2022年经济学人 科学世家赫胥黎(1)(在线收听

Culture

文化板块

Book review: Scientific dynasties

书评:科学世家

Circles of life

人生的轮回

The Huxleys. By Alison Bashford.

《赫胥黎》艾莉森·巴什福德著

In 1958 Julian Huxley fell in love with a gorilla.

1958年,朱利安·赫胥黎爱上了一只大猩猩。

Then in his early 70s, he had long been a household name in Britain.

在他70岁出头的时候,他早就是英国家喻户晓的人物了。

As Alison Bashford describes in her new double biography, Julian had inherited the role of evolution’s frontman from his grandfather, Thomas Henry Huxley, a Victorian scientist writer.

正如艾莉森·巴什福德在她的新双重传记中所描述的那样,朱利安从他的祖父——维多利亚时代的科学家作家托马斯·亨利·赫胥黎那里,继承了进化论代表的角色。

Yet on meeting Guy the Gorilla at London Zoo, Julian found himself undone.

然而,当朱利安在伦敦动物园遇到大猩猩盖伊时,他发现自己完蛋了。

“Magnificent in his reserve and silent sense,” he wrote of their first encounter, “he gives you a look of sombre dignity that makes you feel in some real sense his inferior.”

“他太沉默寡言了,”他这样描述他们的第一次相遇,“他看过来的眼神中有着阴郁的庄严,让你在某种真正意义上感觉到了他的自卑。”

This fellow-feeling for animals, Ms Bashford notes, was a reversion to Huxley type.

巴什福德指出,这种对动物的同情心,是隔代遗传了老赫胥黎。

Thomas had started on the road to agnosticism—a term he coined—in 1860, after his son died in childhood and a tone-deaf curate presiding over the funeral quoted Paul’s epistles: “If the dead rise not again, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”

托马斯在1860年开始走上不可知论(他自创的术语)的道路,当时他的儿子在孩提时代就已经去世了,主持葬礼的一位音盲牧师引用了保罗的书信:“若死人不复活,我们就吃吃喝喝吧,因为明天就要死了。”

Ridiculous, Thomas thought: as a zoologist who had observed primates’ treatment of the dead, he doubted that they believed in resurrection.

托马斯认为这很荒谬:作为一名观察过灵长类动物对待死者方式的动物学家,他怀疑它们是否相信复活这一说。

Nor were they inclined to gluttony.

它们也不喜欢暴饮暴食。

Why should people be any different?

那人类又为什么会有所不同呢?

The sea-tide that would pull him away from religion and towards secular science was tugging at his heels.

此时,那股后来把他从宗教拉向世俗科学的浪潮正紧随其后。

It would sweep him to notoriety as “Darwin’s Bulldog”, arch-debunker of “natural theology” and champion of the descent of man.

它使他声名狼藉,成为了“达尔文的斗牛犬”、“自然神学”的主要批判者和人类起源论的捍卫者。

The same currents bore his grandson from an abortive academic career to national and eventually global fame as a broadcaster and popular-science writer.

而同样的潮流却把他的孙子从失败的学术生涯中拯救了出来,使其成为了一名在全国乃至全球享有盛誉的广播员和科普作家。

“A man now cannot be a universal expert,” a colleague told the young Julian, as a warning against imitating his illustrious grandfather.

一位同事对年轻的朱利安说:“现在的人不可能成为全能专家”,以此警告他不要效仿他杰出的祖父。

The younger Huxley took that as a challenge.

小赫胥黎把这当成了一个挑战。

Appropriately for acolytes of Darwinism, Thomas and Julian shared what may have been heritable traits: scientific genius, an appetite for culture (both were keen poets), and a tragic tint of mental instability.

作为达尔文主义的追随者,托马斯和朱利安有着共同的特征,这些特征或许是可以遗传的:科学天赋,对文化的渴望(两人都是狂热的诗人),以及精神不稳定的悲剧色彩。

Thomas was wracked by depression.

托马斯深受抑郁症的折磨。

Julian’s tempestuous ego troubled his marriage and tried his friends; his brother committed suicide.

朱利安狂暴的自我让他的婚姻出现问题,也使他的朋友忍无可忍;他的兄弟还自杀了。

  原文地址:http://www.tingroom.com/lesson/jjxrhj/2022jjxr/551511.html