-
unit1
笛卡尔错了：
“他人在，故我在”
According to Ubuntu philosophy, which
has its origins in ancient Africa, a newborn baby
is
not
a
person.
People
are
born
without
‘ena’,
or
selfhood,
and
instead
must
acquire
it
through
interactions
and
experiences
over
time.
So
the
‘self’/‘other’
distinction
that’s
axiomatic
in
Western
philosophy
is
much
blurrier
in
Ubuntu
thought.
As
the
Kenyan-born
philosopher
John
Mbiti put it in African
Religions and Philosophy (1975): ‘I am because we
are, and since we are,
therefore I
am.’
乌班图哲学起源于古代非洲。按照它的说法，新生儿
尚不能称为
“
人
”
。初生时，人没有
自我。
随着时间的推移，
在互动和经验中才能习得它。因此，
西方哲学中自我／他者之间清
晰的分野在乌班图哲学中变得模糊起来。出生于肯尼亚的哲学家约翰
·
姆比蒂（
John Mbiti
）
在著作《非洲的宗教与哲学》
（
African
Religions and Philosophy
）中如是说：我在，因为我们
在；因为我们在，所以我在。
We
know
from
everyday
experience
that
a
person
is
partly
forged
in
the
crucible
of
community.
Relationships
inform
self-
understanding.
Who
I
am
depends
on
many
‘others’:
my
family, my friends, my culture, my work
colleagues. The self I take grocery shopping, say,
differs in
her actions and behaviours
from the self that talks to my PhD supervisor.
Even my most private
and personal
reflections are entangled with the perspectives
and voices of different people, be it
those who agree with me, those who
criticise, or those who praise me.
日常经验告诉我们，
一个人一部分从社会的历练中锻造出来。
社会关系赋予我们自我认
知。我是谁，这个问题的答案依赖于众多他者：家
庭、朋友、文化背景、同事等等。在杂货
店购物的我和与博士导师交谈的我不是同一个自
我。
即便是私密、
最个人的思绪也不同人的
观点和声音纠缠在一起，
无论是那些赞同我的人，
还是那些
批评我的人，
抑或是那些赞美我
的人。
;
Yet
the notion of a fluctuating and ambiguous self can
be disconcerting. We can chalk up this
discomfort, in large part, to
Ren
é
Descartes.
The 17th-century French philosopher believed that
a
human
being
was
essentially
self-contained
and
self-sufficient;
an
inherently
rational,
mind-bound subject, who ought to
encounter the world outside her head with
skepticism. While
Descartes
didn
’
t single-handedly
create the modern mind, he went a long way towards
defining
its
contours.
但是，
自我的摇
摆不定和充满歧义让人不安。
很大程度上，
我们可以把这份不安
归因于
笛卡尔。这位
17
世纪的法国哲
学家认为，人类本质上是自给自足的；省而理性、受其思想
约束的个体，
应该以怀疑的态度面对他头脑之外的世界。
尽管笛卡尔没有单独创造出现代思<
/p>
维，但他在定义其框架上起到了很大的推动作用。
Descartes had set himself a
very particular puzzle to solve. He wanted to find
a stable point
of view from which to
look on the world without relying on God-decreed
wisdoms; a place from
which he could
discern the permanent structures beneath the
changeable phenomena of nature.
But
Descartes believed that there was a trade-off
between certainty and a kind of social, worldly
richness.
The
only
thing
you
can
be
certain
of
is
your
own
cogito
–
the
fact
that
you
are
thinking.
Other
people
and
other
things
are
inherently
fickle
and
erratic.
So
they
must
have
nothing to do with the basic
constitution
of the knowing self, which
is a necessarily detached,
coherent and
contemplative whole.
笛卡尔给自己提
出了一个特别的谜团。
他想要找到一种稳定的观点，
而非依靠上
帝赐予
的智慧，
来观察这个世界；
由此
，
他可以透过自然界中变幻莫测的现象分辨出永久性的结构。
但
笛卡尔认为，稳定性和来自社会的、世俗的多样性之间存在权衡关系。你唯一能确定的，
就是
“
我思故我在
”——
即，你思考的状态。其他人和其他事物是不稳定且难以预测的存在。
因此，<
/p>
它们和认识自己的基本律条毫无关系。
认识自我从来都是独自进行
的，
需要不断的深
思。
Few respected philosophers
and psychologists would identify as strict
Cartesian dualists, in
the sense of
believing that mind and matter are completely
separate. But the Cartesian cogito is
still
everywhere
you
look.
The
experimental
design
of
memory
testing,
for
example,
tends
to
proceed from the assumption that
it
’
s possible to draw a
sharp distinction between the self and
the world. If memory simply lives
inside the skull, then it
’
s
perfectly acceptable to remove a
person
from her everyday environment and relationships,
and to test her recall using flashcards
or
screens
in
the
artificial
confines
of
a
lab.
A
person
is
considered
a
standalone
entity,
irrespective of her surroundings,
inscribed in the brain as a series of cognitive
processes. Memory
must be simply
something you have, not something you do within a
certain context.
在认识到精神和身体是完
全独立存在的基础上，
很少有备受尊敬的哲学家和心理学家被
认为是个彻底的笛卡尔式的二元论者。
但笛卡尔式的我思故我在目之所及，
已遍布每一个角
落。记忆
测试的实验设计趋于从一个假说出发，即自我和世界之间是可能存在明确界限的。
如果记
忆仅仅存在于我们的头颅中，
那么，
将一个人从他的日常生活的
环境和社会关系中剥
离出来，
并在人造的封闭实验室中使用卡片
或荧幕来检测他的记忆是百分百可行的。
人被视
作独立的个体，
区别于环绕他的一切，
是在大脑中被篆刻为一系列认知过程的存
在。
记忆一
定是你拥有的事实，而不是你在特定环境下的行为产
物。
&
Social psychology purports to examine
the relationship between cognition and society.
But
even then, the investigation often
presumes that a collective of Cartesian subjects
are the real
focus of the enquiry, not
selves that co-evolve with others over time. In
the 1960s, the American
psychologists
John Darley and Bibb Latan
é
became interested in the murder of
Kitty Genovese, a
young white woman who
had been stabbed and assaulted on her way home one
night in New
York.
Multiple
people
had
witnessed
the
crime
but
none
stepped
in
to
prevent
it.
Darley
and
Latan
é
designed a series of experiments in
which they simulated a crisis, such as an
epileptic fit,
or smoke billowing in
from the next room, to observe what people did.
They were the first to
identify
the
so-called
‘
bystander
effect
’
,
in
which
people
seem
to
respond
more
slowly
to
someone in distress if others are
around.
社会心理学标榜自己致力于检验认知和社会间
的关系。
但即便如此，
其研究常常假定如
下主张：
“
询问
”
< br>这一行为，其真正焦点在于一系列笛卡尔式议题的集合，而不是始终与他人
共同演
化的自我。
在二十世纪六十年代，
美国心理学家约翰
·
达利
(John Darley)
和比布
·
拉塔内
(Bibb
Latané)
对吉诺维斯案产生兴趣。吉诺维斯是一位年轻的
白人女性，在回家的路上遭到
袭击，
被歹徒刺伤。
很多人看到了这起罪行，
却无人挺身而出。达利和拉塔内设计了一系列
实验，模拟日常中的危机情况，比如癫痫发作、隔壁房间冒烟等，以此来观察人们的反应。
他们首次发现了所谓的
“
旁观者效应
”
，
即周围有他人存在的时候，
人们对处于紧急情况中的
个体的响应会变慢。
Darley and
Latan
é
suggested
that this might come from a
‘
diffusion of
responsibility
’
, in
which
the
obligation
to
react
is
diluted
across
a
bigger
group
of
people.
But
as
the
American
psychologist
Frances Cherry argued in The Stubborn Particulars
of Social Psychology: Essays on
the
Research
Process
(1995),
this
numerical
approach
wipes
away
vital
contextual
information
that might help
to understand people
’
s real
motives. Genovese
’
s murder
had to be seen against
a backdrop in
which violence against women was not taken
seriously, Cherry said, and in which
people
were
reluctant
to
step
into
what
might
have
been
a
domestic
dispute.
Moreover,
the
murder
of
a
poor
black
woman
would
have
attracted
far
less
subsequent
media
interest.
But
Darley and
Latan
é’
s focus make
structural factors much harder to see.
达利和拉塔内认为，这种现象归因于
“
责任分散
”
。在这个过程中，提供帮助的义务在人
数众多的群体中被稀释了。但美国心理学家弗朗西斯
·
切利（
Frances
Cherry
）对此有不同意
见。
在
《社会心理学
中的偏执细节：
论研究进程》
（
The
Stubborn Particulars of Social Psychology:
Essays on the Research Process
）中提到，这种通过数字解释行为的方法剔除了重要的语境，
使得人们难以理解当事
人的真正动机。
谢里认为，
吉诺维斯杀案反映了当时的社会并不
关注
女性遭受的暴力困扰，
人们也不愿介入一桩可能是家庭纠纷
的暴力袭击中。
她进一步说，
一
个贫穷
的黑人女性被谋杀也很难吸引媒体的关注。
但是，
达利和拉塔内
关注的焦点让这些结
构性的因素变得更加难以察觉。
Is
there
a
way
of
reconciling
these
two
accounts
of
the
self
–
the
relational,
world-embracing
version,
and
the
autonomous,
inward
one
The
20th-
century
Russian
philosopher
Mikhail Bakhtin believed that the answer lay in
dialogue. We need others in order to
evaluate our own existence and
construct a coherent self-image. Think of that
luminous moment
when a poet captures
something you
’
d felt but had
never articulated; or when
you
’
d struggled
to summarise your thoughts, but they
crystallised in conversation with a friend.
Bakhtin believed
that it was only
through an encounter with another person that you
could come to appreciate
your own
unique perspective and see yourself as a whole
entity. By
‘
looking through
the screen
of the
other
’
s
soul,
’
he wrote,
‘
I vivify my
exterior.
’
Selfhood and knowledge are evolving
and dynamic; the self is never finished
–
it is an open
book.
）
自我有两种面孔，一种是关系化的、与世界紧密相拥的；另一种是自主内向的
——<
/p>
有没
有一种方法，
可以消除它俩之间的分
歧二十世纪，
俄罗斯的哲学家米哈伊尔
·
巴赫金
（
Mikhail
Bakh
tin
）认为，答案在于对话。我们需要他人来对自己的存在进行评估，并借此构建完整
连贯的自我印象。
想一想那些醍醐灌顶的时刻：
诗人捕捉到你所感受到的却从未表达出来的
东西；
或者
在与朋友交谈时你灵光一现，
信口而出你曾难以总结、
难以表达
的一些想法。巴
赫金相信，
只有在与他人的交往中，
你才能欣赏自己独一无二的观点，
才能将自己视作一个
实体存在。他这样写道：
“<
/p>
透过他人的灵魂之窗，我看到了自己的外在
”
。自我和认识不断演
进，永远处于动态；自我也永不消亡
—
—
这点一目了然。
So reality is not simply out there,
waiting to be uncovered.
‘
Truth is not born nor is it
to be
found inside the head of an
individual person, it is born between people
collectively searching for
truth, in
the process of their dialogic
interaction,
’
Bakhtin wrote in Problems of
Dostoyevsky
’
s
Poetics
(1929). Nothing
simply
is
itself,
outside
the matrix
of relationships
in which
it
appears.
Instead, being is an act or event that
must happen in the space between the self and the
world.
因此，现实并不是就在那儿等着我们去发现。<
/p>
“
真理不会诞生于或被发现于一个人的头
脑中，它诞生于人类集体对真理的追寻之中，诞生于人们之间对话形式的互动中
”
。这句话
出自巴赫金写的《陀思妥耶夫问题》
（
Problems of Dostoevsky’s
Po
etics
）这本书。
“
没有任何
东西单纯地是它本身，完全脱离它所处的关系网络
”
。
“
存在
”
< br>这个动作或事件一定发生在自
我和世界之间的空间。
Accepting that others are
vital to our self-perception is a corrective to
the limitations of the
Cartesian
view.
Consider
two
different
models
of
child
psychology.
Jean
Piaget
’
s
theory
of
cognitive
development
conceives
of
individual
growth
in
a
Cartesian
fashion,
as
the
reorganisation
of
mental
processes.
The
developing
child
is
depicted
as
a
lone
learner
–
an
inventive
scientist,
struggling
independently
to
make
sense
of
the
world.
By
contrast,
‘
dialog
ical
’
theories,
brought to life in experiments such as Lisa
Freund
’
s
‘
doll house
study
’
from
1990,
emphasise
interactions
between
the
child
and
the
adult
who
can
provide
‘
scaffolding
’
for how she understands the
world.
想要纠正笛卡尔式观点的局限性，就要承认，他
人对于我们的自我认知有着重要意义。
来思考两个不同的儿童心理学模型。简
·
皮亚杰（
Jean Piaget
）的认知发展理论提出，笛卡尔
式的潮流下个体的成长伴随精神进程方面的重
组。
不断成长的儿童被描述成一个孤独的学习
者，一个富有创新
的科学家，孤身一人，奋力要搞清世间的真相。另一个理论
——
对话理论
则不相同。相比之下，从
1990
年开始，对话理论才在莉萨
·
弗罗因德的“玩偶屋研究”等
一
系列实验中得以呈现。
该理论强调孩子和成年人之间的互动，
认为成年人可以为孩子们了解
世界提供“脚手架”
。
…
A grimmer example might be solitary
confinement in prisons. The punishment was
originally
designed to encourage
introspection: to turn the
prisoner
’
s thoughts inward,
to prompt her to
reflect on her crimes,
and to eventually help her return to society as a
morally cleansed citizen. A
perfect
policy
for
the
reform
of
Cartesian
individuals.
But,
in
fact,
studies
of
such
prisoners
suggest that their
sense of self dissolves if they are punished this
way for long enough. Prisoners
tend
to
suffer
profound
physical
and
psychological
difficulties,
such
as
confusion,
anxiety,
insomnia,
feelings
of
inadequacy,
and
a
distorted
sense
of
time.
Deprived
of
contact
and
interaction
–
the
external
perspective
needed
to
consummate
and
sustain
a
coherent
self-image
–
a person risks
disappearing into non-existence.
这里举一个略残酷的例子：
监狱中的单人囚室。
这项
惩罚最初被用于促进犯人自省，
改
变囚徒的内心想法，
促使他们反思罪行，
最终帮助犯人在重返社会时变成一个良好公民。
但
是，事实上，对这些囚犯的研究表明，如果接受此类惩罚太久，其
自我意识就会消融。囚徒
们更容易遭受生理和心理上的折磨：焦虑、紧张、失眠、无能感
，以及扭曲的时间观念都是
困扰他们的问题。
如果失去联系与交
流这种完善和维持清晰自我形象的外部因素，
人会面临
失去自我
的危险。
The
emerging
fields
of
embodied
and
enactive
cognition
have
started
to
take
dialogic
models of the self more seriously. But
for the most part, scientific psychology is only
too willing to
adopt individualistic
Cartesian assumptions that cut away the webbing
that ties the self to others.
There is
a Zulu phrase,
‘
Umuntu
ngumuntu ngabantu
’
, which
means
‘
A person is a person
through other
persons.
’
This is
a richer and better account, I think, than
‘
I think, therefore I
am.
’
具
身认知和生成认知的领域开始严肃对待自我的对话模式。
但是在大多数情况下，
科学
意义上的心理学非常乐意采纳个人色彩浓厚的、切断了自我与他人相
互联系的笛卡尔式假
说。有句祖鲁族谚语，
Umuntu
ngumuntu ngabantu
，意思是
“
他人在，故我在
”
，在我看来，
这句话比
“
我思故我在
”
更完满贴切。
Unit2
我们准备好应对下一次火山灾难了吗
/
In April 1815,
the biggest known eruption of the historical
period blew apart the Tambora
volcano,
on
the
Indonesian
island
of
Sumbawa,
12,000km
from
the
UK.
What
happened
next
testifies to the enormous reach of the
biggest volcanic blasts.
181
5
年
4
月，历史上最著名的喷发使距印
度尼西亚
12,000
公里的印度尼西亚苏姆巴瓦
岛上的坦波拉火山炸毁。接下来发生的事情证明了最大的火山爆炸的巨大影响力。
The
Tambora
volcano
had
shown
no
signs
of
life
for
1,000
years;
a
single
eruption
in
the
previous five millennia provided the
only indication that magma was still churning far
5 April
1815,
a
titanic
explosion
hurled
a
cloud
of
ash
to
a
height
of
more
than
30km.
Violent,
but
short-lived,
the
blast
lasted
just
two
hours,
after
which
the
volcano
returned
to
a
state
of
brooding
to the lieutenant governor,
Thomas Stamford (later Sir Stamford) Bingley
Raffles, to
whom volcanologists are
indebted for his accounts of the eruption, the
detonation was so loud
that it was
mistaken across Java for cannon fire, causing
consternation among the British troops,
which had ousted the Dutch and French
forces just a few years earlier.
坦波拉火山（
Tambora
）的火山已经有
1000
年没有生命迹象了。在过去的五千年中，
一次喷发提供了唯一的迹象，表明岩浆仍在搅拌之下。
1815
年
4
月
5
日，发生了巨大的爆
炸，将一团灰烬推向
30
< br>公里以上的高度。剧烈，但是爆炸是短暂的，爆炸只持续了两个小
时，
之后火山又恢复了沉重的威胁状态。
因记录了火山喷发事件而令火山学家们
感激不已的
副州长托马斯
·
斯坦福德<
/p>
·
宾利
·
莱佛士
（后来的斯坦福德爵士）表示，此次火山爆发声音之巨
大，
以至
被误认为是爪哇岛爆发战争时的加农大炮声，
令几年前曾驱赶荷兰和法国军队的英
国士兵们惊慌失措。
But the blast was small beer in
comparison with what followed. After five days of
relative
calm,
the
climactic
phase
of
the
eruption
began
with
a
colossal
explosion
that
launched
a
towering column of ash to the edge of
space. For four or five days, utter blackness
reigned across
the island as the
hurricane blasts of hot ash and scalding gas
–
known as
pyroclastic flows
–
scoured
the
flanks
of
the
volcano
of
everything
and
everyone,
and
drifts
of
ash
metres
thick
entombed what few signs of life
remained. When the explosions ceased and the
darkness finally
lifted, the view
revealed was a vision of
Tolkien
’
s Mordor; a grey
landscape within which nothing
lived or
moved. The top 500m of the volcano was gone,
blasted into smithereens, and replaced
by
a
6km-wide
maw
from
which
steam
spiralled
on
the
flanks
of
the
volcano
had
vanished,
along with the lives of around 12,000
men, women and children. These, perhaps, were the
lucky
ones, as a further 60,000
survivors of the eruption succumbed slowly and
agonisingly to famine
or disease.
但与随后发
生的爆炸相比，
这次爆炸就显得微不足道。
经过相对平静的五天
后，
一声巨
响宣告了火山爆发的高潮，
喷发的火山灰烬柱高耸入云，
直逼天际。
整个岛屿都笼罩在一片
漆黑之中，
炙热的火山灰和滚烫的气体——即火山碎屑流，
像飓风一样吞噬了火山翼侧的一
切事物，
几
米厚的火山灰掩盖之处死寂沉沉，
几乎没有任何生命迹象。
当爆
炸停止并且黑暗
终于消除时，
所见的景象就是托尔金的魔都的景
象。
一种灰色的景观，
其中没有人居住或活
动。火山的最高
500m
消失了，被炸成碎片，然后被
6
公里宽的取代，从中蒸腾出蒸汽。火
山两
侧的社区以及约
12,000
名男女儿童的生活都消失了。这些
也许是幸运的，因为另外
60,000
名喷发幸存者缓慢而痛苦
地死于饥荒或疾病。
}
But the consequences were not confined
to this Indonesian backwater. The explosion was
heard
2,600km
away
in
Sumatra,
while
giant
rafts
of
floating
pumice
–
some
kilometres
in
length
–
clogged
shipping routes for years. The 50 cubic kilometres
or so of ash ejected over
the
course
of
the
eruption
returned
to
earth
in
the
following
days
and
weeks,
leaving
a
thick
covering
as
far
away
as
Borneo,
500km
to
the
addition
to
the
ash,
an
estimated
200
million
tonnes
of
microscopic
sulphur
particles
pumped
into
the
stratosphere,
spread
outwards
from
Sumbawa to form a giant aerosol veil
that enclosed the planet and acted as a block to
incoming
sunlight.
< br>但是后果不仅仅限于印尼的死水。爆炸发生在苏门答腊岛
2600
公里以外，而数公里长
的漂浮浮石筏阻塞了数年的运输路线。在喷发过程中喷出
的约
50
立方公里的灰烬在接下来
的几
天和几周内返回地面，
厚厚的一层火山灰一直延伸至距北
500
公里的婆罗洲。
除火山灰
外，
估计有
2
亿吨微小的硫颗粒被注入平流层，
从松巴哇岛向外扩散，
形成一个巨大的气溶
胶幕，将整个地球包裹起来，成为阻挡阳光照射的屏障。
The consequences for the developed
societies of the northern hemisphere were dire. A
dry,
sulphurous,
fog
draped
itself
across
the
landscape
of
eastern
North
America,
causing
temperatures to plunge and bringing
unprecedented summer cold. In New York State, snow
fell in
June, while the bitter cold and
killing frosts wiped out crops and halved the
length of the growing
season
across
much
of
the
region.
On
the
other
side
of
the
Atlantic,
Europe
saw
summer
temperatures
down
by
2C
compared
to
the
average
for
the
decade;
the
unseasonal
cold
accompanied
by
incessant
rains
and
–
into
the
following
winter
–
by
unusually
powerful
storms. Analysis of climate records
reveals that 1816, the so-called
“
year without a
summer
”
,
was the
second coldest in the northern hemisphere of the
past six centuries.
对北半球发达社
会的后果是可怕的。
干燥，
硫磺的雾笼罩着整个北美东部，
造成温度骤
降，
并带来前所未有的夏季寒冷
。
在纽约州，
6
月降雪，
而严酷的寒冷和霜冻消灭了农作物，
并使该地区大部分地区的生长期缩短了一
半。
在大西洋的另一侧，
欧洲的夏季气温比十年来
的平均水平下降了
2
摄氏度。
异常的寒冷伴随着持续不断的降雨，
并在随后的冬季
（伴随着
接下来的冬天）爆发了异常强烈的风暴。对气候记录的分析表明，
1816
年，即所谓的
“
无夏
之年
”
，是过去六个世纪北半球第二冷的一年
。
The
alleged
cultural
implications
of
this
“volcano
weather”
for
Europe
are
somewhat
whimsical. The
brilliant, gas-charged, sunsets have been declared
by some to have provided the
inspiration
for
some
of
JMW
Turner’s
more
flamboy
ant
skies.
In
a
similar
vein,
the
damp
and
gloom of the 1816 summer
has been charged with setting the scene for both
Lord Byron’s grim
vision
Darkness,
and
Mary
Shelley’s
gothic
novel
the
less
well-to-
do
of
Europe,
however,
the
Tambora
eruption
brought
nothing
less
than
hunger,
disease
and
death.
Widespread
harvest
failure resulted in
the most serious famine for more than a hundred
years, doubling the price of
grain
and
spawning
bread
riots
and
widespread
civil
was
the
degree
of
breakdown
of
food
supply t
hat
economic historian John Post has called the
episode “the last, great subsistence crisis
in the western world”
.
Malnourished and weakened, the starving succumbed
rapidly to disease,
with
typhus
in
particular
rife.
Many
tens
of
thousands
are
thought
to
have
died
across
the
continent, including more than 40,000
in Ireland alone.
：
这种
“<
/p>
火山天气
”
对欧洲的所谓文化影响有些古
怪。一些人宣称，明亮，充满气体的日落
为约瑟夫·马洛德·威廉·透纳的一些更加绚丽
的天空提供了灵感。同样，
1816
年夏季的
< br>潮湿和阴郁被认为是为拜伦勋爵的冷酷视觉《黑暗》和玛丽
·
雪莱的哥特式小说《科学怪人》
设定背景的场景。然而，对于欧洲欠富裕的国家来说
，坦波拉火山喷发带来的却只有饥饿，
疾病和死亡。
广泛的庄稼
歉收导致一百多年来最严重的饥荒，
使谷物价格翻了一番，
并导
致
面包暴动和普遍的内乱。
（因火山爆发而引起的）食物短缺问
题十分严重，经济历史学家约
翰·波斯特称这时期是“西方世界最近一次严重的生存危机
”
。营养不良和虚弱，挨饿的人
很快死于疾病，
尤其是斑疹伤寒。据认为，整个欧洲大陆有成千上万的人死亡，其中仅爱尔
兰就有
40,000
多人死亡。
How
would we fare if faced with a Tambora-sized
eruption today Is it even something we
could feasibly prepare for Received
wisdom has it that globalisation would make it
easier to cope.
Should
the
European
harvest
fail,
so
the
thinking
goes,
we
can
always
buy
our
food
from
elsewhere. The very interconnectedness
of world markets may, however, make things worse
–
the collapse of
food production across Europe, parts of North
America and perhaps elsewhere,
could
result
in
global
shortages
which
in
turn
would
drive
a
dramatic
rise
in
the
cost
of
food
commodities. At the same time, the
intense worldwide competition for food supplies,
scarce as a
consequence of the harvest
failures, could drastically reduce the range of
products available in
the UK, interfere
with supply and distribution, and bring about a
collapse of the
supermarkets
’
ultra-sensitive,
time-
critical,
stock-control
systems,
leaving
their
shelves
increasingly
depleted.
While the less well-off could be priced
out of purchasing even staple foodstuffs, panic
buying by
those who can afford it could
quickly empty the stores.
如果
今天面对坦波拉规模的火山喷发，
我们应该怎么办我们是否可以做一些可行的准备
众所周知，全球化将使这个事情处理起来变得更加容易。如果欧洲的农业歉收，一般想法，
我们可以从其他地方购买食物。
然而，
世界
市场间的这一切密切联系可能会令事态恶化
——
欧洲，
北美部分地区以及其他地区的产量危机可能带来全球粮食短缺，
进而可能
导致食品的
成本大幅上涨。
与此同时，
由荒年而致的粮食短缺问题也会造成激烈的全球食品竞争，
可能
会大大减少英国可用农产品，
干扰供应和分销，
导致很多超市异
常灵敏的，
时间要求严格的
库存管理系统全面崩塌，
超市食品货架也会变得越来越空旷。
不富裕的人由于食品价格定价
太高而放弃购买甚至是主食，但那些有能力负担的人的恐慌购买可能会很快买空商店。
On top of this,
harvest disruption in response to volcano weather
might extend far beyond
Europe, and
might
–
in
ensuing decades
–
be exacerbated by the consequence of
rampant
climate
change.
In
spite
of
our
modern
farming
methods
and
distribution
systems,
the
ramifications could be far more severe
than we expect. It is also worth considering that
while the
Tambora blast was
approximately 1,000 times bigger than the 2010
Icelandic eruption, it was a
minor
hiccup in comparison with the greatest volcanic
explosions of history. The Toba eruption
that
excavated
the
world
’
s
largest
volcanic
crater
in
Sumatra,
around
74,000
years
ago,
for
example, injected
hundreds of times more sulphur gases into the
stratosphere than Tambora. The
severe
“
volcanic
winter
”
that
followed probably lasted for several years and saw
a third or more
of the Earth covered
with snow and ice and the wholesale dieback of
vegetation.
此外，
火山
天气而造成的庄稼歉收状况可能会远远超出欧洲范围，
并且可能在随后的几
十年中由于剧烈的气候变化而加剧。
尽管我们采用现代农业方法和分配系统，
但后果可能比
我们预期的要严重得多。
还值得考虑的是，
尽管坦波拉爆炸案比
2010
年冰岛喷发大约
1,000
倍，但与历史上最大的火山
爆发相比，这只是个小小的问题。例如，大约在
74,000
年
前，
在苏门答腊挖掘出世界上最大的火山口的鸟羽火山喷发，
向
平流层注入的硫气比坦波拉高出
数百倍。
|
So,
if a Tambora-scale scenario would be bad news, far
worse could be lying in wait. While
we
can
’
t stop the next Tambora,
nor handle its potential impacts on the climate
and the harvest,
we
can
ensure
that
contingency
plans
are
in
place
to
keep
everyone
adequately
fed
until
the
sulphur
veil dissipates and temperatures return to normal.
In the UK at present, contingency food
supplies probably amount to little more
than a few weeks
’
worth. Some serious policy changes
are needed if a future volcanic blast
is not to bring about another subsistence
crisis.
因此，
如果坦波拉规
模的情景是个坏消息，
那就更糟了。
虽然我们不能阻止下一次坦
博
拉，
也不能控制应它对其对气候和庄稼的潜在影响，
但我们可以实施计划，
确保每个人都能
吃饱，<
/p>
直到硫磺消散，温度恢复正常。目前在英国，应急食品的供应量可能仅相当于几周的
时间。如果未来的火山爆炸不会引起另一次生计危机，则需要进行一些重大的政策调整。
Hazarding a guess
about when and where the next Tambora will explode
is far from an exact
science. Eruptions
on such a scale seem to happen, on average, a few
times every millennium
and one estimate
holds that there is a 1 in 10 chance of a
comparable event in the next 50 years.
The Earth does not, however, operate to
a timetable so such an eruption is equally likely
to occur
in any single year. There is
even a chance that climate change may have a hand
to play. Looking
back
at
previous
episodes
of
dramatic
climate
warming
provides
us
with
plenty
of
robust
evidence for a vigorous volcanic
response, most notably as our world heated up
rapidly at the
end of the last Ice Age.
The reaction is most pronounced at ice-covered
volcanoes, where melting
reduces the
weight acting on the volcanoes beneath,
facilitating eruptions and even promoting
the
production
of
more
magma.
Coastal
volcanoes
may
also
be
brought
to
eruption
as
the
increased load
of water, due to climbing sea levels, bends the
crust around the margins of the
oceans,
squeezing magma upwards like toothpaste out of a
tube.
关于下一个坦波拉何时何地爆炸的猜测，
远非一门确切的科学。
如此大规模的喷发似乎
平
均每千年发生几次，并且据估计，在未来的
50
年中，发生类似
事件的几率为十分之一。
但是，
地球没有按时间表运行，
因此在任何一年中都可能发生这种喷发。
气候变化甚至有可
能发挥作用。
以往气候急剧变暖的历史时期，
最为
显著的是在地球气温迅速上升的上个冰河
世纪末期，
为我们提供
了大量有力的证据，
证明在该时期发生过剧烈的火山。
该反应在
冰雪
覆盖的火山中最为明显，
其融化降低了作用在下方火山上的
重量，
促进喷发，
甚至促进更多
岩浆的
产生。沿海火山也可能喷发，
原因是由于海平面上升，
水量增加
，使地壳在海洋边缘
弯曲，将岩浆像牙膏一样从管中挤出。
No
volcano
erupts
without
warning
signs,
caused
by
rising
magma
triggering
earthquake
swarms and
inflating the ground surface. The problem is that
out of our world
’
s 1,300 or
more
active and potentially active
volcanoes, we monitor only a few hundred. The
Tambora eruption
reinforces the
unofficial volcanological axiom: the longer the
wait, the bigger the bang. That rule
of
thumb is borne out by the fact that fully half of
the biggest eruptions since 1800 originated at
volcanoes that had previously been
dormant throughout history. What we should be
keeping a
special watch on then, in
order to prepare ourselves for the next arrival of
Vulcan
’
s shock troops,
are those seemingly innocuous volcanoes
that have kept their heads down for centuries or
even
millennia. While there are too
many candidates to keep a serious eye
on, the numbers can be
narrowed down by focusing on those that
have been recently
“
restless
”
; perhaps best regarded
as the
volcanologists
’
term for
“
bubbling
under
”
. Beyond that, though,
it
’
s
anyone
’
s guess.
<
/p>
没有岩浆上升，
引发地震群和使地面膨胀的现象，
没有警告标志的火山就不会爆发。
问
题在于，在世界上
1,300
或更多的活跃和潜在活跃的火山中，我们仅监视数百
座。坦波拉火
山喷发强化了非官方的火山公理：等待时间越长，爆炸声越大。自
1800
年以来，半数最为
猛烈的火山喷发发源
自于历史上一直处于休眠状态的火山。
这一事实证实了该经验法则。
为
了让沃尔坎的突击部队下次到来做好准备，
我们应该特别
注意那些看似无害的火山，
它们压
低了数百年甚至数千年。
尽管有太多候选人无法认真关注，
通过关注那些最近
“
不安
”
的数字，
可以缩小数字；也许最被认为是火山学家
“
冒泡<
/p>
”
的术语。除此之外，这是任何人的猜测。
~
Unit3
理论家，实验家和大众物理学的偏见
Most people with more than a passing
interest in physics will tell you who came up with
the
idea of quarks - Murray Gell-
Mann.
大多数对物理学仅有一时兴趣的人都会告诉你谁提
出了夸克的想法
——
默里·盖尔曼。
Now gather around the same
crowd which knows about Gell-Mann and ask them who
Henry
Kendall, Jerome Friedman and
Richard Taylor are. It
’
s
very likely that you will draw mostly blank
stares.
现在，在认识盖尔曼
的人群中聚集一堂，问他们亨利
·
肯德尔，杰罗姆
·
弗里德曼和理查
德
·
泰勒是谁。你很有可能茫然地看着他们。
~
Yet
“
coming up with the
idea
”
was as far
as Gell-Mann went in 1964 when he and George
Zweig
independently
developed
the
concept.
Without
the
1968
experiments
of
Kendall,
Friedman
and
Taylor
at
the
Stanford
Linear
Accelerator
Center
(SLAC),
quarks
would
have
remained
a
mere
theory,
a
will-o-
wisp
whose
existence
was
confidently
postulated
but
never
proven.
然而，直到
1964
年盖尔
< br>·
曼（
Gell-Mann
）和
乔治
·
茨威格（
George Zwe
ig
）独立提出这个
概念时，他才提出
“
提出这个想法
”
。如果没有
1968
年肯德尔，弗里德曼和泰勒在斯坦福直
线加速器中心（
SLAC
）所进行的的实验，夸克将仅仅是一种
理论，一个未经证实的、缥缈的
大胆假设。
Similar
themes
proliferate
throughout
the
popular
view
of
physics.
Everyone
knows
Paul
Dirac who conjectured
the existence of the positron, but how many know
Carl Anderson and his
collaborator Seth
Neddermeyer who actually found it People similarly
know about Wolfgang Pauli
and Enrico
Fermi stating the requirement for a ghostly
particle called the neutrino in the 30s, but
ask
popular
science
enthusiasts
if
they
are
aware
of
the
dogged
pursuit
of
the
neutrino
by
Raymond
Davis
for
over
30
years
and
you
will
likely
see
knitted
brows.
Finally,
even
today,
a
schoolchild would likely know
Einstein
’
s prediction of the
bending of starlight by the gravitational
field of a star, but Arthur
Eddington
’
s verification of
this fact would be little known.
在整个流行的物理学观点中，相似的主题激增。每个人都知道保罗
·
狄拉克（
Paul Dirac
）
猜出了正电子的存在，
但是有多少人知道卡尔
·
安德森
（
Carl Anderson
）
和他的合作者塞思
·
内
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
上一篇：测绘专业英语词汇及名词解释
下一篇：成人呼吸窘迫综合征ARDS