黑象

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Black elephants

Taken from the June 2015 issue of Physics World

Robert P Crease

几个月前，纽约时报用了个怪词“黑象”（black elephant），这个词是伦敦投资家和环保主义者Adam Sweidan所创。这个词是“黑天鹅”和“房间里的大象”（elephant in the room）两个词缩合出来的。“黑天鹅”指的是某个东西，它使你抛弃你视为当然的理论，比如你可能先入为主地认为“所有的天鹅都是白的”，一只黑天鹅就可以让你放弃这个观念。“房间里的大象”指一个现象，大家都看见了但是大家都不说。
A few months ago the New York Times used the curious term "black elephant", attributing it to the London-based investor and environmentalist Adam Sweidan. The term crosses two already familiar expressions. One is "black swan" – a name for something whose repercussions force you to throw out key theories that you took for granted, such as the premise that "all swans are white". The other term is "elephant in the room" – something whose presence everyone knows but nobody seriously addresses out of fear or embarrassment.

Sweidan 所说的“黑象”指的是环境问题，包括全球变暖、海洋酸化、饮用水污染等。Sweidan 说，要规模化解决这些问题，需要彻底打乱当前的政治活动秩序。于是我们选择忽略这些问题。黑象就是搞乱一切的事物，但是没人想去搞这个事物。
Sweidan's examples of "black elephants" were environmental and included global warming, ocean acidification and pollution of water supplies. To address these issues on the required scale, Sweidan said, would profoundly disrupt current political activity. So we ignore them. A black elephant is therefore something that changes everything, but which no-one wants to deal with.

纯科学里也有黑象。举个例子，美国国家同步辐射光源关闭纪念。这些纪念活动很世俗，甚至显得有点小圈子，从科学共同体的心理和同步辐射光源的工作人员的感情来看，这些纪念活动很自然。但是关于科学的书里面不会提这些事情，科学界的人也说不清这些纪念活动的价值。
I believe black elephants are found in pure science as well. In January, for example, I wrote about shutdown ceremonies for synchrotron radiation sources. I noted that such mundane, even cliquey, events are natural and spring from the special character of the scientific community and the feelings of its participants. Yet you won't find these events mentioned in books on how science works, nor could anybody I spoke to could clearly describe their value.

一位科学家在邮件中说了他对他工作的这个机器的关闭的复杂感情，自豪、感恩、依恋、失落。这说明，这场纪念活动就是一头黑象。科学世界的黑象是科学界里人人熟悉的东西，但是被排除出科学的正式叙述，不毁掉一些事情，就无法纳入到科学叙事里。
I had "captured it well", e-mailed one scientist, mentioning his mixed feelings of pride and gratitude, affection and loss at the closing ceremony for a machine he had worked on. His remark convinced me that, in shutdown ceremonies, I had spotted a black elephant. In science, in other words, a black elephant is a familiar feature that is routinely excluded from formal accounts of how science works, and could not be incorporated without ruining them.

为什么有黑象 Why some elephants are black

科学世界是个蔓生凌杂的地方，那里的居民用各种方式操练他们的手艺，不断建些样板房，给这个世界带来秩序，宣称样板房里就是科学真实的样子，样板房外面的活动都是有瑕疵的。这样，我们就方便给学生教科学，给外行讲科学。
The scientific world is a sprawling and untidy place whose inhabitants practise their craft in myriad ways. Attempts are periodically made to bring order to this world by building model homes in it, so to speak, and declaring that what's inside is what science is really like – all the activities outside being imperfect versions. That way, we can easily teach it and tell outsiders what it's about.

最引人注目的样板房有两座。第一座样板房整洁有序，逻辑严密，争议总能通过新理论和新数据平心静气地解决。得到正确结果的实验就是好实验，否则就是差实验。这个屋子里没有正常人——他们无比正确，循规蹈矩，与屋子外面的人截然不同。这个屋子里的发现都是普世的，反映外面世界的真相。这座房子是传统科学哲学建造的。
Two such homes are particularly attention-grabbing. The first is orderly, its atmosphere logical, and its disputes calmly resolved by proposing theories and taking data. Experiments are good when they get the true result, wrong when they don't. This house does not have normal people inside – the inhabitants are so exacting and rule-abiding that they live and act quite differently from the rest of us. Discoveries made inside this house are universal, reflecting truths about nature outside. This house was built by traditional philosophy of science.

另一座样板房针对第一座样板房而建。它的居民的行为与非科学家一般无二，与非科学家一样，是受社会和心理作用驱动的。得到大家都接受的结果的实验才是好实验。屋子里做出的发现不是普世适用的，而只是局域适用的，就来自屋子里的那点事。对一个结果取得共识是利益交换的结果，就像外交工作。这座屋子是“社会建构主义者”所建，屋子里有真实的人，但没有 真实的自然。
Another house was erected in reaction to the first. Its inhabitants behave exactly as non-scientists do, motivated by the same social and psychological forces. Experiments are good when they get a result everyone accepts. What's found in the room is not universal but local – arising from what's happening in that room. Obtaining consensus about a result is a matter of swapping interests, like the work of diplomats. This home, built by "social constructivists", has real people inside but no real nature.

以上描述都简单化了，对每座样板房都应予以修正，尽管如此，还是可以作为很好的近似。这两座样板房有所不同，但也有共同点，它们都可用于从科学局外人的视角给出科学过程的抽象的、形式化的描述。两座样板房所包含的东西和所忽略的东西有所不同。第一座样板房略去了人的不理性。第二座样板房略去了自然对媾和的抵制和限制。
My characterization is simplified, and each model house has undergone modifications. Still, it's a good first approximation. The model houses might be different, but they have in common that they seek to give an abstract, formalized representation of the scientific process from the perspective of someone outside the territory. They differ in what they include and omit. The first, to oversimplify, gets rid of human beings, who disrupt the rationality inside the house. The second gets rid of nature, which would resist, define and frustrate the negotiations.

每座房子都有一套黑象，科学生活中常见但又不好提及的黑象。在第一座房子里，前面提及的同步辐射光源的关闭纪念活动就是黑象。而在第二座房子里，这些纪念活动却根本不是黑象，可以解读为一场团结起来增强要求政府建设一个新装置的呼声的活动。
Each house has a different set of black elephants, common and easily recognizable features of the scientific life that it would be impolitic to discuss. In the first house, one black elephant is the example I mentioned – shutdown ceremonies at machines that are integral to the lives and work of communities of scientists. In the second house, however, a shutdown ceremony is not a black elephant; such events might be read, for instance, as deliberate attempts to consolidate and reinforce a community in preparation for a political drive to request a new facility.

建房子的代价在最近的弦论是不是科学的争议得到充分体现。弦论没有可检验的预言，不能放进第一座样板房。这件事丢人的不是弦论作为科学的缺陷，而是第一座样板房的缺陷。这应该促使我们审视对建房子的迷思。
The cost of house-building is illustrated by recent silly debates about whether string theory can truly be considered science if it has no testable predictions. String theory doesn't fit into the first model house. But the scandal here is not about the flawed character of string theory as science, but about the flawed architecture of the first house. The scandal should even cause us to examine our fascination for house-building.

评点 The critical point

史蒂文·温伯格在他的新书《解释世界》（To Explain the World）中说：“我们不是通过制定如何做科学的规则来学会做科学，而是在做科学的过程中学会做科学，在我们的方法能成功解释一些事情时我们获得的乐趣激励我们做科学。”
"We learn how to do science," Steven Weinberg writes in his new book , "not by making rules about how to do science, but from the experience of doing science, driven by desire for the pleasure we get when our methods succeed in explaining something."

科学是一种理解世界的方式，已经运作有几百年了，持续不断增长我们的知识，也持续不断走向深远，但是，如温伯格所说，科学不可以简化为几条规则，也不能沦于交换利益。如果你试图描述科学而非做科学，你要清楚你的假设，包括你为什么要描述科学，你想从中发现什么，必要时还要及时修正你的假设。
Science is a way of making sense of the world and has gone on for centuries. It has continually accreted knowledge during that time and is always being extended further, but – as Weinberg says – not in a form that can be reduced to rules or negotiating interests. If you are trying to describe science – rather than just do it – you have to beware of your assumptions, including why you are looking at it and what you are hoping to find; you also have to be ready to revise them when necessary.

所以，描述科学的时候，我们不应该追求建立一个永久的屋子这样的目标，而是建立临时的帐篷，可以随时拆下挪走。这样我们就能欣赏大象，而不是涂黑大象。
So in describing how science works we shouldn't aim at building permanent houses. Instead, we should create temporary tents that let us watch science in action – ready to be taken down and moved. That way we can appreciate the elephants, rather than paint them black.