按：知不可为而为之，这一部分真不好弄。看不懂，所以完全靠在线机器来翻译就更难了。我是属于无知者无畏的，加油！

Nature自然

I now turn to “nature,” a theme that, even more than “space and place,” continues to baffle me perhaps because “nature” is conceptually more complex. For the purpose of this talk, I will reduce the complexity to three sub-themes. The first addresses how knowledge affects the way nature is appraised; the second addresses the way imagination is curtailed or knowledge is suppressed so that nature can seem more accommodating; and the third raises the question of what is real.

我现在转向“自然”，这个主题甚至比“空间和地方”还要令人困惑，也许是因为“自然”在概念上更复杂。为了这次演讲的目的，我将把复杂性简化为三个子主题。第一个问题讨论了知识如何影响人们对自然的评价；第二个问题讨论了限制想象力或压制知识的方式，以便使自然看起来更为通融；第三个问题提出了什么是真实的问题。

The first sub-theme--how knowledge affects the way nature is appraised—has become rather stale by being written about too often, so I will try to give it a fresher look by launching it with a personal experience, namely, my visit to Beijing’s Summer Palace in 2005. The visit being my first, I needed a guide. The one I had was very loquacious and regaled me, non-stop, with information. Surprisingly for a tourist guide, her information was not directed at the garden’s charms; rather, she depicted a landscape of fear in which just about everything built was designed to deflect or appease nature’s malignant spirits.  Even the smallest misjudgment could offend—a door opening at the wrong angle, a misplaced bronze lion, a color of the wrong shade, a missing arch in the multi-arched bridge, and so on. But as I looked about me I detected no anxiety or fear, no sign of any awareness that nature might be hostile. To the contrary, everywhere I saw men, women, and children, smiling, chatting, and laughing. They were clearly having a good time and they were having it in a place at which every natural and manmade feature promoted pleasure and well-being.

第一个子主题——知识如何影响自然的评价方式——已经变得相当陈旧，因为经常被写出来，所以我将尝试用个人经验，即2005年我访问北京圆明园来，让知识更新鲜一些。这次访问是我第一次，我需要一个向导。我的那位向导非常健谈，不停地给我提供信息，让我很开心。令人惊讶的是，作为一名导游，她的信息并不是针对花园的魅力;相反，她描绘了一幅充满恐惧的景象，在这里，几乎所有的建筑都是为了转移或安抚大自然的邪恶灵魂。即使是最小的错误判断也会造成伤害——开门的角度错了，青铜狮子放错了地方，颜色的阴影错了，多拱桥上缺了一个拱门，等等。但当我环顾四周时，没有发现任何焦虑或恐惧，也没有任何意识到大自然可能怀有敌意的迹象。相反，我到处看到男人、女人和孩子们在微笑、聊天、大笑。他们显然玩得很开心，而且他们是在一个自然和人为的特征都促进快乐和幸福的地方玩的。

What happened in China also happened elsewhere, and indeed earlier in the Western world. It can be put simply as knowledge dispelling superstitious fear, a trend that has lasted long enough so that by now much of the world sees nature favorably. There is even the likelihood that nature is losing some of its appeal through familiarity. If this should happen, knowledge—deeper knowledge—can come to the rescue. Take Lake Mendota in Madison, Wisconsin, as an example. It is a popular amenity that is at risk of being too much taken for granted. Students flock to the Memorial Union terrace less to admire the lake than to use it as a pleasing backdrop for beer drinking and social chitchat. To rekindle their appreciation, I suggest that they recall a fact they learned in physical geography, which is that the lake is not just a sparkling surface but also a murky depth, and that an ice sheet 1,000 feet thick once covered it. When students are able to meld in their minds the dissonant images of surface and depth, sun-lit terrace and glacial ice, their aesthetic sensibility will revive and not only revive but reach a level that is beyond the picturesque to the sublime.

在中国发生的事情也发生在其他地方，甚至更早的发生在西方世界。可以简单地说，这是知识消除/驱散了迷信的恐惧，这种趋势已经持续了很长时间，到目前为止，世界上大多数人都对自然持乐观态度/对自然抱有好感。甚至有一种可能性是，自然会因为熟悉而失去一些吸引力。如果发生这种情况，知识——更深入的知识——可以来拯救。以威斯康星州麦迪逊市的门多塔湖为例。它是一种很受欢迎的便利设施/舒适amenity，但却面临着被过度视为理所当然的风险。学生们涌向纪念联盟露台，与其说是为了欣赏这座湖，不如说是为了把它作为啤酒饮用和社交聊天的令人愉悦的背景。为了重新点燃他们的欣赏，我建议他们回忆起他们在自然地理学中学到的一个事实，即湖水不仅是一个波光粼粼的表面，而且是一个浑浊的深度，一个1000英尺厚的冰盖曾经覆盖了它。当学生能够将表面和深度，阳光照射的露台和冰川冰的不和谐影像融合到他们的脑海中时，他们的审美感受将复活/恢复，不仅复活，而且达到一个超越风景如画的崇高境界。

Can knowledge also have a negative effect?  Can it make us anxious rather than reassured, fearful rather than appreciative? The answer is yes, and the best known example is the way the consoling images of religion have been corroded by the harsh images of science. But within science itself, this happens when a system that is appealing to human emotion and aesthetic taste is displaced by one that is far less appealing. Astronomy is a case in point. From antiquity to the early modern period, outer space was believed to be a cathedral-like, soaring space of vast size and beauty, one, moreover, filled with music produced by transparent orbs rotating at various distances from one another.

知识也会有负面影响吗？它能让我们焦虑而不是安心，恐惧而不是感激吗？答案是肯定的，最著名的例子就是宗教的安慰形象被严酷的科学形象腐蚀了。但就科学本身而言，当一个对人类情感和审美有吸引力的系统被一个远没有那么有吸引力的系统取代时，这种情况就会发生。天文学就是一个很好的例子。从古代到现代早期，外层空间被认为是一个大教堂般的、高耸入云的空间，其规模之大、美不胜收，而且充满了由透明球体在不同距离旋转而产生的音乐。

Modern astronomy shattered this attractive model, although a couple more centuries had to pass before it was totally erased even as a backdrop for human romance. Yet we who have inherited  the new astronomy are, for the most part, quite unfazed, the reason being that what we see with our eyes trumps what we are taught and know, the image of stars glittering at night so near as to seem almost within reach prevails over our knowledge of mind-boggling distance. What is true of space is even more true of nature’s other major axis—time.

现代天文学打破了这个吸引人的模式，尽管要经过数个世纪才能彻底消除它，甚至作为人类浪漫的背景。 然而，我们这些继承了新天文学的人，在很大程度上是相当不受影响的，原因是我们用眼睛看到的东西胜过我们所教和知道的东西，星星在夜晚闪闪发光的形象，似乎几乎触手可及，超过了我们对难以置信的距离的认识。  空间的真实性在自然界的另一个主轴时间上更是如此。

Time introduces the second sub-theme, which addresses the way imagination is curtailed or knowledge suppressed so that nature can seem more accommodating. Time, however, is a special case in that suppressed is not knowledge of time’s span, which is given as artifacts chronologically arranged in museums and as large numbers in learned articles and books; deficient rather is the imagination exercised over that time span. Consider artifacts on display in a museum. From ancient Egyptian mummies to modern Danish furniture, they all fall under the sweep of the eye and so give the viewer a false sense of control. Failing to give is a sense of threat, an awareness of time as a yawning abyss. As for the large numbers that stand for the ages of the various geologic periods, they numb rather than stimulate the imagination. Still, even the dull of mind can come to life when the circumstances are right, as they were for me one day at the El Morro National Monument in northwestern New Mexico.

时间引入了第二个子主题，它阐述了想象力被限制或知识被抑制的方式，从而使自然看起来更包容。然而，时间是一个特例，因为被压抑的并不是时间跨度的知识，而是博物馆里按时间顺序排列的文物，以及学术文章和书籍中的大量数字；缺乏的是对时间跨度的想象力。想想博物馆里陈列的文物。从古埃及的木乃伊到现代的丹麦家具，它们都在人们的视线范围之内，因此给观者一种虚假的控制感。不给予是一种威胁感，一种对时间的意识，就像一个巨大的深渊。 对于代表各个地质时期的大量数字，他们麻木而不是激发想象力。 但是，即使情况合适，即使是沉闷的头脑也可以复活，就像我在新墨西哥州西北部的El Morro国家纪念碑的一天所经历的那样。

Northwestern New Mexico is a plateau, capped by a hard sandstone layer that protects the softer rock underneath. A number of streams have cut into the hard layer and into the softer beds to produce canyons, whose retreating slopes resulted in a landscape of table-lands or mesas. During the seventeenth century, Spanish explorers passed by this place on their march north. They rested at the foot of one mesa and carved their names on the sandstone. These names are now protected by a glass plate. At the National Monument, I could see visitors having a good time, picnicking and throwing Frisbees. They no doubt looked at the names etched on the mesa’s flank, but these did not in any way upset them.  I was more than upset—I was shaken by a glimpse into time’s bottomless pit.

新墨西哥州西北部是一个高原，由坚硬的砂岩层覆盖，保护着下面的较软岩石。许多溪流切入硬层，进入较软的河床，形成峡谷，峡谷的斜坡后退，形成了一片平地或台地的景观。在十七世纪，西班牙探险家北上经过这里。他们在一个台地脚下休息，把自己的名字刻在砂岩上。这些名字现在被一块玻璃板保护着。在国家纪念碑，我可以看到游客们玩得很开心，野餐和扔飞盘。毫无疑问，他们看着刻在台地侧面的名字，但这些名字丝毫没有让他们感到不安，我感到非常不安，因为我瞥见了时间的无底深渊。

I said to myself, “Three hundred years represent a substantial time span in American history, yet during that period, pelting rain and sheet-wash have not caused the slopes to weather back by the quarter inch that would have wiped out the signatures.”  Dizziness came with the recognition that the slope has indeed retreated and that it retreated by at least several hundred feet from the position it originally occupied a-half million years ago. Abstract knowledge of geologic time would not have turned my stomach. What did turn my stomach was to feel time in all its terrifying vastness. I could feel this way because the mesas, serving as a chronometer, raised my imagination well above its usual pedestrian level.

我对自己说：“三百年是美国历史上相当长的时间跨度，但是在那段时期里，不断下雨和喷水冲刷并没有使坡面回缩四分之一英寸，而这会消灭签名。”头昏眼花是因为人们认识到该斜坡确实已经退缩，并且距其50万年前的最初位置至少退了几百英尺。地质时间的抽象知识不会让我大吃一惊。令我反胃的是，在它那可怕的广阔空间中感受着时间。我之所以会这样，是因为用作计时码表的台面使我的想象力大大超出了通常的行人水平。

Was this elevation of my imagination a gain for me? Hardly, for ever since, geologic landscapes have lost their simple, visual appeal. My eyes can still delight in mountains and valleys, but my mind’s eye sees in the twisted and folded rock beds time that has “no vestige of a beginning—no prospect of an end,” words that James Hutton used in 1795 when he first recognized and announced Earth’s great age.

我的想象力的提升对我来说是收获吗？ 从那以后，地质景观几乎没有失去其简单的视觉吸引力。 我的眼睛仍然可以在高山和山谷中赏心悦目，但是我的眼睛却在扭曲而折叠的岩床中看到“没有开始的痕迹，也没有结束的前景”的时光，詹姆斯·赫顿在1795年首次意识到这一点时曾用过这样的话 并宣布了地球的伟大时代。

If physical science can make us feel small and ill at ease, biological science can do so even more effectively. An outstanding example is biology’s teaching that we are descended from the apes. Many people have tried to suppress this knowledge. But it doesn’t take a theory of biological evolution to make us uncomfortable. Even the simplest biological facts can do that if only we make the connection. Consider sexual organs. Ours are unobtrusive compared with those of our nearest relative, the chimpanzee. Aroused, the male chimpanzee’s penis and scrotum grow impressively pendulous and the female’s organ swells to a large pink mound. These are not pictures we want displayed in our home. Now, what about flowers in bright red, pink, or yellow? Aren’t they the sexual organs of plants? Knowing them to be such should make us pause before plunging our nose into them, yet this is not at all the case. We don’t hesitate to smell flowers, indeed we consider whiffing them with eyes closed in ecstasy as a sign of our refined taste. This is possible because we unthinkingly disconnect sex in one form of life from sex in another form.

如果物理科学可以使我们感到小而不适/渺小和不安，那么生物科学可以更有效地做到这一点。 一个杰出的例子是生物学的教导，即我们是猿的后裔。 许多人试图抑制这种知识。 但是，不需要生物学进化论就可以使我们感到不舒服。 只要我们建立联系，即使是最简单的生物学事实也可以做到这一点。考虑性器官。与我们最近的亲戚黑猩猩相比，我们的黑猩猩并不显眼。被唤起后，雄性黑猩猩的阴茎和阴囊会令人印象深刻地下垂，而雌性黑猩猩的器官则会膨胀成一个巨大的粉红色的土堆。这些不是我们想在家里展示的照片。那么鲜艳的红色、粉色或黄色的花呢?它们不是植物的性器官吗?知道他们是这样的人，我们应该在深入了解他们之前停下来，但事实并非如此。我们会毫不犹豫地闻到花香，事实上，我们认为在狂喜中闭上眼睛来嗅它们是我们优雅品味的标志。这是可能的，因为我们不假思索地将一种生活形式的性与另一种生活形式的性断开。
Here is another example from the biological realm. We humans have close relations with animals, especially with domesticated ones, and, above all, with our oldest animal domesticate, the dog. Science may have taught us to be wary of attributing human traits and capabilities to other living things, but the habit remains and may be ingrained in our nature. True, we admit that willows do not weep because we weep and birds do not sing to please us, yet we cannot help making an exception of our pet dog, and this despite our awareness that the dog’s senses differ notably from our own. How strange it is that we can feel better connected with our canine companion sleeping by our feet than with our human companion snoring by our side.

这是生物学领域的另一个例子。我们人类与动物有着密切的关系，尤其是与家养的动物，尤其是与我们最古老的驯养动物——狗。科学可能已经教会我们要警惕将人类的特性和能力归因于其他生物，但这种习惯仍然存在，并可能在我们的本性中根深蒂固。的确，我们承认，柳树不会因为我们哭泣而哭泣，鸟儿也不会为取悦我们而歌唱，然而，尽管我们知道狗的感官与我们的明显不同，我们还是不能不把我们的爱犬当作例外。这是多么奇怪啊，一起睡在我们的脚边狗比和我们一起打鼾的人感觉更好。

Whence this need to see not only intelligence, but high intelligence, in other animals? Can it be because we humans dread the idea of being utterly alone in the universe, with no other creature that is our intellectual equal or superior? When unsentimental science taught us to eschew anthropomorphism, we turned to other planets for signs of sophisticated life. But when, in the 1950s, improved observations showed that Mars did not have canals and that advanced culture did not exist on other planets, we had no choice but to turn our capacity for fantasy back to Earth and there some scientists took to finding high intelligence in such animals as dolphins and chimpanzees. Differences between them and us, however obvious, are underplayed or suppressed, a procedure made all the easier in that animals, no matter how smart they are in solving the problems we give them, never disconcert us, as our fellow humans all too often do, by saying cuttingly, “We disagree” or “On the contrary…”

因此我们不仅需要看到其他动物的智力，而且还需要看到它们的高智力?难道是因为我们人类害怕在宇宙中完全孤独，没有其他生物与我们智力相当或比我们更高吗?当无情的科学教会我们避开拟人论时，我们转向其他星球寻找复杂生命的迹象。但当,在1950年代,改善观测表明,火星没有运河和先进文化不存在其他星球上,我们别无选择,只能将幻想回到地球。一些科学家开始在海豚和黑猩猩等动物身上发现高智力。他们和我们之间的差异，无论多么明显，都被忽视或压制，这一过程使动物更容易，无论他们在解决我们给他们的问题上有多聪明，永远不要让我们不安，就像我们的人类同胞经常做的那样，尖刻地说，“我们不同意”或“相反……”

My last example of suppression is of society imposing its values on us when we from our own experience could easily have arrived at other values. This is not simply a case of power play on the part of society; rather it is our readiness to conform with whatever is in the air and has society’s tacit support. Put more abstractly, I am saying that indirect experience—that is to say, what we learn from books and teachers--easily overrides direct experience—that is to say, what we learn in the field through the senses and mind. 

我压制的最后一个例子是，当我们从自己的经验中很容易获得其他价值观时，社会将其价值观强加于我们。这并非只是社会权力发挥的一个案例;而只是社会一方面的权力。相反， 我们愿意遵守空气中的任何东西， 并得到社会的默许。更抽象地说，我是说间接经验——也就是说，我们从书本和老师那里学到的东西——很容易凌驾于直接经验之上——也就是说，我们通过感官和头脑在实地学到的东西。
I have always suspected this to be true, but it was for me vividly confirmed only when I taught a class called “Environment and the Quality of Life.” In that class, on the first day of meeting I handed out cards to students and asked them to write on them their favorite place in which to live. When I read what they had written, I was surprised to find that they opted for farm, countryside, or wilderness--in a word, for nature and this even though most of them were raised in the very livable cities of Minneapolis/St. Paul and Madison. So what happened? I surmise that students have been so seduced by Thoreau’s Walden and Leopold’s Sand County Almanac, literary works promoted by their professors and, more generally, by the spirit of the time that the direct evidence of their senses—the fact that they have lived the good life in the city—is suppressed.

我一直怀疑这是真的，但只有当我教了一个名为“环境与生活质量”的课程时，我才生动地证实了这一点。在那堂课上，第一天见面的时候，我给学生们发了卡片，让他们在卡片上写上他们最喜欢的居住地。当我读到他们写的东西时，我惊讶地发现他们选择了农场、乡村或荒野——总而言之，他们选择了自然和自然，尽管他们中的大多数人都是在非常宜居的城市明尼阿波利斯/圣保罗和麦迪逊长大的。怎么了？我推测，学生们被梭罗的《瓦尔登》和利奥波德的《沙乡年鉴》所诱惑，这些文学作品是由他们的教授所提倡的，更笼统地，被当时的精神所诱惑，即他们感官的直接证据——他们在城市中过着美好的生活——被压制了。

My third and last sub-theme raises the question of what is real. Not being a philosopher, I don’t ordinarily question what is real. When in doubt, I kick a stone as did Dr. Johnson. No, my problem is with realities organized by the human mind such as landscape. Even then I don’t feel perplexed when, from the top of a hill, I gaze at the scene before me. My difficulties arise when I am asked to look at landscapes of the pre-human past. These difficulties first appeared when, as a child, I walked down the corridor of a natural history museum and paused at a diorama that showed dinosaurs sunning themselves by the sea. One lifted up its leg and was about to step into the water. I assumed that museum scientists made sure that all the details were correct and that, to enhance the realism, they added color—white sand, blue sea, and a brilliant sunset.

我的第三个也是最后一个子主题提出了什么是真实的问题。 不是哲学家，我通常不会质疑什么是真实的。 如有疑问，我会像约翰逊博士一样踢石头。 不，我的问题是人为组织的现实，例如风景。 即使那样，当我从山顶注视着眼前的景象时，我也不会感到困惑。 当我被要求看一眼人类以前的风景时，我的困难就出现了。 当我还是个孩子的时候，当我走过自然历史博物馆的走廊，在一个展示恐龙在海边晒太阳的立体模型前停下来时，这些困难第一次出现了。其中一只抬起了腿，正准备踏入水中。 我以为博物馆的科学家们确保所有细节都是正确的，并且为了增强真实感，他们增加了色彩-白色的沙子，蓝色的大海和绚丽的日落。

Suddenly, I found myself asking, “A landscape for whom?” For me, as I stood in front of the diorama? For other visitors? But we humans didn’t exist during the Cretaceous Age. Was the landscape, then, real for the dinosaurs? Was that what they saw? No, that couldn’t be right, for they lacked color vision, and their eyes were incapable of perspectival composition. Was it real for God? Maybe God stood there, contemplated the dinosaurs in darkening twilight and liked what he saw. But why would God, a hundred million years ago, want to see a landscape through human eyes? In college, I continued to be baffled, for geologic pasts, like those in the museum, were also shown in my textbook as landscapes, which could exist only if humans were present.  But, then, why knowing this I still see movies such as “Jurassic Park” and “Walking with Dinosaurs” not as cartoon fantasies but as actual worlds that drew on the best that science has to offer?

突然间，我发现自己在问：“谁的风景？“对我来说，当我站在透视图前？对于其他访客？但我们人类在白垩纪时代并不存在。那么，对于恐龙来说，这风景是真的吗？那是他们看到的吗？不，那不可能是对的，因为他们缺乏色觉，他们的眼睛也不能透视构图。对上帝来说是真的吗？也许上帝站在那里，在昏暗的暮色中凝视着恐龙，喜欢他所看到的一切。但是，为什么上帝，一亿年前，想通过人类的眼睛看到一幅风景画？在大学里，我一直困惑不解，因为地质历史，像博物馆里的那些，在我的教科书里也被当作风景画来展示，只有在人类在场的情况下才能存在，为什么知道了这一点，我仍然把电影《侏罗纪公园》和《与恐龙同行》视为不是卡通幻想，而是真实的世界，借鉴了科学所能提供的最好的东西？