Curious Minds 英文原版
作者： John
出版社：Random House US 2005年09月
简介：
In this anthology of reminiscences by prominent scientists,the roll includes Richard Dawkins, Murray Gell-Mann, Joseph Ledouxand Ray Kurzweil, along with 23 others. The mandate of the book'seditor, literary agent Brockman (The Third Culture), to each ofthese authors was to write an essay explaining how he or she cameto be a scientist. Some take him at his word and write meanderingstories of childhood. David Buss found his calling—the study ofhuman mating behavior—while working at a truck stop after droppingout of school. Paul Davies says he was born to be a theoreticalphysicist. Daniel Dennett, on the other hand, seems to have triedevery other profession before landing, as if by accident, inscience. A few writers let their essays get hijacked by the sciencethey have devoted their lives to. And in the midst of this, like akeystone in an arch, is an essay by Steven Pinker explaining whythe entire exercise is a bunch of hooey: scientifically speaking,he says, people have no objective idea what influenced theirbehavior, and that writing a memoir is creative storytelling, notobjective observation of what actually happened. Whether or notthese essays are scientifically sound is open to debate, but theydo offer occasionally inspiring glimpses into the minds of today'sscientific intelligentsia.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of ReedElsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to theHardcover edition.
From Scientific American
When the late evolutionist and polymath Stephen Jay Gould was atoddler, he became fascinated and terrified by the toweringTyrannosaurus rex skeleton at the American Museum of NaturalHistory. Gould later claimed to have been instantly "imprinted" onthe monstrous saurian, like a duckling on its mama. The little boydecided on the spot to become a paleontologist--years before heeven learned the word. In John Brockman's Curious Minds: How aChild Becomes a Scientist, a collection of 27 autobiographicalessays by leading savants, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinkerscoffs at this oft-told story. Pinker relates that Gould dedicatedhis first book: "For my father, who took me to see theTyrannosaurus when I was five," and admires Gould's "genius ... forcoming up with that charming line." But he doesn't buy it. Pinkergoes on to tell his own childhood story, with the caveat thatlong-term memory is notoriously malleable and that we often concoctretrospective scenarios to fit satisfying *s of our lives. Sodon't believe anything in this book, he warns, including his ownself-constructed mythology; many children are exposed to books andmuseums, but few become scientists. Pinker concludes that perhapsthe essence of who we are from birth shapes our childhoodexperiences rather than the other way around. Nevertheless, whenBrockman asked Pinker and others to trace the roots of their adultobsessions for this book, he received some unexpected andentertaining responses. Primatologist Robert Sapolsky, for example,haunted the Bronx Zoo and the natural history museum, as Gould did,but fell in love with living primates rather than fossil bones. Hedidn't want to just study mountain gorillas, he recalls of hischildhood crush on monkeys and apes, "I wanted to be one." For thepast few decades, Sapolsky has spent half of each year in hisphysiology lab and the other half among wild baboon troops in EastAfrica. Some people, such as theoretical psychologist NicholasHumphrey, are simply born into science. His grandfather, Nobellaureate A. V. Hill, often took him along to the physiology lab.Grandfather Hill--quoting his friend Ivan Pavlov--taught youngNicholas that "facts are the air of a scientist. Without them youcan never fly." Among frequent visitors to the family home were hisgreat-uncles Maynard and Geoffrey Keynes, members of Britishscience's aristocracy, as well as his great-aunt Margaret, agranddaughter of Charles Darwin. He recalls how their long-termhouseguest, an adolescent, "bossy" Stephen Hawking, once marched upand down the hallways clutching a military swagger stick, barkingat a "platoon of hapless classmates." Science was Humphrey'sbirthright. Richard (The Selfish Gene) Dawkins, one of England'spreeminent Darwinians, admits that he never cared for science orthe natural world during his early years. He was inspired, however,by the fanciful children's books about Dr. Dolittle by HughLofting. The good doctor was a Victorian gentleman who heldintelligent conversations with mice and parrots and whales. Anadventurous sort, he traveled the world to learn the secrets offaraway places. When the adult Dawkins encountered the life andworks of Charles Darwin, he welcomed him as an old friend and heroof his youth. Dolittle and Darwin, he opines, "would have been soulbrothers." Lynn Margulis's early interest in the wonders of themicroscopic world began when she was a "boy crazy" adolescent, whowas amazed to learn that some minuscule creatures never need sex inorder to reproduce. Enter a teenage heartthrob: the buddingastrophysicist Carl Sagan. ("Tall, handsome in a sort of galootyway, with a shock of brown-black hair, he captivated me.") She was16 when they met; eventually they married. Sagan's fascination with"billions and billions" of cosmic bodies resonated with her ownfixation on the billions of microcosms to be observed through themicroscope. Margulis's study subjects have included a tiny animalin a termite's gut that is made up of five distinct genomes cobbledtogether. She has argued that we and other animals are compositecritters, whose every cell harbors long-ago invaders--minutesymbiotic organisms that became part of our makeup. Her innovativeapproach to evolution has profoundly influenced biology. Harvardpsychologist and neurologist Howard Gardner says his youth wasnotable for its lack of any clues indicating a future in science:"I did not go around gathering flowers, studying bugs, ordissecting mice ... I neither assembled radios nor tore apartcars." Yet, for others, there was a decisive turning point. Andsome could clearly remember it. I was fortunate in having been achildhood friend of Steve Gould's and can vouch for the sincerity of his conviction that his extraordinary career as a paleontologist,historian of science and evolutionary theorist began when that T.rex followed him into his nightmares. Once, during our junior highschool days, I stood with him beneath that iconic carnosaur in themuseum, observing his reverence and awe on revisiting the shrine ofhis inspiration. Professor Pinker, of course, is free to believethat I'm making this up for my own psychological reasons.
