PALE BLUE DOT

----A VISION OF THE HUMAN FUTURE IN SPACE

暗淡蓝点

----探寻人类的太空家园

CHAPTER4 A UNIVERSE NOT MADE FOR US

第四章　并非为我们造的宇宙

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第四章　并非为我们造的宇宙

信念之海浩瀚，昔日环绕岸边。层层巨浪翻卷，我今倾听忧伤。

怒涛起伏往返，屏息思绪万千。晚风吹拂远方，卵石裸露世间。

　——阿诺尔德(Matthew Arnold)　《多佛海滨》(1867) [译者注:英国诗人(1822-1888)]

我们常说，“落日真美”或“日出前我已起床”。无论科学家有什么论断，在日常谈话中我们往往不理睬他们的发现。我们不说地球在旋转，而说太阳升起和下落。不妨试用哥白尼式的说法，难道你会讲，“比利(Billy)，在地球转得够多，把太阳遮掩到此处地平线下的时候，你就回家吧”?你这句话还没说完，比利早就转身走掉了。我们甚至还没有找到一种优雅的习惯用语来准确表达日心学说的见解。我们是在中心，而一切天体都绕我们运转，这在我们的语言中已经根深蒂固了。我们也这样教孩子。我们是披着哥白尼外衣的顽固守旧的地心说信徒。① [①少数准哥白尼式的英浯习惯用语之一是“宇宙并不绕着你打转”。这是想把乳臭未干的自大狂人拉回地球的一个天文真理。]

1633年，罗马天主教廷谴责伽利略宣扬地球环绕太阳旋转。现在让我们比较详细地了解这场著名的辩论。伽利略在他对比两种假设——地心宇宙与日心宇宙——的著作的序言中写道：

通过对天文现象的研究，哥白尼的假说会得到证实，它最后必然取得绝对的胜利。

后来他在该书中承认：

我还不能充分地钦佩(哥白尼及其追随者)，他们全靠智慧的力量就强行违反自己的知觉，而选择理智的推论，摒弃直觉明明白白向他们显示的经验……

教廷在对伽利略的起诉书中宣称：

认为地球既不是宇宙的中心，又并非静止不动，而是有周日自转，这种学说是荒谬的。从心理学和神学两方面来说，它都是虚假的，至少是一个信念错误。

伽利略回答说：

地球在运动而太阳固定不动的学说受到谴责，根据是《圣经》在多处说太阳在运动而地球固定不动……诚心诚意地说，《圣经》不会说谎。但是谁也不能否认，它往往深奥难解，它的真义难于发现，并且超越单纯的书面含义。我想在讨论自然界的问题时，我们不应当从《圣经》，而是从实验与论证出发。

但是在伽利略的认罪书(1633年6月22日)中，他被迫说道：

承宗教法庭告诫：要完全摒弃太阳是不动的宇宙中心，而地球在动且并非宇宙中心的错误见解，……我已经……怀疑以前持有和相信过的太阳是不动的宇宙中心，而地球在动且并非宇宙中心的异端邪说……我怀着赤诚之心和真实的信念发誓，我诅咒并痛恨那一类谬误邪说，以及违背神圣天主教廷的一切任何错误和教派。

直至1831年，教会才把伽利略的著作从天主教徒禁读书目中撤销(谁要是阅读禁书，会受到极严厉的惩罚)。

从伽利略的时代以来，教皇对近代科学感到的焦虑不安已经减退和消失了。在近代历史上，这方面高潮的标志是 1864年庇护九世的《批谬纲领》。(这位教皇还主持了梵蒂冈教廷会议，在他的坚持下，首次公布了教皇一贯正确的训示。)下面是一些片断：

神的启示是完美的，因此，它不需要接连不断和无限期的发展，以便适应人类理智的进步……在理智光芒的指引下，任何人都不能不信奉和立誓加入他真诚信仰的宗教……教廷有权断然确定天主教为唯一真正的宗教……甚至在今天．仍然需要确认天主教是唯一的国教，并取缔一切其他形式的信仰……民间对每一种信仰的自由选择，以及给所有人以公开发表意见与想法的充分权利，会很容易造成民众的道德和心灵的腐败……罗马教皇不能够也不应该与进步、自由主义以及近代文明达成和解或表示赞同。

虽然是太迟了并且是很勉强地，教廷为了维护它的信誉，在1992年否定了它对伽利略的谴责。尽管如此，它仍然不能完全认清自己这样做的含义。教皇约翰·保罗二世在1992年的一次演讲中辩解说：

从启蒙时代开始直到今天，伽利略案件一直是一种“虚构的故事”，它从事件中捏造出来的形象与真实情况大不一样。依照这种看法，伽利略案件象征着天主教廷被假定为抵制科学进步，或“武断地”用愚民政策来反对对真理的自由探索。

但是当宗教法庭把年老体弱的伽利略带进教廷的地牢并向他展示刑具时，无疑承认并要求有这样的理解。这只不过是对科学的警告和压制，一直到诸如周年视差这种令人不得不信服的证据已经取得的时候，才勉强改头换面。这也是对讨论与争辩的恐惧。对不同观点进行审查，并恐吓迫害其支持者，这暴露出教会宗旨本身对表面上要予以保护的教区居民并不信任。为什么要对伽利略进行威胁和软禁?难道真理在谬误面前不能捍卫自己吗?

尽管如此，教皇继续补充说道：

当时的神学家在坚信地球的中心地位时出了错，这在一定程度上是由于从《圣经》的字面意义来了解物理世界的结构而造成的。

在这里确实有相当大的进步——虽然原教旨主义信念的拥护者在听教皇说《圣经》在字面上并不总是对的时，会感到垂头丧气。

但是如果《圣经》并非每处都对，那么哪些部分是神授的，而哪些部分难免有错并且是人为的呢?一旦我们承认《圣经》有谬误(或者退一步承认当时的愚昧)，那么《圣经》怎么能成为伦理和道德的绝对正确的指南呢?现在能否让某些教派和个人把《圣经》中他们所喜欢的部分当成是真实可靠的，而把引起麻烦和累赘的部分扬弃掉呢?举例来说，禁止凶杀对社会是重要的，但是如果认为神对凶杀未必会惩罚，那么会不会有更多的人认为他们杀了人可以不受惩罚?

许多人认为哥白尼和伽利略不怀好意，破坏了社会秩序。实际上无论来自何方的对《圣经》字面真理的挑战，都会有这样的下场。我们容易看到科学怎样开始使人们紧张不安。那些把神话长期流传的人不受批评，而对神话提出怀疑的人却成为众矢之的。

我们的祖先从自身的经历来推测起源。难道他们还有别的办法吗?因此，宇宙是从一只宇宙之蛋孵化出来的，或是一位母神与父神〇〇而生的，或者是造物主作坊的一种产品——也许是多次有缺陷的试制的最后一次成品。因此宇宙比我们所看见的大不了多少，比我们的书面记录或口头传说古老不了许多，并且与我们所知道的相差无几。

我们的宇宙学说中倾向于采用熟悉的事物。尽管尽力探寻，但并无太多创新。在西方，天国是安静和松软的，而地狱就像是一个火山的内部。在许多传说中，这两个领域都由以天神或魔鬼为首的统治集团管理。一神论者谈论王中之王。每一种文化都把管理宇宙的政治体系设想得与人间的颇为类似。很少有人认为这种相似是值得怀疑的。

后来科学发展起来，并让我们了解到自己并非一切事物的准则，有我们想象不到的奇异事情；另外宇宙也不一定像我们所想的那样是舒适的与合情合理的。我们已经知道我们的常识有某些特异性质。科学已经把人的自我意识推进到一个更高的水平。这肯定是进步的过程，也是走向成熟的一步。它与哥白尼之前的观念之幼稚和自我陶醉形成强烈的对比。

但是为什么我们一定要设想宇宙是为我们创造的?为什么这个想法如此令人神往?为什么我们培育它?是否我们的自尊心太强烈，因此除了一个为我们定做的宇宙之外，就不行?

当然，这种想法所仰赖的是我们的虚荣。狄摩西尼(Demosthenes)[译者注:古雅典雄辩家和民主派政治家(公元前384—公元前332)]说：“一个人需要什么，他就把它想成真实的。”阿奎那高兴地承认：“信念之光让我们看见自己所相信的东西。”但是我想还会有别的东西。灵长类动物有一种种族优越感。无论我们出生在哪一个小的群体，我们对它都怀着热爱和忠诚；而认为其他群体的成员都卑不足道，应当排斥与仇视。就一个旁观者看来，同一种族的两个群体实际上是一模一样的，很难找出差异。对我们在动物王国中最相近的亲戚，即黑猩猩来说，情况正是这样。德鲁扬和我已经谈论过，在几百万年前，从这个观点来看待世界会形成多么重大的进化意识，然而在今天这就变得很危险了。甚至当时以狩猎、采集为生的人群的成员——他们的技能与我们目前全球文明的技术水平相差何其大也——也把他们所在的无论哪一个小团伙都正正经经地说成是“人们”。他们之外的任何人都是异种，甚至不是人。

如果这是观察世界的一种自然方式，那么我们每一次对自己在宇宙中的地位作出一种朴素的判断——没有经过仔细和严格的科学检验的判断——几乎总是选定自己的群体与环境是在中心，这就不足为奇了。进一步说，我们总要相信这是客观事实，而不是哗众取宠。

这样看来，一群饶舌的科学家滔滔不绝地向我们宣讲，“你是寻常的，你并不重要，你不配有特权，你并没有什么了不起，”这并不令人太感兴趣。听得多了，甚至不易激动的人对这种咒语以及坚持说教的人也许会产生厌烦。看来科学家从贬低人类中正在获得某种奇怪的满足。为什么他们不能找到我们优越的地方?让我们兴高采烈吧!吹捧我们吧!在这些辩论中，科学以它让人泄气的曼陀罗[译者注: 古印度宗教的祈祷词或咒语。]，使人感到它是冷冰冰的、疏远的、冷漠无情的、孤独的、对人类需求毫无反应的。

再说，如果我们并不重要，不在中心，不是上帝的宝贝，那么我们根据神学建立的道德准则有什么意义呢?人类在宇宙中真实地位的发现长期来遇到激烈的对抗，至今仍有许多争议的残迹，地心学说支持者的用心有时昭然若揭。试举一例，下面是英国评论性刊物《观察家》在1892年发表的一篇未经署名的揭露问题的评议：

很清楚的事情是行星的日心运动的发现，使我们的地球在太阳系中蜕化到它固有的、“卑不足道的”地位，也促使地球上占优势的种族迄今受指导和约束的道德准则，退化到一个类似的、但远非固有的、“卑不足道的”地位。许多奉命撰稿的作家笔下的自然科学并非一贯正确，而是错误百出，这便过分地动摇了人们对他们的道德伦理和宗教学说的信任感；这无疑是造成道德准则蜕化的部分原因。但是更多的仅仅是由于人类完全认识到自身的“卑不足道”，因为他发现他栖息的场所只是宇宙的一个偏僻角落，而不是太阳、月球和星星都绕之旋转的中心世界。人类无疑会感到，并且早已经常感到，自己要成为任何特殊的神灵培育或关注的对象，是太不够格了。如果把地球当作一座蚁山，人的一生看作是在许多小洞洞进进出出寻找食物与阳光的蚂蚁的一生，那么十分肯定，对人类一生的责任不必太重视，并且可以用一种深刻的宿命论和绝望，而不是抱着新希望，来看待人类的追求……

至少就目前而言，我们的视界已经够广阔了……；直到我们对已有的无限广阔的视界感到习以为常，我们在思考它们时不会像通常一样心慌意乱，而渴望得到更为广阔的视界还为时过早。

我们从哲学和宗教真想得到什么?是缓解剂?治疗?还是安慰?我们是否要再次相信无稽之谈，或是了解我们的真实处境?为了宇宙和我们的一相情愿不符合就心灰意懒，这似乎太孩子气了。你不难想到，把这种失望写下来并付印，对成年人来说真是难为悄的。时新的做法不是责怪宇宙——它似乎真是空空洞洞的，而是责怪我们了解宇宙的工具，就是科学。

肖伯纳(Ceonge Bemard Shaw)在他的剧本《圣琼》(St.Joan)的序言中，描写过科学消灭我们的轻信的观念，把一个陌生的世界观强加于我们，并恫吓我们的信仰：

在中世纪，人们相信大地是平的，对此他们至少有自己的知觉可以作证。现在我们相信它是圆的，并不是因为有百分之一的人能够为这个古怪的信念提供物理依据，而是因为近代科学已经说服我们，凡是明明白白的事物，没有哪一件是真的，而不可思议的、不大可能的、异常的、庞大的、微观的、无情的或者荒谬绝伦的事物却是科学的。

一个更新近的和十分有启发意义的例子，是英国新闻工作者阿普尔亚德(Bryan Appleyard)所写的《了解现在：科学和当代人的灵魂》。这本书阐明了全世界许多人都感觉到，但令人难以说出来的东西。阿普尔亚德的坦率使人耳目一新。他是一个真正的信徒，他不愿让我们陷入近代科学与传统宗教之间矛盾的泥沼中。

他痛惜说，“科学夺走了我们的宗教。”他渴望得到的是哪一种宗教呢?在他所要的宗教中，“人类是整个体系的要害、心脏和最终目的。它肯定把我们自己置于整个世界之上。”……“我们是终点、目的，也是伟大的太空圆穹绕之旋转的合理枢轴。”他渴望一个“天主教正统的宇宙”，在它里面“可以看出整个世界是为演出一场救世戏剧而制造的一架机器”。阿普尔亚德的用意是，尽管有明确的指令，一个女人和一个男人违令吃了一只苹果，这个反抗行动把宇宙转换成控制他们后代子孙的一种机构。

对比起来，近代科学“认为我们是偶然出现的。我们是宇宙的产物，而不是宇宙的目的。当代的人最后什么也不是，他在宇宙中不起作用。”科学是“精神上的腐蚀剂，它激起对古代权威和传统的仇恨。它不能和任何事物真正地共存。”……

“科学不知不觉地说服我们抛弃自我，我们真正的自我。”它揭示“缄默的、异样的自然界景象”。……“人类不能和这样揭示的事物共存，遗留下来仅有的德行便是自慰的谎言。”人类很渺小，这是一个难以忍受的负担，想到它比什么都使人难堪。

在缅怀庇护九世的一段文字中，阿普尔亚德甚至诋毁这样的事实：“可以指望一个近代的民主社会容纳若干个互相抵触的宗教信仰，它们不得不遵从一定数量的共同禁令，但没有别的限制。它们不得相互烧毁对方的教堂，但是，他们可以否认甚至辱骂对方的上帝。这是有效的、科学的行动方式。”

但是还有什么选择?把一个难以确定的世界执拗地说成是可以确定的?采用一种自慰的信仰体系，不管它与事实相差多远?如果我们不知道什么是真的，怎么能面对现实呢?由于实际原因，我们不能过多地生活在幻想世界。我们要不要审查彼此的宗教并烧毁彼此的教堂呢?我们怎么能够认定，数以千计的人类信仰体系中哪一个是没有争议的、无所不在的和非信不可的呢?

这些引文表明，面对着宇宙——它的宏伟和华丽，尤其是它的冷漠——我们多么缺乏胆量。科学告诉我们，因为我们有欺骗自己的才能，因此主观性不能任意支配一切。这是阿普尔亚德如此不信任科学的一个理由。科学似乎是太理性化、太按步就班，也太不顾个人情感了。它的结论都来自对自然界疑问的解决，而全然不是为满足人们的需要而预先设计的。阿普尔亚德为中庸的主张感到痛惜。他向往绝对正确的教义，废除审判，以及履行信仰而不是质询的义务。他不领会人们难免会出差错。他认为，无论是在我们的社会组织里，还是对宇宙的认识中，都不需要把改正错误形成制度。

这就是当父母不在时婴儿的生气哭泣。但是大多数人终于弄清楚了事情的真相，原来是父母本会绝对保证小孩不受伤害，但是有人要父母去办事时他们不得不痛苦地走开。大多数人终于找到了适应于宇宙的办法——尤其是在掌握思考工具的时候。

在科学的年代，阿普尔亚德抱怨说，“我们传授给自己孩子的只是这样的信念：包括培育我们的文化在内，没有一样东西是真实的、不可更改的或持久的。”对于我们遗产的不合适方面，他的话何等正确。但是把没有根据的必然事物加进去，它是否会变得更加丰富?他嘲笑“认为科学和宗教是可以轻易分开的独立领域的这种虔诚希望”。与此相反，“科学就其目前的情况来说，与宗教绝对是水火不相容的。”

然而阿普尔亚德是否真的要说，现在有些宗教对世界的本质发表直言不讳的错误声明而想不引起争议是难以办到的?我们认识到，甚至备受尊敬的宗教领袖(他们是他们那个时代的产物，正像我们是我们这个时代的产物一样)，也可能出了差错。各个宗教之间有矛盾，就琐碎小事来说，诸如走进礼拜堂时应该戴帽还是脱帽，是否应当吃牛肉而不吃猪肉，或反之，可吃猪肉而不能吃牛肉，等等；直到最重要的问题，例如有没有神灵，只是一个上帝还是有许多神。

科学把我们中的许多人带入如霍桑(Nathaniel Hawthome) [译者注: 美国小说家(1804—1864)。]所描绘的梅尔维尔的心情，“他既不能信教，又不能为他的无信仰而感到宽慰。”或者如卢梭(Jean-Jacques Rousseau) [译者注: 法国启蒙思想家、哲学家、文学家(1712－1778)。]所说的：“他们没有说服我，但他们使我烦恼。他们的论证震动了我，但从没有令我信服……要阻止一个人去相信他渴望得到的东西，是困难的。”由于世俗和宗教的权威所倡导的信仰体系都被破坏了，一般说来，对权威的尊重大概会遭到侵蚀。教训是明明白白的：甚至政治领袖也必然会对接受错误的教条留神。这不是科学的失误，而是它的一个恩惠。

当然，世界观的一致是令人宽慰的，而意见冲突会使人不安，并要求我们付出更多。但是除非我们不顾一切证据，坚持认为我们的祖先是十全十美的，那么知识的进步要求我们取消然后重新组合他们所达成的一致。

在某些方面，就引起敬畏的程度来说，科学远远超过宗教。任何一个主要的宗教几乎都不会审视科学并得出结论说，“这比我们想象的更好!宇宙比我们的先哲们所说的更大、更宏伟、更精巧、更优美。上帝必然是比我们想象的更伟大。”这是为什么呢?与此相反，他们会说，“不，不，不!我的神是一个很小的神，我要他以后还是这样。”近代科学揭示出宇宙的宏伟壮丽，一个强调宇宙如此宏伟壮丽的宗教，无论是老的还是新的，也许能博得传统信仰很难得到的尊重与敬畏。这样一个宗教迟早会出现。

如果你活在两三千年以前，那么坚持认为宇宙是为我们而创造的，就不是一桩丢脸的事情。它是与当年人们所知的任何事物都相符合的有吸引力的命题；它是当年人们中间最有学问的人毫无保留地宣讲的学说。但是从那时以来人类已有许多发现。今天还捍卫这样一种见解就是存心不顾证据和毫无自知之明。

然而，对我们许多人来说，消除认知上的这种狭隘观念却依然令人痛恨。即使它们不能主宰一切，它们也会伤害信心——不像早期随社会功利而起伏的人类为宇宙中心的信念那样走运。我们是为了一个目的才渴望在这个位置上，至于证据，除掉自我欺骗之外却一点也没有。列夫·托尔斯泰(L.Tolstoy)曾写道：“生活中毫无意义的荒唐事，便是人类能够取得的仅有的无可争辩的知识。”我们的自高自大接连被戳穿，这使我们的时代背着累积而成的沉重包袱。我们是后来者；我们生活在宇宙的荒野中；我们来自微生物和污泥；猿猴是我们的远亲；我们的思想和感觉并不完全由自己控制；其他地方可能还有更灵巧得多的和大不一样的生灵。除了这一切之外，我们正在把自己的行星搅得一团糟，并正在对自己构成威胁。

我们脚下的陷阱之门打开了。我们发现自己正在坠入无底深渊。我们迷失在一大片黑暗之中，谁也不会派人来搜寻。面对着如此严峻的现实，我们总想闭上眼睛，假装我们是在安全和舒适的家里，而认为下坠只不过是一场恶梦。

我们对自己在宇宙中的地位缺乏共识。对于我们种族的目标，并没有一个公认的长远见解——也许除掉单纯的求生存。尤其是在艰苦岁月，我们极度渴望得到鼓励，不愿接受接连不断的大降级和希望破灭，而非常乐意听到我们是特殊的——即使证据薄得像一张纸也并不在意。如果用一点神话和宗教仪式就能让我们度过似乎是没有尽头的漫漫长夜，我们之中谁又会不同情和理解呢?

但是，如果我们的目标是获得深奥的知识，而不是肤浅的信念，那么从这个新前景所得到的会是远远超过失掉的东西。我们一旦克服了由于人类渺小而引起的恐惧感，就会发现自己是站在一个辽阔的和令人敬畏的宇宙的入口处，这个宇宙使曾让我们的祖先感到惬意的以人类为中心的舞台，无论在时间、空间和潜力上都绝对地相形见绌。我们透过数十亿光年的空间去观察大爆炸之后不久的宇宙，并探索物质的精细结构。我们窥视我们这个行星的核心，以及我们的恒星的炽热的内部。我们从解读遗传密码来了解地球上每种生灵的形形色色的技能和习性。我们揭示记录人类自身起源的隐密篇章，并怀着一定的痛苦更好地了解我们的本性与前景。我们发展和改良农业。如果没有农业，我们几乎全体都会饿死。我们发明了医药和疫苗来拯救亿万人的生命。我们用光的速度进行通讯，并且一个半小时就可以绕行地球一圈。我们已经向70多个世界发送了数十个飞行器，并向恒星发射了4个空间飞船。我们有权为自己的成就而欢欣鼓舞，为人类能看得这样远和评价自己的价值而感到自豪。我们能够这样做，在一定程度上靠的正是戳穿我们自命不凡的科学。

对我们的祖先来说，自然界有许多可怕的东西——闪电、暴风雨、地震、火山、瘟疫、旱灾、长冬。宗教之所以出现，部分地是由于对大自然暴乱的一面不甚了解，就试图抚慰和控制它。科学革命让我们隐约看到一个潜在的有秩序的宇宙，它具有天体的朴实的和谐[开普勒(Johannes Kepler)的用语]。如果我们了解大自然，就有希望控制它，或至少减轻它造成的祸害。在这个意义上，科学带来了希望。

大多数反狭隘地方主义的争论起初都没有想到它们的实际意义。热情而好奇的人类希望了解他们的真实环境，他们及其世界是怎样的独一无二或平淡无奇，他们的最初来源和命运，以及宇宙如何运转。奇怪的是，有一些这样的争议产生了最深刻的实际效果。正是牛顿用来解释行星绕日运行的数学推理方法，导致了我们现代世界的大部分技术。工业革命，尽管有种种缺点，仍然是农业国家摆脱贫困的全球模式。这些争论具有国计民生方面的效果。

也可能是另外一种情况。也可能人类不愿接受，或总的说来，并不想了解一个令人不安的宇宙，也不愿意对流行的学识见解提出挑战。尽管在每一个时代都有人反对这种挑战，值得大加赞扬的是，我们仍让自己根据证据得出一个乍看起来令人沮丧的结论：宇宙非常庞大，极为古老，相比之下，我们个人和历史的经历都显得渺小和低下；在这个宇宙中每天都有若干个太阳诞生和若干个天体湮没；在这个宇宙中新近出现的人类只是依附在一团暗黑的泥土上。

如果我们被安置在一个为我们定造的花园里，而园内别的物件供我们随心所欲的使用，这该是令人多么惬意啊!在西方传说中有一个与此相似的著名故事，只是花园里并非每样东西都是供我们使用的。有一株特殊的树不归我们分享的，这就是智慧之树。在这故事里，知识、理解和智慧对我们都是禁物。我们注定要成为一无所知的。但是我们毫无办法。我们渴求知识——你可以说，我们生来就是知识饥饿者。这是我们一切苦难的根源。特别要谈到，正是由于这个缘故，我们不再住在花园里面：我们找到的东西太多了。我想，只要我们没有好奇心，也很恭顺，我们便可以用自高自大和中心地位来安慰自己，并告诉自己，宇宙就是为我们创造的。然而当好奇心开始使我们着迷时，要探索，要了解宇宙的真相，我们就把自己赶出了伊甸园。手持闪闪发光的宝剑的天使在极乐园门口站岗，阻止我们回去。园丁们就成了流放犯和浪荡者。有时候我们会为那个失掉的世界而悲痛，但我认为这是感情脆弱和多愁善感的表现。我们不可能永远幸福地停留在一无所知的状态中。

在这个宇宙中，想起来好像许多东西都是专门设计出来的。我们每一次碰到它们，都宽慰地松一口气。我们永远都希望找到，或者至少是有把握地推断出一位设计者。但是事与愿违，我们一次又一次地发现自然过程——例如星球碰撞创造世界、基因库的自然选择、甚至一壶开水的对流图象——能够从紊乱中得出秩序，并引诱我们去推断并不存在的目的。在日常生活中——在青少年的卧室里或在国家的政治中——我们常常感到紊乱是自然而然的，而秩序是上面强加的。宇宙的规律性比我们对普通境况常说的秩序更为深刻。所有的秩序，无论是简单的还是复杂的，似乎都来自在大爆炸(或更早)时创立的自然定律，而不是一位不完美的神祗干预迟了所造成的结果。“上帝可以在琐碎事情中找到，”这是德国学者沃伯格(Aby Warburg)的一句名言。但是除了高度的优美和精确外，生活中的琐事，甚至宇宙还显示出随意、临时应急的事先安排和大量的计划不周。我们该怎样弄明白这件事情：一幢大厦在建造早期就被建筑师抛弃了?

至少是现有的证据以及自然规律，都不需要一位设计师。也许有一位，但他是藏而不现，极不愿意被发现。这似乎往往是一种非常渺茫的希望。

于是我们的生活以及我们的脆弱行星的意义，只能靠我们自己的智慧与勇气来决定。我们是生活意义的守护神。我们渴望有一位天父来照管我们，宽恕我们的谬误，从我们的幼稚错误中挽救我们。但是知识比无知更为可取。信奉令人难堪的真理远比叫人开心的无稽之谈要好得多了。

如果我们需要有某种宇宙的目的，那就让我们为自己找一个有意又的目标吧。

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转自 <暗淡蓝点：探寻人类的太空家园>

出版社: 上海科技教育出版社

出版日期: 2000-10

作者: [美] 卡尔·萨根

译者: 叶式煇、黄一勤

2000 上海科技教育出版社

CHAPTER 4 A UNIVERSE NOT MADE FOR US

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.

—MATTHEW ARNOLD, "DOVER BEACH" (1867)

What a beautiful sunset," we say, or "I'm up before sunrise." No matter what the scientists allege, in everyday speech we often ignore their findings. We don't talk about the Earth turning, but about the Sun rising and setting. Try formulating it in Copernican language. Would you say, "Billy, be home by the time the Earth has rotated enough so as to occult the Sun below the local horizon"? Billy would be long gone before you're finished. We haven't been able even to find a graceful locution that accurately the Heliocentric insight. We at the center and everything else circling us is built into our languages; we teach it to our children. We are unreconstructed geocentrists hiding behind a Copernican veneer.

One of the few quasi-Copernican expressions in English is "The Universe doesn't revolve around you"-an astronomical truth intended to bring fledgling narcissists down to Earth.

In 1633 the Roman Catholic Church condemned Galileo for teaching that the Earth goes around the Sun. Let's take a closer look at this famous controversy. In the preface to his book comparing the two hypotheses—an Earth-centered and a Sun-centered universe—Galileo had written,

The celestial phenomena will be examined, strengthening the Copernican hypothesis until it might seem that this must triumph absolutely.

And later in the book he confessed,

Nor can I ever sufficiently admire [Copernicus and his followers]; they have through sheer force of intellect done such violence to their own senses as to prefer what reason told them over what sensible experience plainly showed them . . .

The Church declared, in its indictment of Galileo,

The doctrine that the earth is neither the center of the universe nor immovable, but moves even with a daily rotation, is absurd, and both psychologically and theologically false, and at the least an error of faith.

Galileo replied,

The doctrine of the movements of the earth and the fixity of the sun is condemned on the ground that the Scriptures speak in many places of the sun moving and the earth standing still . . . It is piously spoken that the Scriptures cannot lie. But none will deny that they are frequently abstruse and their true meaning difficult to discover, and more than the bare words signify. I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the Scriptures, but with experiments and demonstrations.

But in his recantation (June 22, 1633) Galileo was made to say,

Having been admonished by the Holy Office entirely to abandon the false opinion that the Sun was the center of the universe and immovable, and that the Earth was not the center of the same and that it moved . . . I have been . . . suspected of heresy, that is, of having held and believed that the Sun is the center of the universe and immovable, and that the Earth is not the center of the same, and that it does move . . . 1 abjure with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith, I curse and detest the same errors and heresies, and generally all and every error and sect contrary to the Holy Catholic Church.

It took the Church until 1832 to remove Galileo's work from its list of books which Catholics were forbidden to read at the risk of dire punishment of their immortal souls.

Pontifical disquiet with modern science has ebbed and flowed since the time of Galileo. The high-water mark in recent history is the 1864 Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX, the pope who also convened the Vatican Council at which the doctrine of papal infallibility was, at his insistence, first proclaimed. Here are a few excerpts:

Divine revelation is perfect and, therefore, it is not subject to continual and indefinite progress in order to correspond with the progress of human reason . . . No man is free to embrace and profess that religion which he believes to be true, guided by the light of reason . . . The Church has power to define dogmatically the religion of the Catholic Church to be the only true religion . . . It is necessary even in the present day that the Catholic religion shall be held as the only religion of the state, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship . . . The civil liberty of every mode of worship, and full power given to all of openly and publicly manifesting their opinions and their ideas conduce more easily to corrupt the morals and minds of the people . . . The Roman Pontiff cannot and ought not to reconcile himself or agree with, progress, liberalism and modern civilization.

To its credit, although belatedly and reluctantly, the Church in 1992 repudiated its denunciation of Galileo. It still cannot quite bring itself, though, to see the significance of its opposition. In a 1992 speech Pope John Paul II argued,

From the beginning of the Age of Enlightenment down to our own day, the Galileo case has been a sort of "myth" in which the image fabricated out of the events is quite far removed from reality. In this perspective, the Galileo case was a symbol of the Catholic Church's supposed rejection of scientific progress, or of "dogmatic" obscurantism opposed to the free search for truth.

But surely the Holy Inquisition ushering the elderly and infirm Galileo in to inspect the instruments of torture in the dungeons of the Church not only admits but requires just such an interpretation. This was not mere scientific caution and restraint, a reluctance to shift a paradigm until compelling evidence, such as the annual parallax, was available. This was fear of discussion and debate. Censoring alternative views and threatening to torture their proponents betray a lack of faith in the very doctrine and parishioners that are ostensibly being protected. Why were threats and Galileo's house arrest needed? Cannot truth defend itself in its confrontation with error?

The Pope does, though, go on to add:

The error of the theologians of the time, when they maintained the centrality of the earth, was to think that our understanding of the physical world's structure was in soiree way imposed by the literal sense of Sacred Scriptures.

Here indeed considerable progress has been made—although proponents of fundamentalist faiths will be distressed to hear from the Pontiff that Sacred Scripture is not always literally true.

But if the Bible is not everywhere literally true, which parts are divinely inspired and which are merely fallible and human? As soon as we admit that there are scriptural mistakes (or concessions to the ignorance of the times), then how can the Bible be an inerrant guide to ethics and morals? Might sects and individuals now accept as authentic the parts of the Bible they like, and reject those that are inconvenient or burdensome? Prohibitions against murder, say, are essential for a society to function, but if divine retribution for murder is considered implausible, won't more people think they can get away with it?

Many felt that Copernicus and Galileo were up to no good and erosive of the social order. Indeed any challenge

from any source, to the literal truth of the Bible might have such consequences. We can readily see how science began to make people nervous. Instead of criticizing those who perpetuated the myths, public rancor was directed at those who discredited them.

OUR ANCESTORS UNDERSTOOD origins by extrapolating from their own experience. How else could they have done it? So the Universe was hatched from a cosmic egg, or conceived in the sexual congress of a mother god and a father god, or was a kind of product of the Creator's workshop—perhaps the latest of many flawed attempts. And the Universe was not much bigger than we see, and not much older than our written or oral records, and nowhere very different from places that we know.

We've tended in our cosmologies to make things familiar. Despite all our best efforts, we've not been very inventive. In the West, Heaven is placid and fluffy, and Hell is like the inside of a volcano. In many stories, both realms are governed by dominance hierarchies headed by gods or devils. Monotheists talked about the king of kings. In every culture we imagined something like our own political system running the Universe. Few found the similarity suspicious.

Then science came along and taught us that we are not the measure of all things, that there are wonders unimagined, that the Universe is not obliged to conform to what we consider comfortable or plausible. We have learned something about the idiosyncratic nature of our common sense. Science has carried human self-consciousness to a higher level. This is surely a rite of passage, a step towards maturity. It contrasts starkly with the childishness and narcissism of our pre-Copernican notions.

But why should we want to think that the Universe was made for us? Why is the idea so appealing? Why do we nurture it? Is our self-esteem so precarious that nothing short of a universe custom-made for us will do?

Of course it appeals to our vanity. "What a man desires, he also imagines to be true," said Demosthenes. "The light of faith makes us see what we believe," cheerfully admitted St. Thomas Aquinas. But I think there may be something else. There's a kind of ethnocentrism among primates. To whichever little group we happen to be born, we owe passionate love and loyalty. Members of other groups are beneath contempt, deserving of rejection and hostility. That both groups are. of the same species, that to an outside observer they are virtually indistinguishable, makes no difference. This is certainly the pattern among the chimpanzees, our closest relatives in the animal kingdom. Ann Druyan and I have described how this way of viewing the world may have made enormous evolutionary sense a few million years ago, however dangerous it has become today. Even members of hunter-gatherer groups—as far from the technological feats of our present global civilization as it is possible for humans to be—solemnly describe their little band, whichever it is, as "the people." Everyone else is something different, something less than human.

If this is our natural way of viewing the world, then it should occasion no surprise that every time we make a naive judgment about our place in the Universe—one untempered by careful and skeptical scientific examination—we almost always opt for the centrality of our group and circumstance. We want to believe, moreover, that these are objective facts, and not our prejudices finding a sanctioned vent.

So it's not much fun to have a gaggle of scientists incessantly haranguing us with "You're ordinary, you're unimportant your privileges are undeserved, there's nothing special about you." Even unexcitable people might, after a while, grow annoyed at this incantation and those who insist on chanting it. It almost seems that the scientists are getting some weird satisfaction out of putting humans down. Why can't they find a way in which we're superior? Lift our spirits! Exalt us! In such debates science, with its mantra of discouragement, feels cold and remote, dispassionate, detached, unresponsive to human needs.

And, again, if we're not important, not central, not the apple of God's eye, what is implied for our theologically based moral codes? The discovery of our true bearings in the Cosmos was resisted for so long and to such a degree that many traces of the debate remain, sometimes with the motives of the geocentrists laid bare. Here, for example, is a revealing unsigned commentary in the British review The Spectator in 1892:

[I]t is certain enough that the discovery of the heliocentric motion of the planets which reduced our earth to its proper "insignificance" in the solar system, did a good deal to reduce to a similar but far from proper "insignificance" the moral principles by which the predominant races of the earth had hitherto been guided and restrained. Part of this effect was no doubt due to the evidence afforded that the physical science of various inspired writers was erroneous instead of being infallible, a conviction which unduly shook the confidence felt even in their moral and religious teaching. But a good deal of it was due only to the mere sense of "insignificance" with which man has contemplated himself, since he has discovered that he inhabits nothing but a very obscure corner of the universe, instead of the central world round which sun, moon, and stars alike revolved. There can be no doubt that man may feel himself, and has often felt himself, a great deal too insignificant to be the object of any particular divine training or care. If the earth be regarded as a sort of ant-hill, and the life and death of human beings as the life and death of so many ants which run into and out of so many holes in search of food and sunlight, it is quite certain that no adequate importance will be attached to the duties of human life, and that a profound fatalism and hopelessness, instead of new hopefulness, will attach to human effort . . .

[F]or the present at least, our horizons are quite vast enough . . . ; till we can get used to the infinite horizons we already have, and not lose our balance so much as we usually do in contemplating them, the yearning for still wider horizons is premature.

WHAT DO WE REALLY WANT from philosophy and religion? Palliatives? Therapy? Comfort? Do we want reassuring fables or an understanding of our actual circumstances? Dismay that the Universe does not conform to our preferences seems childish. You might think that grown-ups would be ashamed to put such disappointments into print. The fashionable way of doing this is not to blame the Universe—which seems truly pointless—but rather to blame the means by which we know the Universe, namely science.

George Bernard Shaw, in the preface to his play St. Joan, described a sense of science preying on our credulity, forcing on us an alien worldview, intimidating belief:

In the Middle Ages, people believed that the Earth was flat, for which they had at least the evidence of their senses: we believe it to be round, not because as many as one per cent of us could give the physical reason for so quaint a belief, but because modern science has convinced us that nothing that is obvious is true, and that everything that is magical, improbable, extraordinary, gigantic, microscopic, heartless, or outrageous is scientific.

A more recent and very instructive example is Understanding the Present: Science and the Soul of Modern Man, by Bryan Appleyard, a British journalist. This book makes explicit what many people feel, all over the world, but are too embarrassed to say. Appleyard's candor is refreshing. He is a true believer and will not let us slough over the contradictions between modern science and traditional religion:

"Science has taken away our religion," he laments. And what sort of religion is it that he longs for? One in which "the human race was the point, the heart, the final cause of the whole system. It placed our selves definitively upon the universal map." . . . "We were the end, the purpose, the rational axle around which the great aetherian shells rotated." He longs for "the universe of Catholic orthodoxy" in which "the cosmos is shown to be a machine constructed around the drama of salvation"—by which Appleyard means that, despite explicit orders to the contrary, a woman and a man once ate of an apple, and that this act of insubordination transformed the Universe into a contrivance for operant-conditioning their remote descendants.

By contrast, modern science "presents us as accidents. We are caused by the cosmos, but we are not the cause of it. Modem man is not finally anything, he has no role in creation." Science is "spiritually corrosive, burning away ancient authorities and traditions. It cannot really co-exist with anything." . . . "Science, quietly and inexplicitly, is talking us into abandoning our selves, our true selves." It reveals "the mute, alien spectacle of nature." . . . "Human beings cannot live with such a revelation. The only morality left is that of the consoling lie." Anything is better than grappling with the unbearable burden of being tiny.

In a passage reminiscent of Plus IX, Appleyard even decries the fact that "a modern democracy can be expected to include a number of contradictory religious faiths which are obliged to agree on a certain limited number of general injunctions, but no more. They must not burn each other's places of worship, but they may deny, even abuse each other's God. This is the effective, scientific way of proceeding."

But what is the alternative? Obdurately to pretend to certainty in an uncertain world? To adopt a comforting belief system, no matter how out of kilter with the facts it is? If we don't know what's real, how can we deal with reality? For practical reasons, we cannot live too much in fantasyland. Shall we censor one another's religions and burn down one another's places of worship? How can we be sure which of the thousands of human belief systems should become unchallenged, ubiquitous, mandatory?

These quotations betray a failure of nerve before the Universe its grandeur and magnificence, but especially its indifference. Science has taught us that, because we have a talent for deceiving ourselves, subjectivity may not freely reign. This is one reason Appleyard so mistrusts science: It seems too reasoned, measured, and impersonal. Its conclusions derive from the interrogation of Nature, and are not in all cases predesigned to satisfy our wants. Appleyard deplores moderation. He yearns for inerrant doctrine, release from the exercise of judgment, and an obligation to believe but not to question. He has not grasped human fallibility. He recognizes no need to institutionalize error-correcting machinery either in our social institutions or in our view of the Universe.

This is the anguished cry of the infant when the Parent does not come. But most people eventually come to grips with reality, and with the painful absence of parents who will absolutely guarantee that no harm befalls the little ones so long as they do what they are told. Eventually most people find ways to accommodate to the Universe—especially when given the tools to think straight.

"All that we pass on to our children" in the scientific age, Appleyard complains, "is the conviction that nothing is true, final or enduring, including the culture from which they sprang." How right he is about the inadequacy of our legacy. But would it be enriched by adding baseless certainties? He scorns "the pious hope that science and religion are independent realms which can easily be separated." Instead, "science, as it is now, is absolutely not compatible with religion."

But isn't Appleyard really saying that some religions now find it difficult to make unchallenged pronouncements on the nature of the world that are straight-out false? We recognize that even revered religious leaders, the products of their time as we are of ours, may have made mistakes. Religions contradict one another on small matters, such as whether we should put on a hat or take one off on entering a house of worship, or whether we should eat beef and eschew pork or the other way around, all the way to the most central issues, such as whether there are no gods, one God, or many gods.

Science has brought many of us to that state in which Nathaniel Hawthorne found Herman Melville: "He can neither believe, nor be comfortable in his unbelief." Or Jean-Jacques Rousseau: "They had not persuaded me, but they had troubled me. Their arguments had shaken me without ever convincing me . . . It is hard to prevent oneself from believing what one so keenly desires." As the belief systems taught by the secular and religious authorities are undennined, respect for authority in general probably does erode. The lesson is clear: Even politics] leaders must be wary of embracing false doctrine. This is not a failing of science, but one of its graces.

Of course, worldview consensus is comforting, while clashes of opinion may be unsettling, and demand more of us. But unless we insist, against all evidence, that our ancestors were perfect, the advance of knowledge requires us to unravel and then restitch the consensus they established.

In some respects, science has far surpassed religion in delivering awe. How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, "This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed"? Instead they say, "No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way." A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge.

IF YOU LIVED two or three millennia ago, there was no shame in holding that the Universe was made for us. It was an appealing thesis consistent with everything we knew; it was what the most learned among us taught without qualification. But we have found out much since then. Defending such a position today amounts to willful disregard of the evidence, and a flight from self-knowledge.

Still, for many of us, these deprovincializations rankle. Even if they do not fully cant' the day, they erode confidence—unlike the happy anthropocentric certitudes, rippling with social utility, of an earlier age. We long to be here for a purpose, even though, despite much self-deception, none is evident. "The meaningless absurdity of life," wrote Leo Tolstoy, "is the only incontestable knowledge accessible to man." Our time is burdened under the cumulative weight of successive debunkings of our conceits: We're Johnny-come-latelies. We live in the cosmic boondocks. We emerged from microbes and muck. Apes are our cousins. Our thoughts and feelings are not fully under our own control. There may be much smarter and very different beings elsewhere. And on top of all this, we're making a mess of our planet and becoming a danger to ourselves.

The trapdoor beneath our feet swings open. We find ourselves in bottomless free fall. We are lost in a great darkness, and there's no one to send out a search party. Given so harsh a reality, of course we're tempted to shut our eyes and pretend that we're safe and snug at home, that the fall is only a bad dream.

We lack consensus about our place in the Universe. There is no generally agreed upon long-term vision of the goal of our species—other than, perhaps, simple survival. Especially when times are hard, we become desperate for encouragement, unreceptive to the litany of great demotions and dashed hopes, and much more willing to hear that we're special, never mind if the evidence is paper-thin. If it takes a little myth and ritual to get us through a night that seems endless, who among us cannot sympathize and understand?

But if our objective is deep knowledge rather than shallow reassurance, the gains from this new perspective far outweigh the losses. Once we overcome our fear of being tiny, we find ourselves on the threshold of a vast and awesome Universe that utterly dwarfs—in time, in space, and in potential—the tidy anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors. We gaze across billions of light-years of space to view the Universe shortly after the Big Bang, and plumb the fine structure of matter. We peer down into the core of our planet, and the blazing interior of our star. We read the genetic language in which is written the diverse skills and propensities of every being on Earth. We uncover hidden chapters in the record of our own origins, and with some anguish better understand our nature and prospects. We invent and refine agriculture, without which almost all of us would starve to death. We create medicines and vaccines that save the lives of billions. We communicate at the speed of light, and whip around the Earth in an hour and a half. We have sent dozens of ships to more than seventy worlds, and four spacecraft to the stars. We are right to rejoice in our accomplishments, to be proud that our species has been able to see so far, and to judge our merit in part by the very science that has so deflated our pretensions.

To our ancestors there was much in Nature to be afraid of—lightning, storms, earthquakes, volcanos, plagues, drought, long winters. Religions arose in part as attempts to propitiate and control, if not much to understand, the disorderly aspect of Nature. The scientific revolution permitted us to glimpse an underlying ordered Universe in which there was a literal harmony of the worlds (Johannes Kepler's phrase). If we understand Nature, there is a prospect of controlling it or at least mitigating the harm it may bring. In this sense, science brought hope.

Most of the great deprovincializing debates were entered into with no thought for their practical implications. Passionate and curious humans wished to understand their actual circumstances, how unique or pedestrian they and their world are, their ultimate origins and destinies, how the Universe works. Surprisingly, some of these debates have yielded the most profound practical benefits. The very method of mathematical reasoning that Isaac Newton introduced to explain the motion of the planets around the Sun has led to most of the technology Of our modern world. The Industrial Revolution, for all its shortcomings, is still the global model of how an agricultural nation can emerge from poverty. These debates have bread-and-butter consequences.

It might have been otherwise. It might have been that the balance lay elsewhere, that humans by and large did not want to yaw about a disquieting Universe, that we were unwilling to hermit challenges to the prevailing wisdom. Despite determined resistance in every age, it is very much to our credit that we have allowed ourselves to follow the evidence, to draw conclusions that at first seem daunting: a Universe so much larger and older that our personal and historical experience is dwarfed and humbled, a Universe in which, every day, suns are born and worlds obliterated, a Universe in which humanity, newly arrived, clings to an obscure clod of matter.

How much more satisfying had we been placed in a garden custom-made for us, its other occupants put there for us to use as we saw fit. There is a celebrated story in the Western tradition like this, except that not quite everything was there for us. There was one particular tree of which we were not to partake, a tree of knowledge. Knowledge and understanding and wisdom were forbidden to us in this story. We were to be kept ignorant. But we couldn't help ourselves. We were starving for knowledge—created hungry, you might say. This was the origin of all our troubles. In particular, it is why we no longer live in a garden: We found out too much. So long as we were incurious and obedient, I imagine, we could console ourselves with our importance and centrality, and tell ourselves that we were the reason the Universe was made. As we began to indulge our curiosity, though, to explore, to learn how the Universe really is, we expelled ourselves from Eden. Angels with a flaming sword were set as sentries at the gates of Paradise to bar our return. The gardeners became exiles and wanderers. Occasionally we mourn that lost world, but that, it seems to me, is maudlin and sentimental. We could not happily have remained ignorant forever.

There is in this Universe much of what seems to he design. Every time we come upon it, we breathe a sigh of relief. We are forever hoping to find, or at least safely deduce, a Designer. But instead, we repeatedly discover that natural processes—collisional selection of worlds, say, or natural selection of gene pools, or even the convection pattern in a pot of boiling water—can extract order out of chaos, and deceive us into deducing purpose where there is none. In everyday life, we often sense—in the bedrooms of teenagers, or in national politics—that chaos is natural, and order imposed from above. While there are deeper regularities in the Universe than the simple circumstances we generally describe as orderly, all that order, simple and complex, seems to derive from laws of Nature established at the Big Bang (or earlier), rather than as a consequence of belated intervention by an imperfect deity. "God is to be found in the details" is the famous dictum of the German scholar Abu Warburg. But, amid much elegance and precision, the details of life and the Universe also exhibit haphazard, jury-rigged arrangements and much poor planning. What shall we make of this: an edifice abandoned early in construction by the architect?

The evidence, so far at least and laws of Nature aside, does not require a Designer. Maybe there is one hiding, maddeningly unwilling to be revealed. Sometimes it seems a very slender hope.

The significance of our lives and our fragile planet is then determined only by our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life's meaning. We long for a Parent to care for us, to forgive us our errors, to save us from our childish mistakes. But knowledge is preferable to ignorance. Better by far to embrace the hard truth than a reassuring fable.

If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find ourselves a worthy goal.

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From < Pale Blue Dot>

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Publication Date: 1997-9

BY CARL SAGAN

Copyright 1994 by Carl Sagan

卡尔·萨根:预约新宇宙 - Chapter 4