李约瑟与《中国的科学与文明》（四)

    JOSEPH NEEDHAM: Science and Civilization in China.                  

       李约瑟与《中国的科学与文明》                   

                                        Compiled and Written by Robin Gilbank

                       Translated by Hu Zongfeng

                                 （英）罗宾·吉尔班克     

                                 胡宗锋   译

       When compared with his prose, which at its best has the virility and finesse of William Hazlitt or Charles Lamb, Needham’s poem comes across as a forced and lacklustre set of rhyming couplets. Despite being of limited artistic value, it does, nonetheless, possess some intrinsic worth. In observing how Mao Zedong was “appropriate” for China in that “age” Needham is demonstrating his own pragmatic, even syncretic attitude towards belief. Just because he himself was a Westerner and espoused Christianity it did not prevent him from regarding Marxism – an ideology which condemned organized religion as an aspect of false consciousness – as offering the hope of reform in the spheres of politics, the economy and social life.

         如果说李约瑟的散文充其量还有点赫兹里特或兰姆的阳刚和细腻，（赫兹里特William Hazlitt和兰姆Charles Lamb都是英国有名的散文家——译者注），那么他的诗则是牵强附会，缺乏生气的骈文。虽然艺术品味有限，但还是有那么一点内在价值的。通过赞扬毛泽东是那个“时代”的圣人和思想家，李约瑟是在宣扬他自己实用、甚至是对信仰调和的态度。不要以为他是一个西方人和基督徒，这就会阻止他崇拜马克思主义思想——马克思主义的意识形态抨击宗教组织有其虚伪的一面——主张在政治、经济和社会生活领域进行改革。

          This insight supplies a useful stepping stone to understanding how religious or ideological diversity is dealt with by Science and Civilisation in China. Having published the opening volume, entitled Introductory Orientations in 1954, Needham was required to step back and consider at length the different contesting schools of thought in Chinese history, and to supply some indications of how these nurtured or inhibited the growth of modern science. Where other less perceptive observers might have been content to praise the richness of the Tang Dynasty learning and the refinement of the Song, Needham opts to cover more contentious ground in a head-on fashion.

           要理解《中国的科技与文明》中对不同的宗教和意识形态的处理，李约瑟的这种洞察是一块很有用的基石。该丛书的开卷之作《入门方针》在1954年出版后，人们要求他退后一步，充分考虑一下中国历史上不同思想流派的较量，从而得出这些思想为孕育或拟制现代科学发展的佐证。感悟力不强的观察者满足于称赞唐代学术的丰富和宋朝的细腻，然而李约瑟则喜欢迎头而上，探索有争议的领域。

In the resulting second volume he focused on the traditional triad of Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism. Confucianism was important in Needham’s eyes not because Confucianist thinkers fostered a spirit of scientific investigation sui generis - in actual fact there were followers of the Master who did quite the opposite. It is rather that the rhetoric of Confucius laid the groundwork for a system of education which was in theory based upon meritocracy instead of hereditary right. He comments:-

       在该丛书的第二卷，他聚焦于中国传统思想的释、道、儒。在李约瑟的眼中，儒家的重要并不是因为儒家学派培育了一种独特的科学调查精神，实际上，孔子的弟子中有人反其道而行之。孔子的言论为一种教育系统奠定了基础，其理论是基于英才而不是世袭。他评点说：

      If every man was potentially educable, then every normal man was potentially as good a judge of truth as every other, the qualifications which added value to his judgement being only education, experience and demonstrated competence.

                   (Science and Civilisation in China, Volume 2, p. 9).

                如果人人是可教的，那么每个普通人就能和别人一样的判别真理，而增加他判别能力的条件只有教育、经验和才能。

                                                                ——《中国的科技与文明》第二卷 第9页

             In a somewhat similar fashion to how he justified Marxism on the basis that it encouraged reform and equality he valorizes Confucianism because it helped to spawn institutions such as the Imperial Entrance Examination. Although controversial and eventually decidedly stale, this enshrined the principle that a person of adequate talent should be able to rise above their circumstances of birth, however modest. This transpired long before such democratizing sentiments had arisen in the Western world.

同样，他信奉马克思主义在于其鼓励改革和平等，而他肯定儒家是因为其催生了如“科举”那样的体制。虽然世人对“科举”有争议，并且最终被废除，但“科举”证明一个人只要有才干，不论出身多么贫贱，都有出人头地的机会。这一切比西方实行民主教育早得多。

            On the other hand, Needham was inclined to marginalize Confucianism in his writing, since to him the custodians of Confucian ideas were in the main preoccupied with issues pertaining to social order and ethics. Likewise, Buddhism emerges as being of only marginal importance to the development of science because Zen practitioners were directed to reject worldliness and to divert their attention to the afterlife. Needham does acknowledge the unparalleled size of Buddhist monastery libraries, but according to some contemporary Sinologists like Frances Wood of the British Library he downplayed how skilled Buddhist scholars were at defending their faith against charges of irrationality and not being interested in the physical world.[1] On top of that, scant thought was given by Needham to the impact of the beliefs of minority ethnic groups and, indeed, to indigenous religions.

        另外，李约瑟在自己的作品中倾向于淡化儒家，因为在他看来儒家思想的捍卫者看重的是社会秩序和伦理。同样，佛家在科学发展中的作用也被淡化是因为禅宗的主旨是反世俗，重来生。李约瑟的确也承认佛门寺庙藏金阁的宏伟，但据一些当今的汉学家所言，如大英图书馆的弗兰西斯·伍德就认为，李约瑟轻描淡写的认为佛教学者善于为自己的信仰而辩，对科学不敢兴趣。基于此，李约瑟对少数民族的信仰以及本土宗教的作用着墨不多。

          To Needham, the greatest progenitor of investigative thinking in the Old China was, whether wittingly or unwittingly, Taoism. Since Taoism put forth a complete view of the cosmos and actively encouraged its adherents to think upon the nature of matter and spirit it was conducive to the making of new discoveries within the physical world. He comments that:

在李约瑟看来，古代中国最有研究思维意识的，不论是有意还是无意当属道家，因为道家提出了一套完整的宇宙观念，并积极鼓励其弟子去思考物质与精神的实质，这有助于人们在科学上有新发现，他说：

The Taoist system of thought, which still today occupies at least as important a place in the background of the Chinese mind as Confucianism, was a unique and extremely interesting combination of philosophy and religion, incorporating also ‘proto’-science and magic. It is vitally important for the understanding of all Chinese science and technology.

                                       (Science and Civilisation in China, Volume 2, p. 33).

           道家思想体系，直到今天还在中国人的思想背景中占有至少和儒家同样重要的地位，它是一种哲学和宗教出色而极其有趣的结合，同时包含着“原始的”科学和方技。它对于了解全部中国科学技术是极其重要的。

                ——《中国的科技与文明》第二卷 第33页

            Here the author has need to clarify his lexicon. Taoism represented a broad spectrum of beliefs, ranging from the Shamanistic teachers of the Warring States Period (wu) and the soothsayers (fangshi) to those who were more actively engaged in fields of knowledge like medicine. Needham praised in particular Ge Hong, for in the inner sections of his Bao Pu Zi he put forwards what appears to be a systematic approach to classifying and treating disease which Needham compares favourably with Aristotle. Although the writer of Science and Civilisation in China invariably uses “science” according to its modern Western usage, Taoism cannot be excluded from the debate for in amongst the alchemy and magic there is plenty of what can now be recognized as “proto-science.” Hence, the history of Chinese technology tends to be diffuse and spread through written sources of diverse and oftentimes unlikely genres. Innovation came in peaks and troughs, sometimes corresponding to the monarch’s whimsical promotion of one type of ethical or religious system at the expense of another.

     在此，作者有必要澄清其所指，道家代表的是一个宽泛的信仰体系，包括战国时期的“巫术”  和“方术” 大师，以及活跃在学术界如医学界的名士。李约瑟特别推崇葛洪，因为在《抱朴子》 的内篇中，葛洪提出了一个在李约瑟眼中堪与亚里士多德想媲美的病理分类和治疗体系。虽然《中国的科技与文明》的作者依据西方现代惯例总是用“科学”一词，但却不能排除人们对道家的争议，因为其“炼丹”和“道术”中的很多成分今天被认为只是科学的“雏形”。是故，中国的科技史散落在各种杂繁且常常是不同体裁的文本中。革新有高潮也有低谷，时而与君主在宗教上反复无常的独尊而排他相关。

           Where then does this leave Needham’s reputation? Should his writings be taken with a pinch of salt just because he painted in such broad brushstrokes and was inclined to refract the complexities of Chinese belief systems through his own admittedly idiosyncratic lens? The fact that he himself has now become a subject for academic study surely confirms the tenacity of his work. Many of the greatest minds of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have mused over the benighted state into which Chinese science fell. Albert Einstein, for example, was of the belief that China did not experience a Scientific Revolution and fell behind the West in technological terms because it did not possess Euclidean geometry. He queried the very import of the “Needham question” by saying that people should not ask why China lacked a Scientific Revolution, but instead ask why any country should have had a Scientific Revolution at all.

             如此以来，李约瑟之名何立？难道其巨笔大作通过特殊镜头折射出的中国复杂的信仰体系有折扣？事实上，他本人今天已经成为学术研究的对象就完全肯定了其大作的魅力。诸多二十世纪和二十一世纪的伟人都曾经思索过中国在科学上落后的囧境，如爱因斯坦就认为中国没有科技革新，落后于西方是因为中国没有出现欧几里得那样的几何学。他对“李约瑟之谜”的叩问是，世人没有必要询问中国为什么缺乏科技革新，而该问的是任何一个国家为何一定要有科技革新。

        The “Needham question” can, moreover, be viewed as a product of its time. Seventy years ago when Joseph Needham first set foot in China the country was apt to interpret its own recent history as a downward spiral from being a formerly prosperous (if feudal) empire to a neutered state afflicted by foreign invasion and the corruption of the Qing Dynasty and Warlord factions. On top of this, the present, intractable Civil War and the war against the Japanese made national reunification seem like a distant prospect. Thinking about the Needham question at the beginning of the 21^st century, following 35 years of Reform and Opening Up, the “century of humiliations” and the decline in innovation which went before this may be seen as temporary blips within the history of a civilization which has lasted more than five thousand years.

不管如何，“李约瑟之谜”乃时代的产物，七十年前，当李约瑟初次踏上中国时，这个国家对自己近代史的阐释是从以前辉煌的帝国陷入了一个列强凌辱、清廷腐败和军阀割据的不幸漩涡。当时棘手的抗战和内战让人觉得国家统一的前景似乎还很遥远。在二十一世纪的初叶，经过三十五年的改革和开放后，再来思索“李约瑟之谜”，让人觉得中国以前的“百年屈辱”和科技上的滞后，在近五千年的文明史中不过是暂时的瞬间而已。

        A more satisfying, if not comprehensive answer to the Needham question, may in fact be found in the field of political science rather than in science itself. Long ago when comparing the destinies of Europe with those of Eastern nations David Hume (1711-76) reasoned that technological progress was better achieved in smaller states which had to compete for survival than in larger ones which experienced relative internal stability.[2] This goes some way to explaining the success of the British Empire and its rivals. A modified version of this argument was put forward by Robert Wesson in the 1960s:-

对“李约瑟之谜”的一个不全面但却较为满意的答复与其说是在科学领域，倒不如说是在政治科学领域。很久以前，大卫·休谟（David Hume 1711-76）在比较欧洲和东方国家的命运时就理智的说过，小国在科技上比大国进步快实乃为了生存而竞争，而大国的局势相对来说比较稳定。这一点也可以解释大英帝国的成功及其对手的境遇。二十世纪六十年代，罗伯特·韦森也更委婉的提出过相同的论点：

The more efficient the empire, the more unimaginative and conventional are its people. Yet genius is always somewhat...maladjusted in terms of the mediocre milieu. In the great empire, moreover, the idealism that energizes genius is lost....The sense and purposes of patriotism are missing in the universal state....

Despotism, as de Tocqueville remarked, freezes the soul. The poor find it enough to keep alive, the educated show only a little less indifference and apathy, and all lose the capacity to wrestle with new thoughts.

               (Robert Wesson, The Imperial Order, 1967).

               国家效率愈高，其臣民则愈传统，愈缺乏想象力。然而，天才总是不免……从平民百姓的角度来讲感觉失调。在大国，激励天才的理想主义不复存在……国家缺失爱国心和激情。

          专制如德·托克维尔所言，禁锢人的灵魂。穷人满足于苟活，学人漠不关心，缺少同情心，人们全都失去了创造新思想的能力。

                                                                   ——选自《帝国的秩序》罗伯特·韦森 著

         In a slight adaptation of the complacency thesis the Old China can be construed as a victim of its own success. A strong system of governance which was invariably autocratic in nature gave the populace the impression that their society was self-sufficient, and actively inhibited the need and desire for looking beyond present borders of knowledge.

          有点适应自满的旧中国可以说是自己成功的牺牲品。强大和实质上独裁的管理体系让民众觉得自己所处的社会自给自足，极大的拟制了人们走出眼前境遇的需求和愿望。

                                                        汉语原文刊《美文》2015年第二期（全文完）