异类之不一样的成功启示录 第57期:因智商不高被拒

 　　The majority had careers that could only be considered ordinary,

　　大部分人的生活只能说是平庸无奇，

　　and a surprising number ended up with careers that even Terman considered failures.

　　很多人的事业令人惊讶地草草收场，就连特曼都没有精力考虑他们为什么会失败。

　　Nor were there any Noble Prize winners in his exhaustively selected group of geniuses.

　　在他费尽心血挑选的天才当中，没有任何一个人获得诺贝尔奖。

　　His field works actually tested two future Noble laureates as elementary students

　　事实上，他的试验团队曾经对两名小学生进行过智力测试，

　　-William Shockley and Luis Alvarez -and rejected them both.

　　他们是未来的诺贝尔奖获得者——威廉.肖克利和路易斯.阿尔瓦雷茨

　　There IQs weren't high enough.

　　但他们都被拒绝了，因为他们的智商不够高。

　　In a devastating¹ critique, the sociologist² Pitirim Sorokin showed

　　社会学家皮特里姆.索罗金全面批评了特曼的观点，

　　that if Terman had simply put together a randomly³ selected group of children

　　他认为如果特曼只是把具有相同家庭背景的孩子随机挑选出来

　　from the same kind of family backgrounds as the Termites⁴, and dispensed⁵ with IQs altogether,

　　正如挑选“特曼人”那样——并且根据智商进行划分，

　　he would have ended up with a group doing almost as many impressive things as his painstakingly⁶ selected group of geniuses.

　　最后的结果必定像他辛辛苦苦挑选出的团队所做的那件令人印象深刻的事情一样告终。

　　"By no stretch of the imagination or of standard of genius," Sorokin concluded, "is the 'gifted group' as a whole 'gifted.'"

　　“这样做并不能扩展一个人的想象的空间和天赋的潜质，”索罗金认为，“这样是把一个‘天才团体’整合成了一个‘天才’。”

　　By the time Terman came out with his fourth volume of Genetic⁷ Studies of Genius, the word "genius" had all but vanished except for the title.

　　在特曼的《天才基因的研究》一书中，下定论的第四章几乎找不到“天才”的字眼,除了标题之外。

　　"We have seen," Terman concluded, with more than a touch of disappointment,

　　“我们看到，”特曼以一种极端失望的笔调写道，

　　"that intellect and achievement are far from perfectly⁸ correlated."

　　“智力和成就并没有完美地结合在一起。”

　　In other words, what I told you at the beginning of this chapter about the extraordinary intelligence of Christ Langan

　　换而言之，正像我在本章开始的部分告诉你的一样，我们并不能从克里斯.兰根过人的智商

　　is of little use if we want to understand his chances of being a success in the world.

　　那里去真正理解他在世界上取得成功的秘密。

　　Yes, he is a man with one-in-a-million mind and the ability to get through Principia Mathematica at sixteen.

　　是的，他是一个百里难挑一的人，他在16岁的时候就能通读《数学原理》；

　　Yes, his sentences come marching out one after another, polished and crisp like soldiers on a parade ground.

　　是的，他说起话来妙语连珠，一句紧接一句，犹如阅兵式上士兵的步调那样明快完美。

　　But so what, if we want to understand his chances of succeeding in the world, we have to know more about him than that.

　　但这就够了吗？如果我们真想了解他在世上如何发迹，就必须进一步走进他的生活。

　　Chapter four The Trouble with Geniuses Part II

　　第四章 天才的烦恼（第二部分）

1 devastating   

adj.毁灭性的，令人震惊的，强有力的

参考例句：

• It is the most devastating storm in 20 years.这是20年来破坏性最大的风暴。
• Affairs do have a devastating effect on marriages.婚外情确实会对婚姻造成毁灭性的影响。

2 sociologist   

n.研究社会学的人，社会学家

参考例句：

• His mother was a sociologist,researching socialism.他的母亲是个社会学家，研究社会主义。
• Max Weber is a great and outstanding sociologist.马克斯·韦伯是一位伟大的、杰出的社会学家。

3 randomly   

adv.随便地，未加计划地

参考例句：

• Within the hot gas chamber, molecules are moving randomly in all directions. 在灼热的气体燃烧室内，分子在各个方向上作无规运动。 来自辞典例句
• Transformed cells are loosely attached, rounded and randomly oriented. 转化细胞则不大贴壁、圆缩并呈杂乱分布。 来自辞典例句

4 termites   

n.白蚁( termite的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Termites are principally tropical in distribution. 白蚁主要分布在热带地区。 来自辞典例句
• This spray will exterminate the termites. 这种喷剂能消灭白蚁。 来自辞典例句

5 dispensed   

v.分配( dispense的过去式和过去分词 )；施与；配（药）

参考例句：

• Not a single one of these conditions can be dispensed with. 这些条件缺一不可。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• They dispensed new clothes to the children in the orphanage. 他们把新衣服发给孤儿院的小孩们。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

6 painstakingly   

adv. 费力地 苦心地

参考例句：

• Every aspect of the original has been closely studied and painstakingly reconstructed. 原作的每一细节都经过了仔细研究，费尽苦心才得以重现。
• The cause they contrived so painstakingly also ended in failure. 他们惨淡经营的事业也以失败而告终。

7 genetic   

adj.遗传的，遗传学的

参考例句：

• It's very difficult to treat genetic diseases.遗传性疾病治疗起来很困难。
• Each daughter cell can receive a full complement of the genetic information.每个子细胞可以收到遗传信息的一个完全补偿物。

8 perfectly   

adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The witnesses were each perfectly certain of what they said.证人们个个对自己所说的话十分肯定。
• Everything that we're doing is all perfectly above board.我们做的每件事情都是光明正大的。