Notes

  • 要能定义自己的工作，精确表述，要做的事，交叉的领域，信息资源
  • 这本书的定位是分享过程中的表达，应该清晰明确，并成为他人可以引用的模块
  • 关注表达，而不是技术，科学的魅力，来自好奇和探索，而不是论文，学科化肢解了好奇心

安利的书

  • biologist Lewis Thomas, Lives of a Cell and The Medusa and the Snail

  • paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. In his monthly column in Natural History magazine and in books like The Panda’s Thumb

  • scientist-writer Paul Davies, author of The Edge of Infinity, whose latest book announced by the boldness of its title, God and the New Physics

  • Yale Alumni Magazine

  • Vincent Ruggiero, The Art of Thinking

  • Michael Scriven, Reasoning

  • Loren Eiseley, The Immense Journey

  • Stephen Jay Gould, Ever Since Darwin

  • Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. （托马斯·库恩《科学革命的结构》）

  • Jeremy Campbell, Grammatical Man: Information, Entropy, Language, and Life

  • Strunk and White, The Elements of Style(William Strunk Jr. & E. B. White)

  • James Geikie, Mountains, Their Origin, Growth and Decay (1913)

  • Rachel Carson, The Sea Around Us. & Silent Spring（《寂静的春天》）

  • George Nelson, How to See

  • A. Hyatt Mayor, Prints & People, who was curator of prints at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for more than forty years

  • John Szarkowski, Looking at Photographs, curator of the department of photography at the Museum of Modern Art.

  • graphic designer Paul Rand, A Designer’s Art

  • Archie Carr, The Windward Road, inspired the formation of the Caribbean Conservation Corporation

  • Archie Carr, So Excellent a Fishe: A Natural History of Sea Turtles

  • Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle

  • Edwin Way Teale, The Insect World of J. Henri Fabre

  • the French historian Fernand Braudel, The Structures of Everyday Life & The Wheels of Commerce

  • Margaret Mead, Growing Up in New Guinea

  • Clifford Geertz’s essay, Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight.

  • anthropologist Edward T. Hall, The Hidden Dimension

  • Robert Coles, Children of Crisis, a doctor and a child psychiatrist by training but also a fine writer.

  • Alec Wilde, American Popular Song

  • Roger Sessions, Reflections on the Music Life in the United States

第二章 跨学科写作 / Writing Across the Curriculum

另一个要点是，写作的本质在于重写。很少有作家在第一次尝试时就能准确地表达他们想要表达的内容。

经过一生的写作，我仍然要反复修改每一句话，仍然担心我没有捕捉到每一个歧义；我不希望任何人需要读两遍我的句子才能理解它的意思。

通过一次次的改写和重思，将写作活动塑造成最好的形式。

无论我们写什么——备忘录、信件、给临时保姆的便条——我们都会经历这样一个时刻：通过尝试用文字表达，才真正发现自己真正想要说什么。

这正是“跨学科写作”让我最为兴奋的方面。这个想法基于两个原则：学会写作和通过写作学习。

读、写作和推理。这三者加起来就是学习。通过撰写我们试图学习的学科，我们通过推理来理解它的含义。推理是电视一代的孩子们失去的一种技能，他们以著名的短注意力跨度而闻名。写作可以帮助他们重新获得这种技能。

我敦促他们为学生们复印这些范文。我提醒他们，写作不能在真空中传授或学习。我们必须要对学生说，在每一个知识领域：“这就是其他人如何就这个主题写作的。读一读；研究一下；思考一下。你也可以做到。”在很多学科中，学生们甚至不知道有文献存在——比如，数学不仅仅关乎对与错的答案，物理学也不仅仅关乎对与错的实验报告。

第三章 通识教育 / A Liberal Education

我在耶鲁度过的那十年。我在那里担任的两份工作让我接触到了知识界最为自由开放的社群。

我们研究的最终目的并非文本本身，而是人类自远古以来，如何定期聚集在一起表达那些在生存斗争中对他们最有帮助的价值观。如果连明天早上都过不去，我就不可能永生。战略目标诞生于追求它的策略之中。像盐、气味、油、面包和酒、歌唱和种子、舞蹈、欢笑和眼泪、身体和婴儿，甚至思想和语言，这些细枝末节构成了生存的策略性基础，而礼仪学者必须处理的就是这些基础。

但所有这些文章都以它们的出人意料的信息量让我感到愉悦。它们也教会了我一个关于知识整合的教训：单独的学科很少是孤立的。

我还记得当我请他在下午结束时朗读他诗集里的作品，他站了起来。这是对诗歌的致敬；之前的谈话都只是回忆。

（要能定义自己的工作，精确表述，要做的事，交叉的领域，信息资源）

我列出大约十位教授，并给他们写了信。我说我在寻找各自学科中优秀写作的简短范例——大约五百字左右——这些范例应该对高中生来说易于理解。他们自己是否写过这样的段落？（我知道他们写过。）如果没有，他们是否能推荐其他学者写的段落？回复迅速而慷慨。装着复印的赞赏段落的信封开始通过邮件寄来，随附的信件常常引导我认识一些我之前不知道的作家，或者提出我之前未曾考虑过的观点。例如，埃德蒙·S·摩根，我所有历史学教授中最喜爱的一位文体家，写道：

我发现很难选出一段五百字的文字，因为我最喜欢的内容往往依赖于前面铺垫的读者背景，这些背景能让后文所言产生共鸣。事实上，我所说的共鸣正是所有写作中最打动我的特质。而这种共鸣并不仅仅是前面提到过的话，还包括每个人都能与之相关的常识和经验。我给你寄了几段萨缪尔·埃利奥特·莫里森（我认为他是这个世纪最好的历史作家，但未必是最佳历史学家）以及佩里·米勒和乔治·奥托·特里维廉的文字。我不确定这些是否适合你，因为它们的主要优点在于其暗示性（共鸣），而非清晰度。

“I find I am hard put to pick a passage of five hundred words, because the passages I like best usually depend on the preparation of the reader in earlier passages that give resonance to things said later. Indeed the quality I call resonance is what hits me hardest in all writing. And what resounds is not merely things said earlier but common knowledge and experience that everyone can relate to. I’m sending you a few passages from Samuel Eliot Morison (whom I consider the best historical writer, not necessarily the best historian, of this century) and from Perry Miller and George Otto Trevelyan. I’m not sure any of them will be appropriate for you because their principal virtue is their suggestiveness (resonance), not their clarity.”

我并不惊讶地发现，比起包裹里的其他内容，我更喜欢这段：

大英帝国的政府并非为了管理半个地球而设计的。当英国人没有忙着进一步扩张殖民地时，他们倾向于认为约克郡的收费公路问题比在纽约执行航海条例重要得多。殖民地的管理权留给了国王，而国王将其移交给了他的南方部门国务卿（其主要职责是英格兰与南欧的关系）。国务卿则基本将此事交给了贸易与种植园委员会，一个具有纯粹咨询权力的类似商会的机构。贸易委员会告诉国务卿该做什么；国务卿告诉皇家总督；总督告诉殖民者；而殖民者则随心所欲行事。

The government of Great Britain had not been designed to cover half the globe, and when Englishmen were not busy extending their possessions still farther, they were apt to regard the problem of turnpikes in Yorkshire as vastly more important than the enforcement of the Navigation Acts in New York. Administration of the colonies was left to the King, who turned it over to his Secretary of State for the Southern Department (whose principal business was England’s relations with southern Europe). The Secretary left it pretty much to the Board of Trade and Plantations, a sort of Chamber of Commerce with purely advisory powers. The Board of Trade told the Secretary what to do; he told the royal governors; the governors told the colonists; and the colonists did what they pleased.

这种制度，或者说缺乏制度，至少有一个优点：它没有造成伤害，这一点通过母国和殖民地的繁荣景象得到了证明。尽管管理效率低下，大英帝国确实在运行，而且大西洋两岸的智者们相信，其成功与运作的混乱方式密切相关。他们将帝国的繁荣与低效都视为其中自由盛行的结果。自由、低效和繁荣常常并存，而前两者之间的区别并不容易。大英帝国效率低下，但其居民生活富裕，并且自由。

This system, or lack of system, had at least one virtue: it did no harm, a fact evidenced by the rolling prosperity of mother country and colonies alike. The British Empire, however inefficient in its management, was very much a going concern, and wise men on both sides of the Atlantic believed that its success was intimately connected with the bumbling way in which it was run. They saw both the prosperity and the inefficiency of the empire as results of the freedom that prevailed in it. Freedom, inefficiency, and prosperity are not infrequently found together, and it is seldom easy to distinguish between the first two. The British Empire was inefficient, but its inhabitants were prosperous, and they were free.

这段文字在清晰度——以及温暖、人情味和适度的幽默感方面——难以超越。但它无疑也具有共鸣。

“与其他国家相比，美国像海洛因和吗啡这样的阿片类药物的使用量极大，以至于第一次世界大战期间的一些美国科学家将海洛因或吗啡成瘾称为‘美国病’。”可卡因的使用则更为普遍。“大约从 1880 年到 1900 年，”马索写道，“可卡因是一种标准的兴奋剂或补品，我们一些最受欢迎的碳酸饮料中甚至含有可卡因。”

第四章 为学习而写作 / Writing to Learn

他们的描述在细节上有所不同，但在一点上他们都达成了共识：通过增加写作要求，实现了更多学习。

随着学期的进行，我试图让他们使用写作来集中思考具体想法和问题。我告诉他们，我将根据清晰度、常识、逻辑、合理性和精确性来评分他们的论文，而不是根据他们观点的内容。学期末，我给了他们同样的目标和政策作业。这一次，他们的论文清晰明确。他们的问题是思考，而不是写作的技巧。

经济学和管理学固然重要，但它们并非如清晰的推理和写作那样重要；没有它们，世界上所有的经济理论也帮不了你。

不幸的是，写作没有快速或简单的方法可以教会。当我第一次尝试教写作时，我假设大部分工作可以通过在课堂上解释构成好作文的要素来完成。我确信，如果我向学生灌输我关于清晰、简洁和简洁的至高原则，鼓励他们使用主动动词、短词和短句，指出撰写游记、体育报道或访谈中可能遇到的陷阱，他们就会去做我告诉他们的事情。

教育未来的科学家更关注他们工作的影响，以及教育我们其他人更具备科学素养。

在这一切中，写作扮演着什么角色？写作是一项使各个学科的人们能够与事实和想法较量的工具。它与阅读不同，是一种体力活动。写作要求我们操作某种机制——铅笔、钢笔、打字机、文字处理程序——以便将我们的想法写在纸上。它通过语言反复的努力强迫我们去追求那些想法，并组织它们和清晰地呈现它们。它迫使我们不断问自己：“我是否在说我想要说的话？”答案往往是“不”。这是一个有用的信息。

这使得班上的每个人都意识到，一篇文章就是一段思考。到学期结束时，所有学生都说，通过不得不撰写关于它的文章，他们更好地理解了这门学科。

和他的同事们一样，保罗教授在他的学科中发现了许多优秀的写作范例。他最喜欢的一个作业涉及广告中的道德问题。学生们被告知要阅读约翰·肯尼思·加尔布雷斯《富裕社会》中关于“依赖效应”的一章，然后阅读弗里德里希·冯·哈耶克题为《依赖效应的谬误》的反驳文章。（两者都收录在一本名为《商业伦理理论》的选集中）。“我特别指出的是哈耶克论证的优雅，”保罗教授说，“它的优雅在于几何论证的意义上：所有需要存在的东西都在那里，而且文章中没有任何内容不支持这个论证。我还强调，哈耶克的回答是多么简洁。我现在更加关注我们在课堂上讨论的写作质量。”

“我与我的近期毕业生保持联系，”他告诉我，“他们都表示，大学期间他们真正需要的正是写作课程，因为他们现在在诸如城市规划或零售店选址，或是经济开发或农村土地利用规划等机构工作，他们需要撰写大量报告，而这些报告必须清晰明了。”

为了让学生充分尊重母语，道格拉斯教授会让他们阅读他的文学偶像 J.B.杰克森的作品——例如《废墟的必要性》和《民间景观》等著作。“J.B.杰克森的每一篇新书评论，”他说，“都会首先强调其语言的清晰度、文笔的简洁性和风格的优美。我用他作品的方式有两种。我可能会告诉学生：‘让我们看看杰克森是如何谈论美中地区小镇的特性，或是城市街道的网格规划。’之后，我会让他们评论写作风格本身。为什么它会如此有效？”

To give his students due reverence for the mother tongue, Professor Douglas sends them to the books of his literary hero, J. B. Jackson—books such as The Necessity of Ruins and The Vernacular Landscape. “Every review of a new book by J. B. Jackson,” he said, “begins by calling attention to the clarity of his language, the brevity of his prose and the beauty of his style. I use him in two ways. I might tell a student, ‘Let’s see what Jackson has to say about the character of small towns in the Midwest, or about the grid plan of city streets.’ Later I get them to critique the writing style itself. Why is it so effective?”

我试图向他们展示，科学也有其独特的文学。我让他们阅读维克多·魏斯科夫的散文以及像洛伦·埃斯利《漫长的旅程》、斯蒂芬·杰·古尔德《自达尔文以来》和托马斯·库恩《科学革命的结构》这样的著作。”

I tried to show them that science has a fine literature of its own. I got them reading the essays of Victor Weisskopf and books like Loren Eiseley’s The Immense Journey, Stephen Jay Gould’s Ever Since Darwin and Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.”

这两位女士迅速纠正了我的误解。她们说，在医院的诸多护理工作中，高科技已承担了许多任务，并且现在有更多的护士活跃在医疗保健领域，监督着我们最重要的前沿领域。“在今天，护士获得学士学位的价值，”米勒教授说，“在于它帮助他们成为领导者、决策者和倡导者。关怀的角色至关重要，而且护士常常是社区中唯一能够发现当事情出错时家庭正在发生什么的人——例如，当双职工家庭的子女生病时——并能找到解决方案。

第五章 蠢见与信念 / Crotchets and Convictions

站在读者的角度：对于完全不了解这一主题的人，你的句子是否绝对清晰？如果不是，思考如何让它清晰。然后重写它。然后思考：“接下来我需要说什么？它是否能够合乎逻辑地从我刚刚写的内容中引出？它是否也能合乎逻辑地引导到我想要表达的方向？” 如果是，写下这句话。然后问问自己，“它是否完成了我想完成的任务，没有任何歧义？” 如果是，思考：“现在读者需要了解什么？” 继续思考、写作和重写。如果你强迫自己清晰思考，你就能清晰写作。就是这么简单。困难的部分不是写作，而是思考。

写作是一种成长方式，它永远不应缺少乐趣和奇妙的元素。

关于晦涩，最引人入胜的建议可能来自 E.B.怀特，出自斯特伦克和怀特的《写作要素》一书——这是一本每位作家每年都应该读一次的书。

Probably the most engaging advice on obscurity comes from E. B. White, in Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style, a book every writer should read once a year.

“喜剧写作需要大胆、活力和愉快——而其中最重要的是大胆。

然后他说：“读者必须相信作者心情愉悦。”

这句话对我产生了巨大的冲击力，尤其是当他补充说，几乎像是随口一提：“即使他并非如此。”

大胆只是佩雷尔曼所谈及的一部分。他还在谈论勇气。幽默是最危险的写作形式，充满风险；将点亮读者的一天作为职业，是一种持续的英勇行为。他还谈及了能量。能量是创造性工作中的神圣火花。

第六章 地球、海洋和天空 / Earth, Sea and Sky

我所知没有哪本书比蕾切尔·卡森的《我们周围的海洋》更能生动地阐述这些沉没之谜。卡森小姐因其后来的经典之作《寂静的春天》而更为人所知，该书通过揭示像 DDT 这样好心却破坏环境的化学物质对地球造成的隐蔽损害，为 20 世纪 60 年代兴起的环保运动提供了巨大推动力。

第七章 艺术与艺术家 / Art and Artists

好的艺术写作至少应做两件事。它应该教我们如何观看：艺术品、建筑、雕塑、摄影以及我们日常景观中所有其他的视觉元素。同时，它还应该提供我们需要的信息来理解我们所看到的内容。

这是他（George Nelson）的生动书籍《如何观看》中的一段话：

Here’s a passage from his(George Nelson) lively book How to See:

安塞尔·亚当斯在四十年代初至少三次分别拍摄了间歇泉，制作出彼此截然不同的照片。这种差异并非源于刻意的艺术诠释，而是源于亚当斯敏锐感的精确性：他看到的不是模糊笼统的事物，而是以严谨精确的细节。问题（正如塞尚所说）在于实现他的感觉。

Ansel Adams photographed the Old Faithful geyser on at least three separate occasions during the early forties, and produced pictures that are profoundly different from each other. The difference is due not to a willful act of artistic interpretation, but rather to the precision of Adams’s sensibility: He saw what was there not in vague and general terms, but with a rigorous exactitude. The problem (as Cézanne put it) was to realize his sensation.

正如他在《设计师的艺术》中所解释的：

The graphic designer Paul Rand, in his book A Designer’s Art

自然界给斑马添加了条纹。人类给旗帜和天篷、领带和衬衫添加条纹。对于排版师来说，条纹是规则；对于建筑师来说，它们是创造视觉错觉的手段。条纹令人眼花缭乱，有时具有催眠效果，通常令人愉悦。它们是普遍存在的。它们曾装饰过房屋、教堂和清真寺的墙壁。条纹吸引注意力。

Nature has striped the zebra. Man has striped his flags and awnings, ties and shirts. For the typographer, stripes are rules; for the architect they are a means of creating optical illusions. Stripes are dazzling, sometimes hypnotic, usually happy. They are universal. They have adorned the walls of houses, churches and mosques. Stripes attract attention.

IBM 标志上的条纹主要充当吸引注意力的装置。它们将普通的字母从平凡的世界中带出。它们令人难忘。它们暗示着效率和速度。市场上最近涌现的大量条纹标志证明了它们的有效性。

The stripes of the IBM logo serve primarily as an attention-getting device. They take commonplace letters out of the realm of the ordinary. They are memorable. They suggest efficiency and speed. The recent spate of striped logos in the marketplace attests to their effectiveness.

视觉上，叠加在字母组合上的条纹往往将它们联系起来。这对于像 IBM 这样的复杂组合特别有用，其中每个字符逐渐变宽，从而产生一种略显不适、开放式的序列。

Visually, stripes superimposed on a cluster of letters tend to tie them together. This is especially useful for complex groupings such as the letters IBM, in which each character gets progressively wider, thereby creating a somewhat uncomfortable, open-ended sequence.

这样一个主观的过程似乎很难用文字描述，但许多印刷工和设计师已经做到了。其中之一是英国字体设计师比阿特丽斯·沃德：

So subjective a process might seem hard to describe in writing, but many printers and designers have done it. One of them was the British typographer Beatrice Warde:

**我的第一条理论 ** 是，在任何关于物理或文学适宜性的问题之前，首先要考虑该字体本身是否作为罗马字母表的一种版本是可容忍或不可容忍的。如果一个字母歪斜或粗糙；如果字母本身虽然漂亮，但不会自动组合成单词；如果连续第四页开始使眼睛炫目和烦恼，总的来说，如果页面无法在无意识但非常真实的愉悦中阅读，那么这种字体是不可容忍的，而且就是这样。有坏的字体和好的字体，而整个印刷术的科学和艺术始于第一类被排除之后。

My first generalization is that before any question of physical or literary suitability must come the question of whether the face itself is tolerable or intolerable as a version of the Roman alphabet. If a single letter is warped or snub; if the letters, however pretty in themselves, do not combine automatically into words; if the fourth consecutive page begins to dazzle and irk the eye, and in general if the pages cannot be read with subconscious but very genuine pleasure, that type is intolerable, and that is all there is about it. There are bad types and good types, and the whole science and art of typography begins after the first category has been set aside.

第二条理论是，简而言之，这件事是值得做的。设计师应该费心并乐于选择字体，这确实很重要。费心和乐趣不仅仅是为了“艺术本身”，而是为了那些如此微妙地、紧密地与所有人类事物相关的事物，以至于除了“人文学科”之外没有其他短语可以描述它。如果一个字体的“语气”不重要，那么任何区分人与其他动物的事物都不重要。软化责备的闪烁；殉道者的超逻辑和孩子的直觉；一个苔藓碎片可以将整个森林拉回记忆——这些都是证明无形事物中存在现实的证据，而且不仅仅是符号，内涵也是人类适当研究的一部分。

The second generalization is, briefly, that the thing is worth doing. It does genuinely matter that a designer should take trouble and take delight in his choice of typefaces. The trouble and delight are taken not merely “for art’s sake” but for the sake of something so subtly and intimately connected with all that is human that it can be described by no other phrase than “the humanities.” If “the tone of voice” of a typeface does not count, then nothing counts that distinguishes man from the other animals. The twinkle that softens a rebuke; the martyr’s super-logic and the child’s intuition; the fact that a fragment of moss can pull back into the memory a whole forest—these are proofs that there is reality in the imponderable, and that not only notation but connotation is part of the proper study of mankind.

印刷术智慧的最好部分在于对内涵的研究，即形式与内容之间的适应性。热爱思想的人必须热爱词语，这意味着，一旦有机会，他们会非常关注词语所穿的衣服。他们越是喜欢思考，就越会因清晰的观念与晦涩的排版之间的任何差异而感到震惊。他们会变得像仪式主义者一样，像辩证学家一样。他们会使用技术上难以辩护的词语，如“浪漫”、“冰冷”和“轻快”来描述不同的字体。如果他们明智，他们总是承认他们正在处理潜意识过程，仅仅是文学女神的熟练仆人。

The best part of typographic wisdom lies in this study of connotation, the suitability of form to content. People who love ideas must have a love of words, and that means, given a chance, they will take a vivid interest in the clothes which words wear. The more they like to think, the more they will be shocked by any discrepancy between a lucid idea and a murky typesetting. They will become ritualists and dialecticians. They will use such technically indefensible words as “romantic,” “chill” and “jaunty” to describe different type faces. If they are wise, they will always admit that they are dealing with processes of the subconscious mind, mere deft servants of the goddess Literature.

第八章 自然界 / The Natural World

1987 年 5 月 23 日，《纽约时报》刊登了一篇关于阿奇·卡尔的冗长讣告。卡尔是一位动物学家，他用了整整五十五年职业生涯来研究巨海龟。

On May 23, 1987, the New York Times ran a long obituary of Archie Carr, a zoologist who spent his entire fifty-five-year career studying the giant sea turtle.

The Windward Road, inspired the formation of the Caribbean Conservation Corporation, a group that coordinates the research and rescue efforts that Professor Carr set in motion.

其中一本《风中之路》启发了加勒比海保护协会的成立，该组织协调了卡尔教授发起的研究和救援工作。

对他来说，胭脂虫的生命周期——它在加尔各答以北的树枝上纺出树脂茧——与卡尔显然对海龟的生命周期一样浪漫，他投入工作时的热情和对质量的追求使他的业务蓬勃发展。看到他如此享受自己的工作以及做得多么出色，我很早就学会了一个对我此后一直很重要的原则——我们想做的事情我们会做得很好。

To him the life cycle of the lac bug, spinning its resinous cocoon onto the twigs of trees north of Calcutta, was as romantic as the turtle’s cycle obviously was to Archie Carr, and he brought to his work an enthusiasm and a passion for quality that made his business prosper. Seeing how much he enjoyed his work and how good he was at it, I learned at an early age what has been an important principle to me ever since—that what we want to do we will do well.

我想，这个原则肯定适用于阿奇·卡尔，于是我出去找了他的一本书，《如此卓越的鱼类：海龟自然史》。它的书名来源于 1620 年由百慕大议会通过的一项法案，以阻止“一些放荡和鲁莽的人，在他们持续的出海中，随意抓取所有种类的海龟，无论老幼”，从而危及“如此卓越的鱼类”的灭绝。

That principle would surely apply to Archie Carr, I thought, and I went out and got one of his books, So Excellent a Fishe: A Natural History of Sea Turtles. Its title comes from an act that was passed in 1620 by the Bermuda Assembly to stop “sundrye lewd & impvident psons who in their continuall goinges out to sea snatch & catch up indifferentlye all kinds of Tortoyses both yonge and old,” thereby risking the extinction of “so excellent a fishe.”

在卡尔的《如此卓越的鱼类》中，我很快被海龟生命中的两个核心奇迹所吸引。一是它是“世界上壮观动物旅行者之一”，通过科学尚无法解释的导航方法，在阿森松岛和加勒比海各个海滩之间精确地旅行。二是繁殖季节，三百磅重的雌性海龟离开熟悉的海洋安全区，登陆到充满敌意的陆地上产卵。在那里，她既过于笨重又过于专注于产卵，无法进行反抗。

我也意识到，在优秀作家的笔下，科学会带有意想不到的人性维度。

与卡尔不同，他仿佛从天而降出现在这本书中，查尔斯·达尔文是一位我想要陪伴我一同探索的人物。我认为他不是一个优秀作家的可能性很小——那些为知识前沿带来巨大推动力的人，很可能就是那些能够清晰表达自己思想的人。写作是领导力的得力助手；亚伯拉罕·林肯和温斯顿·丘吉尔都借助有力的陈述句而声名远扬。然而，我不能声称我的理论无懈可击；例如，它在巴克明斯特·富勒的晦涩文风面前就遭遇了“船只失事”，而富勒绝非唯一一位思想宏伟却杂乱无章的创新思想家。

Unlike Archie Carr, who dropped into this book out of the blue, Charles Darwin is someone I knew I wanted to have along on the ride. The odds that he wouldn’t be a good writer struck me as small—someone who gives the frontiers of knowledge an immense push is a good bet to be someone who can express his ideas clearly. Writing is the handmaiden of leadership; Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill rode to glory on the back of the strong declarative sentence. I can’t claim, however, that my theory is watertight; it gets shipwrecked, for instance, on the rocky prose of Buckminster Fuller, and Fuller is by no means the only innovative thinker whose thoughts spill out in majestic disarray.

I’m a fan, for instance, of a magazine called Missouri Conservationist, which performs the genial tightrope act of telling the people of Missouri both how to enjoy their state and how to take care of it. Its articles aren’t shrill or punitive; they never say: “Don’t hunt and don’t fish.” What they do say is: “Be informed. Know the facts.”

正如埃德温·韦·蒂尔在其选集《亨利·法布尔的昆虫世界》的序言中所讲述的那样：“他数十年被忽视、数十年勤奋耕耘，最终换来了五年疲惫不堪的声名。法布尔八十四岁时，其鸿篇巨著的最后一卷问世。此后不久，他竟被莫里斯·梅特林克、埃德蒙·罗森丹和罗曼·罗兰等著名文学家所发现。1910 年，塞里尼亚为他举行了庆祝活动。

英文译者亚历山大·特谢拉·德·马托斯说：“我一直认为，易于译成外语是衡量写作优劣的试金石。是那些矫揉造作、费力不讨好的所谓‘原创’风格束缚了译者。法布尔的风格始终直白易懂。”

有一位作家，弗拉基米尔·纳博科夫，在优雅方面与法布尔相媲美。纳博科夫的痴迷始于他在俄国童年时期，只触及了法布尔宇宙的一小部分：蝴蝶和飞蛾。……纳博科夫的精确性在《说，记忆》中达到了最纯粹的精炼，这是他最为风格的回忆录。

《鸟类及其特征》（Birds and Their Attributes）的书，作者为格洛弗·莫里尔·艾伦（Glover Morrill Allen）。这本书出版于 1925 年，但我怀疑如今没有人比艾伦教授当时更了解鸟类——典型的章节有“羽毛”、“鸟类的颜色及其用途”以及“喙、脚、翅膀和骨骼”——或者能以如此清晰和生动的笔触描述它们的习性。

（这本书的定位是分享过程中的表达，应该清晰明确，并成为他人可以引用的模块）

At such times I turn to a book called Birds and Their Attributes, by Glover Morrill Allen. The book was published in 1925, but I doubt if anyone knows more about birds today than Professor Allen knew then—typical chapters are “Feathers,” “Birds’ Colors and Their Uses” and “Bills, Feet, Wings, and Bones”—or can write about their habits with such clarity and vigor.

第九章 数学写作 / Writing Mathematics

但真正让数学引人入胜的，并非正确的答案，而是它从何而来，又将引领我们走向何方。

（关注表达，而不是技术，科学的魅力，来自好奇和探索，而不是论文，学科化肢解了好奇心）

“那么数学到底是什么？”我又问，仍然希望能得到一个定义。

“So what is mathematics?” I asked, still hoping for a definition.

“任何学科不都是人们试图理解世界或宇宙的一种方式吗？”她说。“数学就是其中一种方式，就像文学、哲学或历史一样。数学通过寻找模式和抽象来实现这一点——也就是说，通过考察一个具体案例并由此进行概括。但这不是孩子会用来定义数学的方式。他会说数学就是算术——加、减、乘、除，因为这是我们首先让他们做的事情。我们在这上面花费了太多的时间；如今我们有了能更快更好地完成这项工作的计算器。我认为我们甚至不应该再教长除了；孩子们花这么多时间学习如何做，而且总是出错，以至于他们永远看不到它的意义——为什么要做它。但是有了计算器来处理这些繁重的计算，你可以问一个有趣的问题，比如‘我需要多少布料才能覆盖这把椅子？’”

“What are any of the disciplines but a way in which people try to make sense of the world or the universe?” she said. “Mathematics is one way of doing that, just as literature is, or philosophy, or history. Math does it by looking for patterns and abstracting—that is, by examining a specific case and generalizing from that. But that’s not how a child would define mathematics. He’d say that math is arithmetic—adding and subtracting and multiplying and dividing—because that’s the first thing we make him do. We spend far too much time on it; today we’ve got calculators that can do the job faster and better. I don’t think we should even teach long division anymore; kids spend so much time learning to do it, and getting it wrong, that they never see the point of it—why you would want to do it. But with a calculator doing the drudgery, you can ask an interesting question, like ‘How much fabric do I need to cover this chair?’”

“当你问一个关于布料的问题时，它就变成了算术以外的东西了吗？”我问。“

“When you ask a question about the fabric does it become something beyond arithmetic?” I asked.

“确实如此，因为你开始建立联系。如果不建立这些联系，孩子们总是认为数学在某种程度上‘与我无关——不是我的世界的一部分。’这种情况一直持续到高中，在那里，人们过分强调练习和计算，数字是唯一的语言，唯一的目标是得到正确答案。”

It does, because you begin to make connections. Unless you make those connections, children will always think of mathematics as somehow ‘other than me—not part of my world.’ And that continues right through high school, where there’s a heavy emphasis on exercises and computation, with numbers as the sole language and the right answer as the sole objective.”

我不喜欢数学学习过程中的孤立感：你独自学习，独自考试，与别人没什么互动。我立刻让孩子们分组，让他们互相教学、一起考试。我决心要让他们摆脱教育是个人经历这一观念。

大多数孩子认为老师拥有所有信息，而他们没有。我不喜欢这一点所隐含的含义——即你自己没有能力自己发现问题。

听着这些例子，我发现关于写作和学习的许多信念同样适用于数学：我们写作是为了发现我们知道什么和不知道什么；如果我们像探险一样去探索，不去担心是否走在通往正确目标的“正确”道路上，我们会写得更自如，并且当我们觉得工作有意义时，我们能学到更多。

我做过的一件事是和学生们一起阅读欧几里得，这在哲学中通常不是一部分。结果证明这对学生们非常有用，因为欧几里得的风格——提出命题并从中推导定理——被许多后来的哲学家采纳，比如斯宾诺莎。

有两本书因其受欢迎程度而让我们感到惊讶，它们是法国历史学家费尔南·布罗代尔的《物质文明、经济与资本主义》和《十五至十八世纪的文明与资本主义》，这些书籍详细描绘了 15 至 18 世纪欧洲“普通人”的生活和工作方式以及他们赚钱的方法。

Two that took us by surprise with their popularity were The Structures of Everyday Lifeand The Wheels of Commerce, by the French historian Fernand Braudel, which were intimate accounts of how “ordinary” people lived and worked and made their money in Europe between the fifteenth and the eighteenth centuries.

第十章 男人、女人和孩子 / Man, Woman and Child

因此，我对人类学家的写作十分钦佩。他们研究每一种文化时都保持着严谨的客观性，不受先入为主的偏见影响，这与社会学家不同，社会学家带着关于人们应该如何行为的既定信念进行研究。与大多数社会学家不同，人类学家往往擅长写作；他们鄙视含糊不清的语言和轻易的遁词。

人类，如同动物王国中的其他成员，“首先是、最后也是永远是其生物躯体的囚徒。无论他如何努力，都无法摆脱自己的文化，因为它已渗透到其神经系统的根源，并决定了他如何感知世界。”

第十一章 物理与化学写作 / Writing Physics and Chemistry

将你的学科——无论它是什么——简化为一系列逻辑清晰、思路明确的句子。这样，你不仅能让别人理解，也能让自己明白。你会发现，你对所学科目的了解是否真如你所想的那么透彻。如果并非如此，写作将会揭示你知识或推理中的漏洞。

No book has so put me inside the head and heart of a chemist as The Periodic Table, by Primo Levi, an Italian chemist who survived Auschwitz and wrote three powerful books about that experience.

“我相信写作是提升思维能力的一种有效方式，因为一个人必须对想法进行心理加工才能写出解释。写作也能提升自尊，因为经过心理加工的想法，就属于写作者本人，而不仅仅是老师或教科书作者。”

第十二章 音乐的世界 / Worlds of Music

学会毫无畏惧地使用这些工具。它们并非某种只有英语老师或其他老师才拥有的神秘装置。它们只是将你的想法写在纸上的简单机制。享受发现它们如何工作的过程。对于主动语态的动词能为你做什么，要像对于数学公式、计算机或离心机能做什么一样感到愉悦。那么自尊心自会随之而来。任何时候，当你通过推理理清一个复杂的科学概念，并将其清晰地写给别人看时，你可以感到和诺曼·梅勒一样好——而且你应该感到如此。

Learn to use the tools without fear. They are not some kind of secret apparatus owned by the English teacher or any other teacher. They are simple mechanisms for putting your thoughts on paper. Enjoy finding out how they work. Take as much pleasure in what an active verb will do for you as in what a mathematical formula will do, or a computer, or a centrifuge. The self-esteem will then take care of itself. Any time you reason your way through a complex scientific idea and put it in writing so that it’s clear to somebody else, you can feel as good as Norman Mailer—and you should.

我把这个谜题带到米切尔面前，他说：“那个和弦只有在降 D 调才管用。” 他的耳朵知道每个和弦在每个调、每个八度音区里的声音是什么样的。“这是由震动决定的，”他说，“音符之间的震动方式总是不同的。”他经常谈论震动。当我和他一起分析和弦时，我们就像两位鳞翅目昆虫学家，仔细研究一盒光彩夺目的蝴蝶标本，沉醉于它们无穷的多样性和微妙色彩渐变之中。米切尔也经常谈论压力：手指按在琴键上的压力。我开始注意到，一个和弦可以通过许多方式弹得不对，即便音符是正确的，以及米切尔的和弦总是听起来那么恰到好处。他也谈论姿势——霍洛维茨（Horowitz）的平静姿态让他惊叹不已。最重要的是，他谈论的是感觉。他常常提到某位技术上完美无缺的钢琴家，但“他可以算作没弹过”。情感对他来说是最关键的要素，而音乐是一种全身心的投入。在他的言谈和关切中，我窥见了艺术家与仅仅作为音乐家之间的区别。

歌唱是人类所知的最高贵、最亲密、最完整的表现自我的方式，归根结底，自我表现正是人类不断追寻的伟大事物。随着表现能力的发展，生活中更高的理想也随之发展，那些促成文化的最伟大、最微妙的影响也开始发挥作用。

Song is the noblest, the most intimate, the most complete manner of self-expression known to mankind, and in the last analysis self-expression is the great thing for which mankind is ever searching. As the power to express grows, so the higher ideals of life develop and the greatest and most subtle influences which make for culture come to have full sway.

每个人的生活中总会有那么一个时刻，内在的自我无法再被外部的事物触及，当灵魂渴望那些它独自能够提供的东西之时。此时的歌唱不仅成为忘却物质事物的源泉和慰藉，也成为一种灵感。它会回报那些为其付出的一切努力，并千倍地返还所有成本。

There comes into every life a time when the inner self can no longer be reached by things from without, when the soul craves that which it can supply to itself alone. Song then becomes not only a source of forgetfulness of material things and a solace, but also an inspiration. It repays the possessor for every effort that has been lavished upon it and returns a thousandfold all that it has cost.

在如今这样一个商业时代，我们容易忘记许多真正让生活值得一活的东西。任何有助于培养人们对美好事物之爱的事物，对所有的人都具有无法估量的益处。歌唱旨在激励我们行动，将我们带入一种意识到比“我们哲学中梦想的”更崇高、更神圣事物的存在状态。人类的嗓音被恰当地称为“上帝自己的乐器”。每个人都被托付了这个乐器，正如卡莱尔所指出的，它具有引领我们走向无限边缘并让我们瞬间凝视超越的力量。

In a commercial age like the present we are prone to forget much that really makes life worth living. Anything which develops a love of the beautiful is of incalculable benefit to all. Song is intended to stir us into action and into a condition where we become conscious of the presence of higher, holier things than “are dreamed of in our philosophies.” Rightly has the human voice been called “God’s own instrument.” Entrusted to the care of each human being is this instrument which, as Carlyle pointed out, has within it the power to lead us to the edge of the infinite and to enable us momentarily to gaze beyond.

音调应该聚焦于上颌前牙和上颚（口腔顶部）的后方。举例来说：闭上嘴唇，试着唱字母 M。你会在上颚和前牙区域感到明显的振动。这就是大多数音调应该聚焦的点。对于头声音调，聚焦点会上升，在极高音区，感觉就像把音调置于头部高处。

执行的过程首先在于内在地倾听音乐如何塑造自己；让音乐生长；无论灵感与构思将引领何方，都要跟随它们。一个乐句、一个动机、一个节奏，甚至一个和弦，都可能包含在作曲家的想象中产生运动的能量。它将通过自身的动力或张力引导作曲家，走向其他乐句、其他动机、其他和弦。

The process of execution is first of all that of listening inwardly to the music as it shapes itself; of allowing the music to grow; of following both inspiration and conception wherever they may lead. A phrase, a motif, a rhythm, even a chord, may contain within itself, in the composer’s imagination, the energy which produces movement. It will lead the composer on, through the force of its own momentum or tension, to other phrases, other motifs, other chords.

致谢 / Acknowledgments

作曲家在创作时其“意识”能有多深入？他在思考些什么，又有着怎样的感受？我认为，答案是：创作是一种行为，一种行动，而从心理学角度来说，任何真正的行动都是世界上最简单的事情。难道其主观本质不就是对行动的专注吗？身处高山的攀登者专注于他正在迈出的步伐，专注于这些步伐的实际实现；如果他让自己的意识流连于其潜在的含义，他的脚可能会朝着身旁的深渊方向移动那致命的半英寸。正在创作音乐的音乐家面对的并非这样的悲剧性选择；但他的心理并非不同。他与其说是意识到自己的想法，不如说是被它们所占据。他常常意识不到自己确切的思考过程，直到完成它们；极常见的是，作品完成后，他立刻无法理解它。

How far is the composer “conscious” while he is composing? Of what is he thinking, what are his feelings? The answer, I think, is that composition is a deed, an action, and a genuine action of any kind is, psychologically speaking, the simplest thing in the world. Is not its subjective essence intentness on the deed? The climber in the high mountains is intent on the steps he is taking, on the practical realization of those steps; if he allows his consciousness to dwell even on their implications, his foot may move the fatal half inch too far in the direction of the abyss at his side. The composer working at his music is faced with no such tragic alternatives; but his psychology is not dissimilar. He is not so much conscious of his ideas as possessed by them. Very often he is unaware of his exact processes of thought till he is through with them; extremely often the completed work is incomprehensible to him immediately after it is finished.

为什么会这样？因为他在创作作品时的体验比他后来能从中获得的任何体验都强烈得无法估量；因为最终成品是那次体验的目标，而在任何意义上都不是对它的重复。他无法不费力地重新体验那种体验。然而，他距离作品太近，无法达到必要的程度来将自己抽离，以客观地看待自己的作品并允许其内在的力量对他产生影响。

Why? Because his experience in creating the work is incalculably more intense than any later experience he can have from it; because the finished product is the goal of that experience and not in any sense a repetition of it. He cannot relive the experience without effort which seems quite irrelevant. And yet he is too close to it to detach himself to the extent necessary to see his work objectively and to allow it to exert its inherent power over him.

正因为如此，我一直强烈反对我的某位杰出在世同行提出的定义。他在阐述亚里士多德著名的艺术定义时写道，最高层次的艺术关注的是“der Wiedergabe der inneren Natur”——直译过来就是“内在自然的再现”。相反，我认为艺术是一种功能，是内在自然的一种活动——艺术家的努力在于，运用他的内在自然所赋予他的原始而未经雕琢的材料，赋予它们本身不具备的意义——通过赋予它们艺术形式来超越它们。

For this reason I have always profoundly disagreed with the definition made by one of my most distinguished living colleagues who, elaborating Aristotle’s famous definition of art, wrote that art on the highest level is concerned with “der Wiedergabe der inneren Natur”—literally translated, the reproduction of inner nature. It seems to me, on the contrary, that art is a function, an activity of the inner nature—that the artist’s effort is, using the raw and undisciplined materials with which his inner nature provides him, to endow them with a meaning which they do not of themselves possess—to transcend them by giving them artistic form.

参考资料与注释 / Sources and Notes

“我们作为写作教师所经历的事情，与女性运动非常相似，”赫斯顿教授说。“你可以看看我们已经取得了多远并为我们取得的进步而欢欣鼓舞，也可以看看仍然存在的障“我们作为写作教师所经历的事情，与女性运动非常相似，”赫斯顿教授说。“你可以看看我们已经取得了多远并为我们取得的进步而欢欣鼓舞，也可以看看仍然存在的障碍而感到气馁。

但逻辑早已不再是这场争论中的考虑因素。对于文学机构来说，问题是权力；他们不想放弃对整个英语的控制。是权力；他们不想放弃对整个英语的控制。对于我们来说，问题是生存。我们必须切断心理上的纽带才能成熟。

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