被画在陶罐上,用来记录重要的信息,比如作物的产量。这可以回溯到几千年前的美索不达米亚和古中国。之后是卷轴,比如十分著名的,在亚历山大图书馆中烧毁的那些。现在,它成为了有限的纸制品,我们把它们叫作书,印刷机在过去的几百年里把人类引向了文明社会。

Now we are fully in the digital age when it comes to information systems. And digital data is profoundly networked and ephemeral in ways that were simply not possible before. We can update the linkages and information content with ease that makes book printing look cumbersome by comparison. So it has become paradigmatic that libraries are “going digital” and building up a network ecology framework for organizing the knowledge of societies.

现在,我们在信息系统方面完全处于数字化的时代,并且数据正在迅速被网络化,这在之前是不可想象的。我们可以轻松得更新链接和信息,相比之下,印刷图书是很繁琐的事情。所以图书馆将变得数字化,并且建立一个组织起社会知识的网络生态框架已成为重中之重。

What does this have to do with the look and feel of 21st Century science? In a word, everything. For humanity is now on the cusp of planetary-scale crisis. According to earth system scientists at the Stockholm Resilience Institute, the Earth has now passed at least four of nine “planetary boundaries” that define a safe operating range for global civilization. We are fully in overshoot-and-collapse — living through an Easter Island type of instability on a planetary scale.

这和21世纪科学的样貌有什么关系?一句话,一切都有关系。因为人类现在正处于世界范围危机的尖端。根据Stockholm Resilience Institute的地球系统科学家的研究,地球现在已经通过了9个“行星极限”中的至少4个,为全球的文明创造了安全的空间。我们正完全处在濒临崩溃的边缘——正生活在如复活节岛般的不稳定之中。

At the same time, our social systems are in deep turmoil due to massive wealth inequality and the various forms of institutional decline that comes with collapsing trust in an unequal world. This is apparent in the rise of authoritarian leaders in many countries in concert with a rapid drop of trust in authoritative expertise. Science is in crisis alongside the political and economic systems of the world that are in turmoil today.

同时,由于巨大的财富不平等和各种形式制度的衰落,我们的社会制度陷入了极度的混乱,随之而来的是信任在一个不平等世界中的崩溃。显而易见的是,在许多国家,专制统治的兴起使得对于权威知识的信任极速下降。 今天,科学处于危机当中,世界的政治,经济也处在动荡中。

So we must envision a look and feel for science in the future that is networked, agile and ever-evolving, relevant to the pressing issues of the day, and deeply,  DEEPLY ecologically human. This last point bears elaboration. And a brief side comment about the fundamental importance of metaphors for organizing knowledge in societies.

因此,我们必须设想未来的科学形态,它是联网的,敏捷的和不断变化的,与当今的紧迫问题相关,并且入人性化的。 最后一点需要详细说明,还有一个对于组织社会知识的比喻之根本重要性的简要单方面评论要说。

The guiding metaphor for the Modern Era was the “clockwork universe” of Enlightenment thinkers like René Descartes.I wrote more about this in an earlier essay, The Great Lie of Living on a Dead Planet. When we separate mind from body; humans from nature; and societies from their environments; we are doing so by presuming the Universe to be a giant mechanical device with no morality or soul inside. This metaphor gave rise to the mechanistic sciences of physics and chemistry in the 16th through 19th Centuries.

指导现代的比喻是如勒奈·笛卡尔那样的启蒙思想家的“发条宇宙”。我在一篇早期的文章——死星上的大谎言——中更多地写到了这一点。当我们分离头脑和身体; 人类和自然; 社会和其环境; 我们正在通过假设宇宙是一个巨大的机器,在里面没有道德或灵魂来做到这一点。在16至19世纪, 这个比喻产生了物理和化学的机械科学。

Many of the systemic problems we face today — from climate change to political corruption — are traceable back to this illusion of separation between machines and living things. And so it should come as no surprise that the 20th Century was a period of ascendence for systems thinking in fields like ecology, computer science, quantum mechanics, and the study of social networks. Herein we can see the early shape of the new paradigm for 21st Century science.

我们今天面临的许多系统性问题 ——从气候变化到政治腐败 -——都可追溯到机器和生命之间分离的错觉。 因此,毫不奇怪,20世纪是在生态学,计算机科学,量子力学和社会网络研究领域系统性思考的强盛时期。 于此,我们可以看到21世纪科学新样貌的早期形态。

The guiding metaphor here is ecological networks. Living systems that function through their interdependence, networked relationships among functional parts, and a dynamism of emergence that is not reducible. The science of the last few hundred years may necessarily have been reductionistic (breaking complexity down into manageably simple parts in order to make sense of it) but the science that is emerging will equally strongly require holism in order to make sense of the interwoven patterns that arise as global systemic behaviors.

这里的指导性比喻是生态网络。 生存系统通过相互的依赖,功能部分之间的网络化关系,以及不可还原的显现出的动态性来发挥作用。 过去几百年的科学可能一定是有还原性的(将复杂的分解成可控的简单部分以使它可以感受到),但正在出现的科学同样强烈地需要整体性,以便可以理解出现全球化系统性行为的交织模式。

Let me demonstrate the difference with a concrete example from my work as the coordinator for birthing a new scientific society for the study of cultural evolution. I have worked with a team of researchers to map out the knowledge ecology of this field. We did this because a survey of our founding membership revealed a strong desire for knowledge synthesis across the divided silos of university departments.

让我用一个我工作的具体例子来展示其间的不同。我的工作是作为一位协调员,为文明进化研究孕育一个新的科学社团。我与一个研究小组合作,绘制出这个领域的知识生态系统。我们这样做是因为我们的创始会员的调查显示,在大学部门里分散的“孤岛”中有对知识综合的强烈渴望。


A beautiful map for the knowledge ecology of Cultural Evolution Society members.           文明进化社会成员组成的一张美丽知识生态系统图

Research in psychology was not adequately being informed by (or informing) that which was taking place in anthropology or sociology. Historians were not in sufficient dialogue with archeologists or population ecologists. Political scientist hadn’t played well with economists. Biologists weren’t working closely with humanities scholars. What’s worse, researchers in each of these siloed fields have scarcely been in dialogue with each other either. According to one illustrative study, 90% of all peer review journal articles have never been read!

在人类学或社会学中发生的事没有充分通知过(或正在通知)心理学方面的研究。 历史学家与考古学家或人口(种群)生态学家没有充分的对话。 政治学家没有与经济学家愉快地合作。 生物学家没有与人文学者密切合作。 更糟的是,每个这些孤立领域的研究人员几乎没有相互对话。 根据一个说明性的研究,90%的同行评议期刊文章从未被阅读过!

In another essay I called this The Predicament of Knowledge and it is now chronic as humanity is clearly failing to apply all of this compartmentalized knowledge to the crises of living in a 21st Century world. The argument I made there was that we collectively have all the knowledge we need to solve every major social problem in the world. Yet we lack the capacities to synthesize and apply all this knowledge in real time.

在另一篇文章中,我称这为“知识的困境”,它现在是长期的,因为人类显然不能将所有这些分离的知识应用于21世纪世界的生命危机中。 我所提出的论点是,我们集体拥有了解决世界上每一个重大社会问题所需的所有知识。 然而,我们缺乏适时综合应用所有这些知识的能力

This is where the Cultural Evolution Society comes into play. The mechanistic divisions of Modern-Era science have led to treating science as an industrial manufacturing process devoid of human sentiment or morality (think of all the animal testing done in cages throughout the last 400 years). What is needed to replace it is a living intelligence process guided by evolution for sense-making and collective learning. This requires a 21st Century understanding for (a) what it means to be a living thing; and more specifically (b) what it means to be human.

这是文化进化社会发挥作用的地方。 现代科学的机械分类导致将科学视为缺乏人类情感或道德的工业制造过程(想想在过去400年间在笼子里进行的所有动物测试)。 需要替代它的是一个富有生命的智力过程,由感觉和集体学习的进化来指导。 这需要有二十一世纪对于(a)作为生命具体意味着什么(b)作为人类意味着什么的理解。

Sciences of the future will need to be integrative and holistic, emergent and evolutionary, and profoundly informed by knowledge of their interdependencies. No more “Cartesian” separations. No more dividing knowledge into silos. No more treating humans as an industrial input into corporate machines. Instead we need to apply the ecological principles of regeneration, resilience, and thriving. Scientists of the future will work together as networks — an evolutionary step beyond the ad hoc interdisciplinary teams of the late 20th Century.

未来的科学将会是综合性的,整体性的,紧急的和不断进化的,并且知道它们的相互依赖性。 没有更多的“笛卡尔”般的分离。 没有更多的知识分离成孤岛。 不再将人类视为集体机器的工业化投入。相反,我们需要应用可再生的,有恢复力和蓬勃发展的生态原则。未来的科学家将一起工作,形成一个网络—— 以不断进化的步伐超越20世纪后期特设跨学科团队。

Tools for synthesis will include group facilitation, scientific visualization, computer modeling and simulation, and iterative design practices. We will need to actively co-create in pluralistic communities where those trained in specific domains of knowledge are partnered with transdisciplinary scholars who specialize in facilitating knowledge synthesis. These are the new-and-improved generalists of a bygone era. They are fully human as networked ecosystems of people learning together using tools, theoretical frameworks, and social practices that are incentivized for collective intelligence.

集成工具将包括集体便利(小组促进),科学可视化,计算机建模和模拟,以及迭代设计实践。在多元化社区中,我们需要那些受过特定知识领域培训的人与专门从事促进知识综合的跨学科学者积极地共同创造。 这些是在一个过去时代里崭新且优秀的通才。 他们是在人类生态系统网络中完全可以一起学习使用能激发集体智慧的工具,理论框架和社会实践的人。

Critical for this science to emerge will be that it avoid its greatest current threat — a 21st Century version of the burning of Alexandria’s great library. We need our science to survive the potential collapse of global civilization in the next 50 years. Let this sink in. It is a very serious issue that is hardly on anyone’s radar at the moment.

这个科学出现的关键将是,它避免其当前的最大威胁 ——一个21世纪版本的亚历山大图书馆的焚毁。 我们需要我们的科学在未来50年全球文明的潜在崩溃中生存。要让这被理解。这是一个非常严重的问题,在这一刻,几乎没有人察觉。

Yes, there is a crisis in peer-review publishing.

没错,在同行评议出版中存在危机。

Yes, there is a crisis in public understanding of science for policymaking.

没错,公众对于决策科学的理解存在危机。

Yes, there is a crisis of impending ecological collapse of the biosphere.

没错,生物圈的生态即将崩溃。

Yes, there is a crisis of anti-science demagogues replacing rigorous methods with ideology.

没错,反对科学的煽动者正用思想观念替代严谨的方法。

Yet at the deep systemic level, there is a greater crisis of unraveling paradigms for knowledge systems as humanity goes through its next great transition as a species.

然而,在深层次的系统层面上,随着人类这一物种经历下一个大的过渡,对解开知识体系的范式面临更大的危机。

It is here that the new sciences must emerge. It must not be based on a separation of theory and practice — for it will be the practices of working with, studying, and guiding the evolution of complex social systems that will enable the sciences to advance. And also what enables the social systems themselves to maintain the efficacy to continue their existence. These things are inseparable in reality and must be dealt with accordingly.

在这儿,新的科学必须出现。 它不能以理论和实践的分离为基础——因为它将是关于复杂社会系统进化的研究与指导,这种社会系统将使科学得以进步。 还有什么能使社会系统自身保持效力,继续它的存在。 这些事情在现实中是不可分割的,必须相应地加以处理。

Applying this back to the observation that started this essay, we must envision libraries of the future as networked living systems of interconnected human beings. The “digital divide” between those with access to internet and those without is only one use for this phrase. Another is the deeper semantic separation presumed by disembodied rationality — that there is no digital without physical and all human knowledge is worthless if it fails to be embodied by human societies as social norms, behaviors, narratives, and institutional practices.

应用这个,要回到这篇文章开始的观察,我们必须设想未来的图书馆作为相互联系的人类的联网生活系统。 在那些有互联网和没有互联网的人之间的“数字鸿沟”只是这个短语的一个用法。 另一个是由无理由的的理性假设的更加深入的语义分离   ——    如果物质不数字化,如果不能体现人类社会的社会规范,行为,故事和制度的实践,那么,所有的人类知识都是无价值的。

The digital libraries of the future will be cyborgs… interwoven human-machine meshworks for active learning. The singularity is us as human beings. The look and feel of 21st Century science will be human through and through. There will be holism and integration; emotion and reason recombined in resonance with findings from the cognitive and behavioral sciences. And it will be ecological; embedded in human networks which are themselves embedded within physical and social geographies.

未来的数字图书馆将是智能化的...交织的人机网络会主动学习。我们作为人类是奇异的。 21世纪科学的样貌将是由人类从头到尾创造的。 将有整体性和综合性; 感性和理性会与认知与行为科学的发现共鸣。 它将是生态的; 嵌入在人类网络中,这些网络自身嵌入在物理和社会地理中。

Let us rapidly transform the look and feel of science to reflect its best face. Let it be systemic and integrative. Let it be moral and political. And let it be relevant and responsive to the crises we all face together on a daily basis in the real world.

让我们快速改变科学的形态,以反映其最好的面貌。让它系统化和综合化。让它成为道德和政治。让它关联与响应我们每天在现实世界中共同面对的危机。

Onward, fellow humans.

前进吧,同胞们。

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