life in luxury？ Due to the shady character of most of their patrons, the Zeritskys kept all records by a system of numbers. Name never appeared on the books, and anonymity was guaranteed. 大学生，还有那些中学生，应该尽早地，也许从一开始，就得去了解目前科学家正在争论不休的一些重大问题。这类重大争论可以激起学生们的兴趣，如果弄得好的话，甚至可以吸引他们全部的注意力。生活中绝大多数事都比不上训练Law enforcement agents, looking for fugitives from 有素，经验丰富的论敌间的激烈辩论引人入胜。不管怎样，对于当代那些主要争论，年轻学生们justice, found no way to break down this system, nor any law 却不很了解。关于达尔文主义者和他们论敌间所which they could interpret as making it illegal to 展开的争论，年轻的学生们也许被老师教过一点。quick-freeze. Perhaps the truth is that they did not search 但是其他方面正在进行相仿的争论。其中许多已too diligently for a law that could be made to apply. As long as the Zeritskys kept things quiet and did not advertise or 触及到有关我们自然界理解的深奥问题，实际上仍然在继续着并反映了科学进程中的本质特征。这一切，学生们并不了解。我担忧的是，理科老attract public attention, they could safely continue their 师自己不情愿谈论这事情，因为他们相信学生们bizarre business. City officials of Los Angeles, and particularly members 对这些争论的理解只能建立在领会掌握了“基本知识”的基础上。我很想看到与这方面相关的一些实验，心目中已有不少当代学术争鸣的例子。of the police force, enjoyed a period of unparalleled 即使对这些主题没有深刻，详尽地了解，人们也prosperity. Lawyers and other experts who thought they were 容易理解争论的大意。 这儿有个例子是有关动物意识问题的。有一on the track of legal means by which to liquidate the Zeritsky 派生态学家，他们专门从事动物行为的研究，他empire found themselves suddenly able to buy a ranch or a yacht 们断言道，人类是唯一拥有意识的，在能够仔细or both, and retire forever from the arduous task of earning 考虑事情方面，不同于其他生物，充分利用过去a living. 的经验，大胆有根据地推测未来。而其他“低级”动物（黑猩猩，鲸鱼和海豚可能要排除在外），是Even with a goodly part of the population of Los Angeles 不能用大脑做出类似事情的。它们大脑只能按一as permanent pensioners, the Zeritsky fortune grew to 定程序作出，自动的或有条件的反应。对于生活incredible proportions. By the time the Zeritsky Brothers died and left the business to their sons, it was a gold mine, and an inexhaustible one at that. 环境中的突发性事件，但他们认为人的心理活动可以通过这种自动的或条件化的反应得以解释。尽管行为心理学家们不太喜欢“心理的”一词，另一派生态学家，则显得更为宽容大度。一般动Next to criminals, the majority of people who applied for 物完全能够真正地思维并且正在进行大量的思维。他们认为没有理由必须去怀疑这一事实。与quick-freezing seem to have been husbands or wives caught in 人类的思维比较起来，动物思维稀疏得多，这也insupportable marital situations. Their experiences were 是动物缺乏语言，缺乏比喻去推动思维进程。但subsequently written up in the confession magazines. It was 无论如何它们是在思维。 usually the husband who fled to Los Angeles and incarcerated 争论中，哪一方的事实比另一方的更强有力，更有说服力，这不是争论的意义所在，而是刚好himself for an appropriate number of years, at the end of which 相反。两方想展开真正的长期的争论，但却都没time his unamiable spouse would have died or made other arrangements. If we can believe the magazines, this scheme worked out very well in most cases. 有充分的事实来支持自己的观点。动物意识问题还处于未被解决的状态。 人们开始仔细考虑整个生物圈时，另一个可争论的问题便出现了。生物圈也就是地球上所有The sins of the fathers may be visited on the sons, but 连接在一起的生命。它是如何能保持这样稳定、和谐，象一个硕大无比正发育着的胚胎一样的呢how often we see repeated the old familiar pattern of the sons 只是由于一个偶然的事件决定其出现的吗洛夫洛destroying the lifework of the fathers! The Zeritsky Brothers 克和马克利斯就这一问题，提出了盖亚假说。用were fanatically meticulous. They supervised every detail of 简短的话来说，该假说认为地球本身就是一种生their operations, and kept their records with an elaborate system of checks and doublechecks. They were shrewd enough 命形式。“这一囊括了地球生物圈、大气层、海洋和土壤的复杂实体，整个构成了一个为地球生命寻求最佳物理和化学环境的反馈或控制系统。地球表面的物理和化学条件，to realize that complete dependability was essential to their 拉夫洛克还假定了，business. A satisfied Zeritsky client was a silent client. One dissatisfied client would be enough to blow the business apart. “越来越适宜的大气层由生命本身的存在已经创造出来并且现在仍然在积极地创造着。” 这述观点正开始激起风暴，已有一些迹象表明了这一点。我认为这一观点如果流行的话，生The sons, in their greed, over-expanded to the point where 物学界将很快地分裂成怒气十足的两派：一派认为进化了的生物圈是按计划有目的地进行的结they could not, even among the four of them, personally 果。另一派谴责这类异端邪说。对于这场争论，supervise each and every detail. A fatal mistake was bound 这认为学生们应尽可能多去了解。 to occur sooner or later. When it did, the victim broadcast his grievance to the world. 另一场同时存在的争论是在社会生物学家和反社会生物学家之间展开的，它也是一场有关世未知领域的论战。对学生们来说，它提供了一次The story appeared in a national magazine, every copy of 绝妙的机会使他们拓宽视野。观看这场论战的人which was sold an hour after it appeared on the stands. Under 们会惊愕得张大嘴。一群科学家，他们聪明绝顶，the title They Put the Freeze on Me! John A. Monahan told his tragic tale. At the age of 37, he had fallen desperately in 训练有素，知识广博，想象丰富，主张，基因无疑整个控制了所有动物的或人类的行为；另一群科学家，同样出类拔萃，则坚持环境和文化决定love with a girl of 16. She was immature and frivolous and 了一切行为。每个大学生都不要错过这场很有教wanted to \around\a little more before she settled down. 育意义的论战。在这儿，论据的相对可靠程度并不是我们要学的十分必要的一课。实际上，这里\told me,\he wrote, \come back in five years, and 的教育意义就在于争论本身：我们依靠目前的知that stared me thinking. In five year I'd be 42, and what would 识想解决这类问题，那还是远远不够的。 a girl of 21 want with a man twice as old as her\John Monahan moved in circles where the work of the Zeritskys was well known. Not only did he see an opportunity of being still only 37 when his darling reached 21, but he foresaw a painless way of passing the years which he must endure without her. Accordingly, he presented himself for the deep-freeze, paid his $3000 and the $500 storage charge in advance, and left, he claimed, \me out in five years, so there'd he no mistakes.\Nobody knows how the slip happened, but somehow John A. Monahan, or rather the number assigned to him, was entered on the books for 25 years instead of five years. Upon being defrosted, and discovering that a quarter of a century had elapsed, his rage was awesome. Along with everything else, his love for his sweetheart had been perfectly preserved, but she had given up waiting for him and was a happy mother of two boys and six girls. Monahan's accusation that the Zeritskys had \life\be taken with a grain of salt. He was still a young man, and the rumor that he got a hundred thousand for the magazine rights to his story was true. As most readers are aware, what has come to be known as \President three days after Monahan's story broke. Seventy-five years after Mrs. Graham's cat feel into the freezer, it became he law of the land that the mandatory penalty for anyone applying quick-freezing methods to any living thing, human or animal, was death. Also, all quick-frozen people were to be defrosted immediately. Los Angeles papers reported that beginning on the day Monahan's story appeared, men by the thousands poured into the city. They continued to come, choking every available means of transport, for the next two days -- until, that is, Zerisky's Law went through. When we consider the date, and remember that due to the gravity of the international situation, a bill had just been passed drafting all men from 16 to 60, we realize why Congress had to act. The Zeritskys, of course, were among the first to be taken. Because of their experience, they were put in charge of a military warehouse for dehydrated foods, and warned not to get any ideas for a new business. THE ROLE OF SCIENCE FICTION The year 1972 was marked by publication of a controversial book, The Limits to Growth, This study of the world's future, done by a team of MIT scientists with the aid of computer \of the future of our society, forecast a planet wide disaster unless humankind sharply limits its population growth and consumption of natural resources. Most people were caught by surprise when the book came out. Many refused to believe that disaster is possible, probable, inevitable -- if we don't change our mode of running Spaceship Earth. But science fiction people were neither surprised nor outraged. The study was really old news to them. They'd been making their own \of tomorrow and testing them all them all their lives. For what the scientists attempted with their computer model is very much like the thing that science fiction writers and readers have been doing for decades. Instead of using a computer to \writers have used their human imaginations. This gives the writers some enormous advantages. One of the advantages is flexibility. Science fiction writers are not in the business of predicting the future. They do something much more important. They try to show the many possible future that lie open to us. For there is not simply a future, a time to come that's inevitable. Our future is built, bit by bit, minute by minute, by the actions of human beings. One vital role of science fiction is to show what kinds of future might result from certain kinds of human actions. To communicate the ideas, the fears and hopes, the shape and feel of all the infinite possible futures, science fiction writers lean heavily on another of their advantages: the art of fiction. For while a scientist's job has largely ended when he's reduced his data to tabular or graph from, the work of a science fiction writer is just beginning. His task is to convey the human story: the scientific basis for the possible future of his story is merely the background. Perhaps \is too limiting a word. Much of science fiction consists of precious little except the background, the basic idea, the gimmick. But the best of science fiction, the stories that make a lasting impact on generations of readers, are stories about people. The people may be nonhuman. They may be robots or other types of machines. But they will be people, in the sense that human readers can feel for them, share their joys
大学英语精读第6册课文全文翻译-中英对照
