[08.09.28泰晤士报]温切斯特所著《李约瑟和中国的伟大秘密》

妩人少将

【08.09.28泰晤士报】温切斯特所著《李约瑟和中国的伟大秘密》
【原文标题】Bomb, Book & Compass: Joseph Needham and the Great Secrets of China by Simon Winchester - The Sunday Times review
【原文标题】炸弹，书籍及指南针：西蒙温切斯特所著《李约瑟和中国的伟大秘密》--泰晤士报星期日评论 ------一个将中国介绍给西方的怪人李约瑟的迷人形象
【登载媒体】英国泰晤士报
【原文地址链接】http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_reviews/article4833823.ece
【译者】妩人少将   个人原创翻译
【声明】本翻译仅供Anti-CNN使用，谢绝转载
【英文原文】

From The Sunday Times
September 28, 2008

                    Bomb, Book & Compass: Joseph Needham and the Great Secrets of China by Simon Winchester -                                                                     The Sunday Times review
    An intriguing portrait of Joseph Needham, the eccentric who introduced China to the West Kevin Jackson
In some ways, Joseph Needham (1900-95) lived up quite charmingly to old myths about absent-minded professors: staggeringly learned, but often shabby, covered in egg stains and hopelessly abstracted from quotidian realities. He attracted all manner of academic tall tales, the oddest of which usually turned out to be true. Take the time when a Russian scientist dropped by for tea in Needham’s Cambridge rooms, and asked, in passing, if the Cantabrigian sage happened to know who had translated one of his own works into English. Needham mused a while, thinking that the title sounded familiar; rummaged in his stacked bookshelves; then pulled out the volume in question and glanced through it. Ah yes, he muttered, no wonder it rang a bell: he himself had been the anonymous translator, back in his undergraduate days. He modestly conceded that he was no longer entirely fluent in Russian. His German, Greek, French and Italian, however, were still impeccable.

     As, more importantly, was his Chinese. Though he was well into middle age before he so much as glanced at an ideogram — the first Mandarin word he learnt meant “cigarette” — Needham eventually became the mastermind behind and principal author of a multi-volume work, still in progress, which has been called “perhaps the greatest single act of historical synthesis and intercultural communication ever attempted by a single man”. The work in question is Science and Civilisation in China; the first part appeared in 1954 and 23 further volumes have been published since then. It is a peerless masterpiece. Compared to Needham, Gibbon was a short-winded, unambitious idler.

      So it is pleasing to recall that, unlike some prophets, Needham was properly honoured in his own country. (China also treated him with great respect. He was known there by several Mandarin names, most commonly Li You-Se, which literally means “Arrangement-Zither Plum”, but sounds suitably dignified.) Early reviewers were awed and thrilled, and fell over themselves trying to find adequate superlatives. By the time of his death in the mid-1990s, Needham was a Fellow of the Royal Society, a Fellow of the British Academy, and a Companion of Honour. As was noted at the time, you can count people with that trio of laurels on one finger of one hand. His obituaries said that he had the most copious learning of any European thinker since Erasmus; another even suggested that he belonged in the company of Aristotle. Not bad going for a doctor’s son from Clapham.

     The American title of Simon Winchester’s admirably readable biography is The Man Who Loved China. This probably sounded a bit touchy-feely for the land of the Stiff Upper Lip, but it is a much clearer indication of the book’s contents than Bomb, Book & Compass, which falsely implies lots of Boy’s Own stuff about gadgets. The British subtitle, Joseph Needham and the Great Secrets of China, is similarly catchpenny. Needham was not in the business of uncovering things that had been deliberately hidden, but of reclaiming things that had been neglected: they were “secrets” only in the sense that, say, French irregular verbs are a secret to daydreaming schoolchildren. Almost by accident at first, and then with mounting wonder, Needham recognised and gave substance to a truth that the West had been too arrogant to investigate and China too arrogant to advertise: for hundreds of years, the Middle Kingdom had led the world in both science and technology.

    Thanks in large part to an extended diplomatic mission to China during the second world war, Needham was able to find incontrovertible evidence of achievement after achievement. The printing press: 7th-century AD (sorry, Herr Gutenberg). The magnetic needle compass: AD1088. Gunpowder: 12th-century AD. The Chinese also thrashed the West in developing everything from the Zoetrope to perfumed lavatory paper. An astonishing story; and still more astonishing is that it all seems to have come to a thunderous halt in the 15th century, when Europe crept up from behind and then swiftly overtook the East. Why is this? There are no easy answers, but the question itself is now called the Needham question.

     The earliest Times Literary Supplement review of Needham’s magnum opus stated that “the important thing about this work . . . is that it is very exciting”. This is also true of Winchester’s biography, which supplies the human side of the genius in generous detail: his keen eye for the ladies, his trencherman’s appetite, his scruffiness, his chain-smoking (he learnt that fateful Mandarin word while enjoying a post-coital gasper with his Chinese mistress), his enthusiasm for Morris dancing — he helped pioneer the early 20th-century revival of the curious hobby — and the political naivety that led him to support Mao long after the Great Helmsman’s fiendishness was apparent to much smaller minds. This low point in his career may also be seen as a testimony to his profound affection for China and his still deeper faith in the integrity of all scientists: when his eastern colleagues told him that the Americans had used biological weapons in Korea, he simply could not credit that they might have been forced to lie.

       But while Winchester’s breezy narrative abounds in human detail, it tends to want depth. Although a notable improvement on its main precursor, a terse Unesco publication by Maurice Goldsmith, it is still too short to be more than an entertaining primer. Winchester whizzes through the first 37 years of Needham’s life (the time of his triumphs in embryology) in about as many pages, and leaves some facets of his complex personality (his enduring Christian faith, for one) largely unexplored. The definitive biography — and he surely deserves one — will probably have to be written by a multi-disciplinary, multinational team of western and Chinese scientists and historians. Meanwhile, as China grows ever more powerful, Needham’s monumental attempt at bridge-building will become more invaluable by the year.

星期日泰晤士报
2008年9月28

                    炸弹，图书及指南针：西蒙温切斯特所著《李约瑟和中国的伟大秘密》-泰晤士报星期日评论
                                                一个将中国介绍给西方的怪人李约瑟的迷人形象
       作者Kevin Jackson

       在某些方面，李约瑟先生（1900至95年）的生活可以说是相当的愉悦，并不如那些用来描述心不在焉的教授们的荒诞说法一样：摇头晃脑地研究学习，但是往往衣衫褴褛，身上遍是蛋渍并常常沉迷出神于显而易见的事实。李约瑟吸引了各种形式学术的荒诞故事，但是那些其中最古老的通常被证明是正确的。曾经有一次一个俄罗斯科学家在李约瑟先生位于剑桥的住宅里喝茶聊天的时候顺手问他，他这个剑桥的学术大家是否有可能知道有人将他的一份工作成果翻译成英文。李约瑟沉思了一会儿，认为对方所说的书名十分的耳熟;于是李约瑟开始在自己汗牛充栋的书架里翻箱倒柜，并且取出那些有可能是的书籍匆匆扫上一眼。啊，他自言自语地说，难怪：他本人早在上大学的时候就是个匿名的翻译。他虚心地承认他的俄语已经不是那么的流利了。但是他的德语、希腊语、法语和意大利语仍然是无可挑剔的。

       至于更重要有影响的则是他那惊人的汉语。虽然已快人到中年的时候他对这种象形文字还是一窍不通-他所学会的第一个普通话单词是“香烟” -但是李约瑟最终成为目前为止仍在进行之中的一项卷帙浩瀚研究工作的幕后策划者和主要作者，这项研究被称为“也许是独自一人所尝试单一的最伟大的历史综述和不同文化交流的行动” 。研究的内容是中国的科学和文明史，首部研究成果于1954年出版，并且自那以后又陆续出版了23卷。这是一部举世无双的杰作。与李约瑟相比长臂猿都简直就可以说是游手好闲和懒惰。

       所以回忆起李约瑟的种种是个愉快的过程，这点不像一些所谓的预言家，李约瑟先生在自己的国家里理所当然的赢得了尊敬和荣誉。（中国也对他高度尊重。在那里他的几个中文名广为人知，最常见中文名叫做李约瑟，其字面上的意思是“安排、琴瑟和李子” ，但听起来却有着非常适宜的威严和品味。 ）早期的那些评论家们面对他的时候充满敬畏和激动，通常总是窘迫地试图寻找能足够表达李约瑟的最高形容词。到于1990年代中期逝世的时候截止，李约瑟先生的头衔有皇家学院院士、英国科学院院士和荣誉同伴者Companion of Honour 爵位（1992年,英国女王授予他国家的最高荣誉——荣誉同伴者Companion of Honour勋衔,这是比爵士更为崇高的勋号）。正如有人指出的那样，在当时能够获得三重桂冠的人用一只手就可以数出来。他的讣告上说他是自伊拉兹马斯以后整个欧洲学识最为广博的思想家;另一说法甚至认为他是亚里士多德式伟人。而他原来却只是一个来自伦敦Clapham的医生的儿子。

       西蒙温切斯特先生所著的通俗易读的李约瑟传记令人钦佩，它在美国的书名叫做《这个热爱中国的男人》。这个书名对保守的绅士之国来说可能听起来有点棘手，但它更清楚地表明了这本书的内容远远超过了被错误认为只是小孩子小玩意的火药、造纸术及指南针。这本书的英国名称是《李约瑟和中国的伟大秘密》，价格同样是极低的。李约瑟没有把发现的那些被故意隐藏的东西商业化，而是要求归还那些被忽视的东西：他们是“神秘”的，不仅仅是法文的不规则动词对一个做白日梦的学童来说是神秘的那种意义。这种神秘起先几乎就是偶然的，然后越来越感到惊奇并想要了解，李约瑟承认并证明了一个真相，西方国家的傲慢导致了这个真相调查的无功，而中国的傲慢导致了这个真相宣传的失败：数百年来，中国这个中央王国一直在科学和技术方面领先于整个世界。

       这在很大程度要归功于在第二次世界大战期间长时期派往中国的外交使团，使得李约瑟先生能够找到关于这些杰作和成就无可辩驳的证据。印刷机：公元7世纪（抱歉的，不是古登堡—德国活版印刷发明人） 。磁罗盘针： 公元1088 。有烟火药：公元12世纪。中国在从西洋镜到香味卫生纸的任何发明的发展上都胜过了西方。这是多么惊人的事实，还有更令人惊讶的是，这一切似乎都在15世纪突然雷鸣般的停滞了，这一时期欧洲奋力追赶，然后迅速超越了东方。这是为什么？这里没有现成的答案，但这个问题本身就是现在所谓的李约瑟难题。

       最早的泰晤士报文学增刊评论李约瑟的巨著作品时指出，“这项工作最为重要的是它本身那令人激动和兴奋的魅力”。这同样也适用于温彻斯特所著的传记，它慷慨的细节补充了天才（李约瑟）人性的一面：他对女人狂热的眼睛，他巨大的胃口，他的后颈 ，他无节制的吞云吐雾，他对莫里斯舞（他是20世纪早期对这业余舞蹈复兴做出贡献的先驱者）的热情，以及他对政治的天真导致他在伟大舵手毛泽东没有理智的残忍开始显现后依然支持他。他的事业生涯中的这一缺点也可能被看作是证明了他对中国深厚的感情和对所有科学家诚实的更深的信心：当他东方的同事告诉他美国人在朝鲜使用了生物武器的时候，他完全不可能相信他们（指东方的同事）或许是在被迫撒谎。

       但是温彻斯特的轻松愉快的叙述富于人性化，它往往要更加的深入。虽然相对于它的主要前者，一个由联合国教科文组织出版莫里斯戈德史密斯所著的简短书籍有显著改善，但该传记仍然太短，只能算是一本有趣的初级读本。温彻斯特在在大约一样多的页面上快速略过李约瑟生命的头37年（他在胚胎学上获得成功的时期），并保留下了他未经探索的复杂性格（其中之一如他终身信仰基督教）的一些方面。而未来的权威传记--他也应该能够称得上是--将可能会由一个西方和中国的多学科、多国的科学家和历史学家团队所编著。与此同时现在中国变得越来越强大，而李约瑟先生构建桥梁的重大尝试随着时间将变得愈加宝贵。
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李约瑟先生
附：李约瑟个人简介


　　李约瑟（Dr.Joseph Needham，1900-1995）,英国人，剑桥大学李约瑟研究所名誉所长，长期致力于中国科技史研究。撰著《中国科学技术史》。 为中国培养了一批优秀科技史学家。 1994年被选为中科院首批外籍院士。


　　李约瑟博士是英国著名科学家、英国皇家学会会员(FRS)、英国学术院院士（FBA)、中国科技史大师及中国人民的老朋友，当代杰出的人文主义者。他早年以生物化学研究而著称，30—40年代出版了《化学胚胎学》（三卷本）及《生物化学与形态发生》，在国际生化界享有盛誉。1937年，在鲁桂珍等三名中国留学生的影响下，皈依于中国古代文明，转而研究中国古代科学、技术与医学，从此一发而不可收。1942年秋，受英国皇家学会之命，前来中国援助战时科学与教育机构，在陪都重庆建立中英科学合作馆，结识大批的中国科学家与学者，并结下深厚的友谊。在华的四年，李约瑟广泛考察和研究中国历代的文化遗迹与典籍，为他日后撰写《中国科学技术史》作了准备。1946年春，李约瑟离任，赴巴黎任联合国教科文组织自然科学部主任。两年之后，返回剑桥，先后在中国助手王铃博士和鲁桂珍博士的协助下，开始编写系列巨著《中国科学技术史》。


　　中华人民共和国成立后，李约瑟亲自发起并分别就任英中友好协会会长、英中了解协会会长，先后八次来华考察旅行，大规模地搜集中国科技史资料，实地了解新中国的政治、经济、科学和文化的发展情况。1954年，李约瑟出版了《中国科学技术史》第一卷，轰动西方汉学界。他在这部计有三十四分册的系列巨著中，以浩瀚的史料、确凿的证据向世界表明：“中国文明在科学技术史上曾起过从来没有被认识到的巨大作用”，“在现代科学技术登场前十多个世纪，中国在科技和知识方面的积累远胜于西方”。李约瑟一生著作等身，被誉为“20世纪的伟大学者”、“百科全书式的人物”。

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[ 本帖最后由 妩人少将 于 2008-9-29 23:40 编辑 ]