康德（1724-1804）曾经说过：世界上只有两样东西是值得我们深深景仰的，一个是我们头上的灿烂星空，另一个是我们内心的崇高道德法则。这就是康德毕生的追求，因此这句话被刻在他的墓碑上。康德生当现代科学发展的早期，牛顿去世的那年，他才三岁。在那个年代，他便思索纯粹科学发展的规律。或许他的思索能够给我们一点什么启发，所以把它转载到这里。 大哲学家康德的一篇短文：《纯粹科学的第一步》 THE FIRST STEP IN PURE SCIENCE IMMANUEL KANT In the earliest days of which history has given us a record, that is to say with that wonderful people the Greeks, Mathematics had already started to travel along the sure road of a science. It must not be supposed that it was as easy for mathematics to find, or rather to build, this royal road as it was for logic, where reason is concerned with itself alone. On the contrary I believe that with mathematics it long remained a case of blind groping about in search of its true aims and destination. The Egyptians in particular were still in that stage. The transformation was the result of the happy idea of one man who was inspired to try an experiment; and from this point onward the road lay straight ahead, inevitable and endless. The exact history of this intellectual revolution much more important in its results than the discovery of the passage round the Cape of Good Hopehas not been preserved, nor do we know much about its author. But Diogenes Laertius, in naming the supposed discoverer of the way to prove some of the simplest of geometrical theoremstheorems which hardly seem to need any proof to us nowmakes it very clear that the vistas opened up by a new technique of geometrical construction and proof were regarded as of the most vital importance by the mathematicians of that bygone age. A new light must have flashed on the mind of the man (Thales or whatever his name may have been) who first found a way of demonstrating the essential property of an isosceles triangle. For he found that it was not sufficient to meditate on the figure as it lay before his eyes, or to brood over a mental image of it. It was not thus that the property of the triangle could be made clear. He tried an experiment; he made a construction and it was the construction which brought the property of the isosceles triangle wi thin range of his arguments and his previous knowledge of lines and angles. It was this inspired idea which opened up the endless vistas. A much longer period elapsed before Physics entered on the highway of Science when the wise Bacon gave a new direction to physical studies, or ratheras others were already on the right trackimparted fresh vigour to the pursuit of this new direction. Here too, as in the case of mathematics, there is evidence of a rapid intellectual revolution. . . . When Galileo experimented with balls of different known weights on an inclined plane, when Torricelli caused the press ure of the air to sustain a weight which he had calculated beforehand to be equal to that of a definite column of water, or when Stahl, at a later period, converted metal into lime, and lime into metal by the addition and subtraction of certain elements, a light broke upon all natural philosophers. They learned that reason only sees what it is looking for. It must not be content to follow humbly in the leading-strings of nature; it must push on ahead with principles of judgment according to unvarying laws, and it must compel nature to reply to the questions which it puts. For accidental observa tions, made according to no preconceived plan, cannot be united under a universal law. Yet it is this necessary law which reason seeks, and which it must find. Reason deduces the natural law from the observations which suggest and support it, and it is only when experiment is directed by reason that it can serve any useful purpose. Reason, indeed, must approach nature, not in the guise of a pupil who listens to all his master chooses to tell him, but rather in that of a judge, who compels the witnesses to reply to those questions which he himself thinks fit to propose. This is the inspiring idea through which, after groping in the dark for so many centuries, natural science was at length led into the path of solid and continuous progress. How exciting the quest must have been in those early days of Science! The whole of Nature was spread out before the questioning eyes of the Greeks, all asking to be explained. Thales had a multitude of successors: mathematicians, astronomers, geographers, biologists, and medical men, although we give a rather false impression by classify ing them thus. The Greek scientist was not a specialist; he was always seeking for universal explanations which would throw light on our knowledge of the world as a whole. He studied fishes or planets or numbers, not only for themselves, but, still more important, for what they might tell him about the whole of nature and the universe. How did they make their discoveries ? How does Science seek Truth ? The answer, in another extract from Karl Pearson's Grammar of Science, may surprise you, but it is none the less true. It is the artist in the scientist who makes the great discoveries; it is the man of imagination who sees the hidden law behind the mass of facts.
标签: 古希腊
