浩瀚萬象（ONENESS）

  （上承 魔鬼盤據的世界  — 簡介）

Preface      序文

My Teachers      憶恩師

It was a blustery fall day in 1939. In the streets outside the apartment building, fallen leaves were swirling in little whirl-winds, each with a life of its own. It was good to be inside and warm and safe, with my mother preparing dinner in the next room. In our apartment there were no older kids who picked on you for no reason. Just the week before, I had been in a fight - I can't remember, after all these years, who it was with; maybe it was Snoony Agata from the third floor - and, after a wild swing, I found I had put my fist through the plate glass window of Schechter's drug store.

1939年秋天某日，公寓外狂風怒吼，街上此起彼落的小旋風捲起落葉，展現出各自的生命力。待在屋裡真好，既暖和又安全；母親此刻正在隔壁廚房內準備晚餐。我是家裡唯一的小孩，所以沒有哥哥姐姐會無緣無故找碴。還記得先前幾天我才剛跟人打過架；只知道在一陣扭打纏鬥之間，我的拳頭不小心打破薛屈特先生藥房的玻璃窗。如今多年過後，我已記不得是跟誰打架了，或許是住在三樓的亞格塔吧！

（譯者註：1939年那時，卡爾·薩根還不到五歲。）

Mr Schechter was solicitous: 'It's all right, I'm insured,' he said as he put some unbelievably painful antiseptic on my wrist. My mother took me to the doctor whose office was on the ground floor of our building. With a pair of tweezers, he pulled out a fragment of glass. Using needle and thread, he sewed two stitches.

薛屈特先生體貼地說︰「沒關係，我有保險。」他邊說邊在我的手腕上塗了消炎藥水，頓時間只感覺一陣刺麻，痛得我說不出話來。之後母親帶我去公寓一樓給醫生療傷。他用一把鑷子從我的傷口內取出一片碎玻璃，然後縫了兩針。

'Two stitches!' my father had repeated later that night. He knew about stitches, because he was a cutter in the garment industry; his job was to use a very scary power saw to cut out patterns - backs, say, or sleeves for ladies' coats and suits - from an enormous stack of cloth. Then the patterns were conveyed to endless rows of women sitting at sewing machines. He was pleased I had gotten angry enough to overcome a natural timidity.

當晚我父親口中不斷唸著︰「竟然縫了兩針。」他是成衣工廠的裁剪師父，所以對針特別瞭解。他負責以一把恐怖的電動鋸刀將一疊疊厚厚的布料剪成各種樣式，例如女裝外套與西裝的背布或袖子布。紙樣裁剪完成後，便經由輸送帶傳至一列列女工的裁縫機上。他看見我生這麼大的氣，一改天生膽小的個性，心中甚為高興。

Sometimes it was good to fight back. I hadn't planned to do anything violent. It just happened. One moment Snoony was pushing me and the next moment my fist was through Mr Schechter's window. I had injured my wrist, generated an unexpected medical expense, broken a plate glass window, and no one was mad at me. As for Snoony, he was more friendly than ever.

偶爾反擊一下也是好事。我原本不想動粗的，一切就這樣發生了。好像是亞格塔推我一把，然後我的拳頭便打穿薛屈特先生的藥房玻璃窗。雖然傷了手腕，花了一大筆冤枉醫藥費，還打破一片玻璃，可是卻沒有人怪我。至於亞格塔，他之後對我倒是友善多了。

I puzzled over what the lesson was. But it was much more pleasant to work it out up here in the warmth of the apartment, gazing out through the living-room window into Lower New York Bay, than to risk some new misadventure on the streets below.

對於這場教訓的意義，我一直苦思不解。但與其跑到街頭上冒險找尋新的刺激與教訓，還不如待在樓上溫暖的家中來思考，順便可以凝視客廳窗外的下紐約灣海景。

As she often did, my mother had changed her clothes and made up her face in anticipation of my father's arrival. We talked about my fight with Snoony. The Sun was almost setting and together we looked out across the choppy waters. 'There are people fighting out there, killing each other,' she said, waving vaguely across the Atlantic. I peered intently.
'I know,' I replied. 'I can see them.'
'No, you can't,' she replied, sceptically, almost severely, before returning to the kitchen. 'They're too far away.'

母親如往常般已換好衣服上了妝，靜候父親的歸來。夕陽漸沈，我們兩人一起望著外頭洶湧的海浪，談起之前我打架的事。她略抬起手指著大西洋說︰「外頭很多人在打架，殺來殺去的。」
於是我專心凝視窗外，回答說：「對啊！我看得見。」
「才怪呢！他們在大老遠的地方，你怎麼看得見？」母親頗嚴肅地回答，然後轉身朝廚房走去。

How could she know whether I could see them or not? I wondered. Squinting, I had thought I'd made out a thin strip of land at the horizon on which tiny figures were pushing and shoving and duelling with swords as they did in my comic books. But maybe she was right. Maybe it had just been my imagination, a little like the midnight monsters that still, on occasion, awakened me from a deep sleep, my pyjamas drenched in sweat, my heart pounding.

我一頭霧水，心想母親怎會知道我看不見？我瞇起雙眼，幻想著遠方地平線上有一道細長的土地，上面許多小矮人相互拉扯，手持利劍廝殺著，有如在漫畫書上看到的情節。不過母親或許說得沒錯，一切應該只是我的想像而已，就好像半夜熟睡當中偶爾夢見怪物而嚇醒，雖然只是想像，但我卻直冒冷汗，把睡衣弄濕了，一顆心還怦怦跳著。

How can you tell when someone is only imagining? I gazed out across the grey waters until night fell and I was called to wash my hands for dinner. When he came home, my father swooped me up in his arms. I could feel the cold of the outside world against his one-day growth of beard.

如何判斷一個人只是在想像呢？我凝視著外頭灰暗的海水，一直到母親叫我洗手吃飯時，才發現天色已黑。父親回到家看見我，將我一把摟入他懷中；我心裡好愉快。倚靠在他一天下來長滿的鬍鬚上，我可以感受到外頭世界的寒冷。

On a Sunday in that same year, my father had patiently explained to me about zero as a placeholder in arithmetic, about the wicked-sounding names of big numbers, and about how there's no biggest number ('You can always add one,' he pointed out). Suddenly, I was seized by a childish compulsion to write in sequence all the integers from 1 to 1,000. We had no pads of paper, but my father offered up the stack of grey cardboards he had been saving from when his shirts were sent to the laundry. I started the project eagerly, but was surprised at how slowly it went. When I had gotten no farther than the low hundreds, my mother announced that it was time for me to take my bath. I was disconsolate. I had to get a thousand. A mediator his whole life, my father intervened: if I would cheerfully submit to the bath, he would continue the sequence. I was overjoyed. By the time I emerged, he was approaching 900, and I was able to reach 1,000 only a little past my ordinary bedtime. The magnitude of large numbers has never ceased to impress me.

那一年某個週日，父親耐心向我解說一些數字概念，例如 0 在算術中屬於一種預留位置號、沒有最大數字等等；他還補充︰「任何數字後面永遠可以加上 1」，教我如何唸一些發音奇特的大數字。突然間，我有了一股天真的強烈衝動，想要寫下 1 至 1000 之間的所有整數。由於一時找不到紙，父親便拿出一疊他送洗襯衫後保存下來的灰色紙板。我興沖沖地開始寫，但卻發現進度慢極了。才寫到前幾百個數字，母親便喊著說洗澡時間到了。我頗為沮喪，心想能夠寫完 1000 該有多好。經常扮演協調人的父親此時插嘴了︰如果我乖乖聽話去洗澡，他願意幫我繼續寫下去，這讓我雀躍不已。當我重新接手時，他已經寫到將近 900 了。於是當我達到 1000 時只不過是比平常上床的時間晚了一點點。這些大數字的重要性在我一生中都沒有忘記過。

Also in 1939 my parents took me to the New York World's Fair. There, I was offered a vision of a perfect future made possible by science and high technology. A time capsule was buried, packed with artefacts of our time for the benefit of those in the far future who, astonishingly, might not know much about the people of 1939. The 'World of Tomorrow' would be sleek, clean, streamlined and, as far as I could tell, without a trace of poor people.

同樣也是1939年，爸媽帶我去參觀紐約萬國博覽會，讓我見識到由高科技所繪製出的一幅完美的未來景象。會場內埋有一顆「時光膠囊」，裡面密封著我們這一代的文物供後代子孫瞭解先人種種情況；不過我想後人看了之後，也難以真正瞭解我們在1939年的生活情形。就我在會場上的觀察，「明日世界」將更為井然有序，乾淨又有效率，一點窮人的影子也沒有。

'See sound' one exhibit bewilderingly commanded. And sure enough, when the tuning fork was struck by the little hammer, a beautiful sine wave marched across the oscilloscope screen. 'Hear light' another poster exhorted. And sure enough, when the flashlight shone on the photocell, I could hear something like the static on our Motorola radio set when the dial was between stations. Plainly the world held wonders of a kind I had never guessed. How could a tone become a picture and light become a noise?

會場上有塊極為醒目的展示板寫著「觀看聲音」。趨前瞧看，只見一支小錘子在音叉上一敲，整個示波器的銀幕上立刻顯示出一幅美麗的聲音正弦波，逼真極了！另一張海報則寫著「聆聽光線」，只見閃光燈投射在光電管上的一剎那，便可聽見類似摩托羅拉收音機轉台時產生的沙沙靜電音效，同樣也是逼真不已。坦白說，這個世界真是無奇不有，一種東西有多種意想不到的形式；竟然連聲音也可以變成畫面，光線可以變成聲音。

My parents were not scientists. They knew almost nothing about science. But in introducing me simultaneously to scepticism and to wonder, they taught me the two uneasily cohabiting modes of thought that are central to the scientific method. They were only one step out of poverty. But when I announced that I wanted to be an astronomer, I received unqualified support - even if they (as I) had only the most rudimentary idea of what an astronomer does. They never suggested that, all things considered, it might be better to be a doctor or a lawyer.

我父母都不是科學家，對科學可說一竅不通，但他們卻帶我來參觀博覽會，讓我同時接觸到科學方法中兩種水火不容但又並存的重要思考模式 —— 懷疑與奇想。當時我父母才剛脫離貧窮生活不久，但是當我表示立志要成為一位天文學家時，他們卻毫不保留地支持我（其實父母與我一樣，對天文學家的工作只知道皮毛而已）。即使他們經過通盤的考慮，也未曾建議我應該去當醫生或律師。

I wish I could tell you about inspirational teachers in science from my elementary or junior high or high school days. But as I think back on it, there were none. There was rote memorization about the Periodic Table of the Elements, levers and inclined planes, green plant photosynthesis, and the difference between anthracite and bituminous coal. But there was no soaring sense of wonder, no hint of an evolutionary perspective, and nothing about mistaken ideas that everybody had once believed. In high school laboratory courses, there was an answer we were supposed to get. We were marked off if we didn't get it. There was no encouragement to pursue our own interests or hunches or conceptual mistakes. In the backs of textbooks there was material you could tell was interesting. The school year would always end before we got to it. You could find wonderful books on astronomy, say, in the libraries, but not in the classroom. Long division was taught as a set of rules from a cookbook, with no explanation of how this particular sequence of short divisions, multiplications and subtractions got you the right answer. In high school, extracting square roots was offered reverentially, as if it were a method once handed down from Mt Sinai. It was our job merely to remember what we had been commanded. Get the right answer, and never mind that you don't understand what you're doing. I had a very capable second-year algebra teacher from whom I learned much mathematics; but he was also a bully who enjoyed reducing young women to tears. My interest in science was maintained through all those school years by reading books and magazines on science fact and fiction.

我真希望在小學、國中或高中時期，能夠碰到一些給我帶來啟示的科學老師，順便在此提出他（她）們的大名感謝一番，但如今回想起來卻連一位也沒有。我只記得在學習過程中不斷死背化學元素週期表、槓桿與斜面原理、綠色植物的光合作用以及無煙煤與瀝青煤的不同；反而從未學到萬物的神奇、演化觀點或是大家曾經深信不移的錯誤觀念。高中實驗課裡，每個問題已經預先有了答案；我們若找不出標準答案則會被扣分。老師不會鼓勵學生追求自己的學習興趣、探索直覺的想法或是探討錯誤觀念。每本教科書後面總是列有一些有趣的題材，但往往還沒上到的時候學期就已經結束了。你可以在圖書館裡，而不是在教室裡找到有關天文學的美妙的書籍。教師將多位除法像教烹調書上的配方一樣灌輸給你，卻不解釋單位除法、乘法、減法是怎樣組合起來以得出正確答案的。在高中時，教師恭敬虔誠地傳授求平方根的方法，似乎這種計算方法是西奈山親手所授。我們的學習僅僅是記住自己被要求做甚麼，並得到正確的答案，而你明不明白自己在做甚麼並不重要。在二年級時，我遇到了一位非常稱職的代課老師，從他那裡我學會了很多數學知識。但他也非常嚴厲，常常弄得一些女孩子難過流淚。在求學這些年中，我對科學的興趣，是得自閱讀科學與科幻書籍以及雜誌而來。

College was the fulfilment of my dreams: I found teachers who not only understood science, but who were actually able to explain it. I was lucky enough to attend one of the great institutions of learning of the time, the University of Chicago. I was a physics student in a department orbiting around Enrico Fermi; I discovered what true mathematical elegance is from Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar; I was given the chance to talk chemistry with Harold Urey; over summers I was apprenticed in biology to H.J. Muller at Indiana University; and I learned planetary astronomy from its only full-time practitioner at the time, G.P. Kuiper.

大學時期是我美夢成真的開始；一些老師不僅懂科學，也知道如何解釋科學。當時我有幸就讀芝加哥大學這所知名的學府。我是物理系的學生，整個系的教學方向以費米教授為中心。從程卓斯卡教授那裡，我瞭解到真正的數學之美；我也有幸向遊理教授請教化學方面的問題。有幾個暑假我前往印第安納大學見習，與馬勒教授一起研究生物學；我在行星天文學方面的知識則來自當時該學科唯一的全職專家桂柏教授。

It was from Kuiper that I first got a feeling for what is called a back-of-the-envelope calculation: a possible explanation to a problem occurs to you, you pull out an old envelope, appeal to your knowledge of fundamental physics, scribble a few approximate equations on the envelope, substitute in likely numerical values, and see if your answer comes anywhere near explaining your problem. If not, you look for a different explanation. It cut through nonsense like a knife through butter.

我也是從桂柏教授那兒首次體會到「信封背面演算法」的便捷與好處。所謂「信封背面演算法」，便是當你對某個問題的答案不確定時，可以拿出一個舊信封，思考一下基礎物理學的原理，然後在信封背面寫下數個近似方程式，互換幾個可能的數值，看看求出的答案可否解釋這個難題。如果無法解答，便繼續找尋其他答案。這種演算法就好像拿刀子切奶油一樣，可以去掉一些無價值的答案。

At the University of Chicago I also was lucky enough to go through a general education programme devised by Robert M. Hutchins, where science was presented as an integral part of the gorgeous tapestry of human knowledge. It was considered unthinkable for an aspiring physicist not to know Plato, Aristotle, Bach, Shakespeare, Gibbon, Malinowski and Freud - among many others. In an introductory science class, Ptolemy's view that the Sun revolved around the Earth was presented so compellingly that some students found themselves re-evaluating their commitment to Copernicus. The status of the teachers in the Hutchins curriculum had almost nothing to do with their research; perversely - unlike the American university standard of today teachers were valued for their teaching, their ability to inform and inspire the next generation.

在芝加哥大學我還非常幸運地修完了羅伯特·梅納德·哈欽斯開設的一門普通教育課。他的課程將科學作為人類知識燦爛輝煌的織錦中的一個組成部分展現現在你的面前。難以想像一個有抱負的物理學家會不去了解柏拉圖、亞里士多德、巴哈、莎士比亞、吉本、馬凌諾斯基和佛洛伊德以及其他的著名學者們。在一堂科學概論課上，他將托勒密關於太陽圍繞地球旋轉的學說講得生動感人、引人入勝，使得一些學生對哥白尼學說的研究有了更新的認識。在哈欽斯的課程中，老師的地位與他們的研究幾乎毫無關係。與今天美國大學的標準不同，那時對老師的評價卻是根據他們的數學水平，以及他們是否具有向下一代傳授知識和啟發學生的能力。

In this heady atmosphere, I was able to fill in some of the many gaps in my education. Much that had been deeply mysterious, and not just in science, became clearer. I also witnessed at first hand the joy felt by those whose privilege it is to uncover a little about how the Universe works.

這種活躍的學術氣氛使我得以填補上了我過去所接受的教育中的許多空白。許多以前非常神秘（不僅是在科學方面）的東西在我的頭腦中變得清晰明瞭起來。我同時也親眼目睹了那些能夠發現一些宇宙規律的人所享受到的榮幸。

I've always been grateful to my mentors of the 1950s, and tried to make sure that each of them knew my appreciation. But as I look back, it seems clear to me that I learned the most essential things not from my school teachers, nor even from my university professors, but from my parents, who knew nothing at all about science, in that single far-off year of 1939.

我一直對50年代的那些輔導我的教師非常感激，而且一直在試圖知道他們中的每一個人是否都知道我的感激之情。但是，當我回首往事時，我似乎清楚地感到，我所學的最重要的東西，不是來自中學和小學的老師，也不是來自大學教授們，而是來自我那時對科學幾乎一無所知的父母，他們對我的教育早在1939年那年就開始了。

（下接 第一章 人生至寶）

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