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夜读偶录--剑桥三哲

2022-03-17 10:24阅读：

http://blog.sina.cn/dpool/blog/u/2326700377

剑桥大学三一学院，菁英荟萃，而怀特海、罗素、维特根斯坦出于其类，拔乎其萃。三人皆天纵之才，师承有来，或自得师。

l 怀特海（Alfred North Whitehead 1861–1947）

怀特海学识淹博，贯通哲学、科学及宗教。1925年初，怀氏赴哈佛大学“罗威尔讲座”（Lowell Lectures）演讲，讲稿经修订、增删后出版，名为《科学与现代世界》（Science & the Modern World），纵论机体论、价值观、上帝观，标志怀氏哲学蟺变。杜威（John Dewey）赞：“自笛卡尔《方法论》以来，探索科学与哲学关系之力作。”

怀氏擅于将哲理融入语境，探讨无止境，其表述缜密、艰深，有时深不可测。

夜读偶录--剑桥三哲

近代科学兴起，情况迥然，有别于宗教改革。后者引发民众叛离，百五十年间，将欧陆浸于血泊。而科学运动发轫，则仅限少数智识精英。

十六世纪，科学之所以有别于欧洲诸多潮流，也因其普适性。现代科学诞生于欧洲，然属于整个世界。近两个世纪，西方范式影响亚洲文明，东方贤哲百思莫解。显然，西方对东方影响最大者，乃科学与科学观念，因为，科学传播可跨越国境与种族。

The Origins of Modern Science

The progress of civilization is not wholly a uniform drift towards better things. It may perhaps wear this aspect, if we map it on a scale which is large enough. But such broad views obscure the details on which rests our whole understanding of the process. New epochs emerge with comparative suddenness, in regard to the scores of thousands of years throughout which complete history extends. Secluded races suddenly take their places in the main stream of events: technological discoveries transform the mechanism of human life: a primitive art quickly flowers into full satisfaction of some aesthetic cravings: great religions in their crusading youth spread through the nations as the peace of Heaven and the sword of the Lord.

The sixteenth century of our era saw the disruption of Western Christianity and the rise of modern science. It was an age of ferment. Nothing was settled, though much was opened -- new worlds and new ideas. In science, Copernicus and Besalius may be chosen as representative figures: they typify the new cosmology and this scientific emphasis on direct observation. Giordano Bruno was the martyr; though the cause for which he suffered was not that of science, but that of free imaginative speculation. His death in the year 1600 ushered in the first century of modern science in the strict sense of the term. In his execution there was an unconscious symbolism: for the subsequent tone of scientific thought has contained distrust of his type of general speculativeness. The Reformation, for all its importance, may be considered as a domestic affair of the European races. Even the Christianity of the East viewed it with profound disengagement. Furthermore, such disruptions are no new phenomena in the history of Christianity or of other religions. When we project this great revolution upon the whole history of the Christian Church, we cannot look upon it as introducing a new principle into human life. For good or for evil, it was a great transformation of religion; but it was not the coming of religion. It did not itself claim to be so. Reformers maintained that they were only restoring what had been forgotten.

It is quite otherwise with the rise of modern science. In every way it contrasts with the contemporary religious movement. The Reformation was a popular uprising, and for a century and a half drenched Europe in blood. The beginnings of the scientific movement were confined to a minority among the intellectual elite. In a generation which saw the Thirty Year's War and remembered Alva in the Netherlands, the worst that happened to men of science was that Galileo suffered an honorable detention and a mild reproof, before dying peacefully in his bed. The way in which the persecution of Galileo has been remembered is a tribute to the quiet commencement of the most intimate change in outlook which the human race had yet encountered. Since a babe was born in a manger, it may be doubted whether so great a thing has happened with so little stir.

The quiet growth of science has practically recolored our mentality so that modes of thought which in former times were exceptional are now broadly spread through the educated world. This new coloring of the ways of thought had been proceeding slowly for many ages in the European peoples. At last it issued in the rapid development of science; and has thereby strengthened itself by its most obvious application. The new mentality is more important even than the new science and the new technology. It has altered the metaphysical presuppositions and the imaginative contents of our minds; so that now the old stimuli provoke a new response. This is exactly illustrated by a sentence from a published letter of William James. When he was finishing his great treatise on the 'Principles of Psychology'. he wrote to his brother Henry James `I have to forge every sentence in the teeth of irreducible and stubborn facts.'

This new tinge to modern minds is a vehement and passionate interest in the relation of general principles to irreducible and stubborn facts. All the world over and at all times there have been practical men, absorbed in `irreducible and stubborn facts': all the world over and at all times there have been men of philosophic temperament who have been absorbed in the weaving of general principle. It is this union of passionate interest in the detailed facts with equal devotion to abstract generalization which forms the novelty in our present society. Previously it had appeared sporadically and as if by chance. This balance of mind has now become part of the tradition which infects cultivated thought. It the salt which keeps life sweet. The main business of universities is to transmit this tradition as a widespread inheritance from generation to generation.

Another contrast which singles out science from among the European movements of the sixteenth century is its universality. Modern science was born in Europe, but its home is the whole world. In the last two centuries there has been a long and confused impact of western modes upon the civilization of Asia. The wise men of the East have been puzzling and puzzling, as to what may be the regulative secret of life which can be passed from West to East without the wanton destruction on their own inheritance which they so rightly prize. More and more it is becoming evident that what the West can most readily give to the East is its science and scientific outlook. This is transferable from country to country, and from race to race, where ever there is a rational society.
夜读偶录--剑桥三哲

《教育之目的》（The Aims of Education）初版于1929年，怀氏认为，大学旨在熔铸智识与热望，少长咸集，创意求知。大学传授讯息，然以极具想象之方式传授。至少大学应为社会发挥此项功能，舍此便枉为大学。

Fortunately, the specialist side of education presents an easier problem than does the provision of a general culture. For this there are many reasons. One is that many of the principles of procedure to be observed are the same in both cases, and it is unnecessary to recapitulate. Another reason is that specialist training takes place—or should take place—at a more advanced stage of the pupil’s course, and thus there is easier material to work upon. But undoubtedly the chief reason is that the specialist study is normally a study of peculiar interest to the student. He is studying it because, for some reason, he wants to know it. This makes all the difference. The general culture is designed to foster an activity of mind; the specialist course utilises this activity. But it does not do to lay too much stress on these neat antitheses. As we have already seen, in the general course foci of special interest will arise; and similarly in the special study, the external connections of the subject drag thought outwards.

Again, there is not one course of study which merely gives general cultures and another which gives special knowledge. The subjects pursued for the sake of a general education are special subjects specially studied; and, on the other hand, one of the ways of encouraging general mental activity is to foster a special devotion. You may not divide the seamless coat of learning. What education has to impart is an intimate sense for the power of ideas, for the beauty of ideas, and for the structure of ideas, together with a particular body of knowledge which has peculiar reference to the life of the being possessing it.

The appreciation of the structure of ideas is that side of a cultured mind which can only grow under the influence of a special study. I mean that eye for the whole chess-board, for the bearing of one set of ideas on another. Nothing but a special study can give any appreciation for the exact formulation of general ideas, for their relations when formulated, for their service in the comprehension of life. A mind so disciplined should be both more abstract and more concrete. It has been trained in the comprehension of abstract thought and in the analysis of facts.

Finally, there should grow the most austere of all mental qualities; I mean the sense for style. It is an aesthetic sense, based on admiration for the direct attainment of a foreseen end, simply and without waste. Style in art, style in literature, style in science, style in logic, style in practical execution have fundamentally the same aesthetic qualities, namely, attainment and restraint. The love of a subject in itself and for itself, where it is not the sleepy pleasure of pacing a mental quarter-deck, is the love of style as manifested in that study.

Here we are brought back to the position from which we started, the utility of education. Style, in its finest sense, is the last acquirement of the educated mind; it is also the most useful. It pervades the whole being. The administrator with a sense for style hate

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