知识与智慧 译文.doc

Knowledge and Wisdom(abridged)译文--伯特兰.罗素 科学是分门别类的知识；智慧是井井有条的生活。 --伊曼纽尔·康德Most people would agree that, although our age far surpasses all previous ages in knowledge, there has been no correlative increase in wisdom. 我们的时代在知识方面远远超过过去所有时代，在智慧方面却没有得到相应的增加，这是大多数人都会同意的看法。But agreement ceases as soon as we attempt to define `wisdom and consider means of promoting it.但一旦我试图定义“智慧”并思考增进它的方法，人们就会有不同意见了。I want to ask first what wisdom is, and then what can be done to teach it.我想问的问题首先是何为智慧，其次是传授智慧的方法。There are, I think, several factors that contribute to wisdom. Of these I should put first a sense of proportion:我想，构成智慧有几种要素，其中须置于首位的是比例感：the capacity to take account of all the important factors in a problem and to attach to each its due weight.将问题的所有重要因素都考虑进去并掂量每个因素应有的分量的能力。This has become more difficult than it used to be owing to the extent and complexity of the specialized knowledge required of various kinds of technicians.鉴于各类技术员所需的专门知识的范围和复杂程度，这种能力变得比过去更难具备。Suppose, for example, that you are engaged in research in scientific medicine. The work is difficult and is likely to absorb the whole of your intellectual energy.比如，假设你从事医科，这份工作本身很难做，可能会耗费你的全部智能。You have not time to consider the effect which your discoveries or inventions may have outside the field of medicine.你没有时间去考虑你的发现或发明可能带来的医学领域以外的影响。You succeed (let us say), as modern medicine has succeeded, in enormously lowering the infant death-rate, not only in Europe and America, but also in Asia and Africa.你成功了（我们假设），正如现代医学所做到的：婴儿死亡率不仅在欧美而且在亚非也大大降低了。This has the entirely unintended result of making the food supply inadequate and lowering the standard of life in the most populous parts of the world.但完全非你所愿的结果产生了：在世界人口最为稠密的地区，食物供应匮乏，生活水平下降。To take an even more spectacular example, which is in everybodys mind at the present time: You study the composition of the atom from a disinterested desire for knowledge, and incidentally place in the hands of powerful lunatics the means of destroying the human race.再举一个甚至更为引人注目的例子，当前人们都在