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Free exchange
Wearied science
New ideas are getting harder to
find
—
for now
自由交流
科学进步乏力
新想法日益难觅
——
至少目前如此
WERE
there far
fewer
undiscovered
ideas
out
there
than in
our
more
primitive
past,
how
would
people
know?
This
is
not
an
idle
question;
decoding
the
mysteries
of
nature,
from
atmospheric
pressure
to
electricity
to
DNA,
allowed people to bend
the natural world to their will, and to grow
richer
in
the
process.
A
dwindling
stock
of
discoverable
insights
would
mean
correspondingly
less
scope
for
progress
in
the
future
—
a
dismal
prospect.
And
some signs suggest that
the well of our imagination has run dry. Though
ever more researchers are digging for
insights, according to new research,
the
flow
of
new
ideas
is
flagging.
But
that
uncovering
new
ideas
is
a
struggle
does
not mean that humanity is near the limits of its
understanding.
假如较之人类更原始的过去，
未被发掘的新想法少了很多，
那么要如何获得它们？
这可不是个
无聊的问题：
正是由于破解了从气压、
电，
到
DNA
等大自然的奥秘，
人们才
得以驾驭自然界，
并在过程中变得富有。
如果可以探求的真知灼
见越来越
少，
那么未来进步的空间也将相应减少，
这样的前景令人沮丧。
而且有迹象表明
我们的想象力
已经枯竭。
新研究显示，
尽管挖掘新知的研究人员越来越多，<
/p>
新想
法的涌现却愈见乏力。
但是，
获得新发现越来越难，
并不意味着人类已经接近其
知性的极限。
The
development
of
new
ideas
—
meaning
scientific
truths
or
clever
inventions
—
allows
economies to grow richer year after year. Adding
more
workers or machinery to an economy
boosts GDP, but only for a while.
Applying
ever
more
men
with
hoes
to
the
cultivation
of
a
field
will
generate
diminishing
returns
in
terms
of
crop
yields,
for
instance;
wringing
more
from
the
soil
eventually
requires
the
use
of
better
seed-stock
or
fertiliser.
Unless
humanity finds new
ways to do more with the same amount of labour and
capital, growth in incomes peters out
to nothing.
新想法
（即科学真理或巧妙的发明）
的发展让经济体日渐富裕。
在一个经济体中
增加更多的工人或机械可以提高
GDP
，但这种增长只能
持续一段时间。例如，
不断让更多人拿着锄头去耕作，
农作物收
成的收益会递减；
要从土地得到更多回
报，
最终还是得使用更好的种苗或肥料。
如果人类不能找到新方法来利用同等数
量的劳动力和资本实现更多，那么收入增长就会逐渐减少至零。
Dwindling growth in incomes is not a
bad description of what has happened
in
much
of
the
industrialised
world
in
recent
decades.
Meagre
rises,
in
turn,
lead some to conclude that there are
simply not many breakthroughs left
to
be
uncovered,
of
the
sort
that
lifted
living
standards
during
the
Industrial
Revolution.
That,
for
instance,
is
the
view
of
Robert
Gordon,
an
economist
at
Northwestern
University,
whose
bleak
book,“The
Rise
and
Fall
of
American Growth”, reckons that the era
of economic revolution is
behind
us.
收入增幅逐渐萎缩这一说法还算贴切地描述了大部分工
业化国家近几十年来的
现实情况。增幅之微小又让一些人得出结论：已经不再有多少类似
工业革命
期
间提高了人类生活水平的
那种突破可供人类发掘了。
美国西北大学的经济学家罗
伯特
?
戈登
（
Robe
rt
Gordon)
就持此观点，
他
的
《美国经济增长的兴衰》
（
The
Rise
and Fall of American
Growth)
—
书笔调阴郁，认为经济革命的时代已一去不
复返。
Is it? A
recent paper by Nicholas Bloom, Charles Jones and
Michael Webb
of
Stanford
University,
and
John
Van
Reenen
of
the
Massachusetts
Institute
of
Technology,
provides
relevant
evidence.
Though
striking
an
agnostic
position
as
to
whether
humanity
has
used
up
all
its
eureka
moments,
they
nonetheless
conclude
that
new
ideas
are
getting
more
expensive
to
find.
The
authors
consider
four
different
case
studies,
within
which
they
compare
research
“inputs”
(such
as
the
money
spent
on
researchers
and
lab
equipment) and outputs. The number of
transistors that can be squeezed
onto a
microchip has doubled with reassuring regularity
for half a century,
every two years or
so
—a phenomenon
known as
Moore’s Law(after Gordon
Moore, a
founder of Intel). Yet this success has been
achieved by pouring
more
and
more
resources
into
the
effort
over
time.
The
research
productivity
of
each
scientist
participating
in
the
battle
to
cram
in
transistors has correspondingly
tumbled.
果真如此吗？斯坦福大学的尼古拉斯
?
布鲁姆
（
Nic
holasBloom)
、
查尔斯
?
琼斯
（
CharlesJones)<
/p>
和迈克尔
?
韦伯
(MichaelWebb)
以及麻省理工学院的约翰
?
范
?
里宁（
John
VanReenen)
最近在共同发表的一篇论文中给出了相关证据。尽管
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