愛因斯坦：探索的動機
在科學的廟堂裏有許多房舍，住在裏麵的人真是各式各樣，而引導他們到那裏去的動機也實在各不相同。有許多人所以愛好科學，是因為科學給他們以超乎常人的智力上的快感，科學是他們自己的特殊娛樂，他們在這種娛樂中尋求生動活潑的經驗和對他們自己雄心壯誌的滿足；在這座廟堂裏，另外還有許多人所以把他們的腦力產物奉獻在祭壇上，為的是純粹功利的目的。如果上帝有位天使跑來把所有屬於這兩類的人都趕出廟堂，那末聚集在那裏的人就會大大減少，但是，仍然還有一些人留在裏麵，其中有古人，也有今人。我們的普朗克就是其中之一，這也就是我們所以愛戴他的原因。
我很明白，我們剛才在想象隨便驅逐可許多卓越的人物，他們對建築科學廟堂有過很大的也許是主要的貢獻；在許多情況下，我們的天使也會覺得難於作出決定。但有一點我可以肯定，如果廟堂裏隻有被驅逐的那兩類人，那末這座廟堂決不會存在，正如隻有蔓草就不成其為森林一樣。因為，對於這些人來說，隻要有機會，人類活動的任何領域都會去幹；他們究竟成為工程師、官吏、商人還是科學家，完全取決於環境。現在讓我們再來看看那些為天使所寵愛的人吧。
他們大多數是相當怪癖、沉默寡言和孤獨的人，但盡管有這些共同特點，實際上他們彼此之間很不一樣，不象被趕走的那許多人那樣彼此相似。究竟是什麽把他們引到這座廟堂裏來的呢?這是一個難題，不能籠統地用一句話來回答。首先我同意叔本華(Schopenhauer)所說的，把人們引向藝術和科學的最強烈的動機之一，是要逃避日常生活中令人厭惡的粗俗和使人絕望的沉悶，是要擺脫人們自己反複無常的欲望的桎梏。一個修養有素的人總是渴望逃避個人生活而進入客觀知覺和思維的世界；這種願望好比城市裏的人渴望逃避喧囂擁擠的環境，而到高山上去享受幽靜的生活，在那裏透過清寂而純潔的空氣，可以自由地眺望，陶醉於那似乎是為永恒而設計的寧靜景色。
除了這種消極的動機以外，還有一種積極的動機。
人們總想以最適當的方式畫出一幅簡化的和易領悟的世界圖像；於是他就試圖用他的這種世界體係(cosmos)來代替經驗的世界，並來征服它。這就是畫家、詩人、思辨哲學家和自然科學家所做的，他們都按自己的方式去做。各人把世界體係及其構成作為他的感情生活的支點，以便由此找到他在個人經驗的狹小範圍理所不能找到的寧靜和安定。
理論物理學家的世界圖像在所有這些可能的圖像中占有什麽地位呢？它在描述各種關係時要求盡可能達到最高的標準的嚴格精密性，這樣的標準隻有用數學語言才能達到。另一方麵，物理學家對於他的主題必須極其嚴格地加以控製：他必須滿足於描述我們的經驗領域裏的最簡單事件。企圖以理論物理學家所要求的精密性和邏輯上的完備性來重現一切比較複雜的事件，這不是人類智力所能及的。
高度的純粹性、明晰性和確定性要以完整性為代價。但是當人們畏醵?ㄇ擁夭蝗ス芤磺脅豢勺矯?捅冉細叢擁畝?魘保?悄┠芪??頤僑ト鮮蹲勻喚緄惱庖幻煨〔糠值木烤褂質鞘裁茨兀?strong>難道這種謹小慎微的努力結果也夠得上宇宙理論的美名嗎？
我認為，是夠得上的；因為，作為理論物理學結構基礎的
普遍定律，應當對任何自然現象都有效。有了它們，就有可能借助於單純的演繹得出一切自然過程(包括生命)的描述，也就是說得出關於這些過程的理論，隻要這種演繹過程並不太多地超出人類理智能力。因此，物理學家放棄他的世界體係的完整性，倒不是一個什麽根本原則性的問題。
物理學家的最高使命是要得到那些普遍的基本定律，由此世界體係就能用單純的演繹法建立起來。要通向這些定律，沒有邏輯的道路，
隻有通過那種以對經驗的共鳴的理解為依據的直覺，才能得到這些定律。由於有這種方法論上的不確定性，人們可以假定，會有許多個同樣站得住腳的理論物理體係；這個看法在理論上無疑是正確的。但是，物理學的發展表明，在某一時期，在所有可想到的構造中，總有一個顯得別的都高明得多。凡是真正深入研究過這問題的人，都不會否認唯一地決定理論體係的，實際上是現象世界，盡管在現象和它們的理論原理之間並沒有邏輯的橋梁；這就是萊布尼茲(Leibnitz)非常中肯地表述過的“先定的和諧”。物理學家往往責備研究認識論者沒有給予足夠的注意。我認為，幾年前馬赫和普朗克之間所進行的論戰的根源就在於此。
渴望看到這種先定的和諧，是無窮的毅力和耐心的源泉。我們看到，普朗克就是因此而專心致誌於這門科學中的最普遍的問題，而不是使自己分心於比較愉快的和容易達到的目標上去。我常常聽到同事們試圖把他的這種態度歸因於非凡的意誌力和修養，但我認為這是錯誤的。
促使人們去做這種工作的精神狀態是同信仰宗教的人或談戀愛的人的精神狀態相類似的；他們每天的努力並非來自深思熟慮的意向或計劃，而是直接來自激情。我們敬愛的普朗克就坐在這裏，內心在笑我像孩子一樣提著第歐根尼的燈籠鬧著玩。我們對他的愛戴不需要作老生常談的說明。祝願他對科學的熱愛繼續照亮他未來的道路，並引導他去解決今天物理學的最重要的問題。這問題是他自己提出來的，並且為了解決這問題他已經做了很多工作。祝他成功地把量子論同電動力學、力學統一於一個單一的邏輯體係裏。
(本文選自《愛因斯坦文集》，商務印書館，1976年)
阿原：以前應該是讀過的。。。今天看，是終於帶了問題，有重點地看。感覺很幸運，正是自己有了些動搖的時候看到這篇，重又有了信心任激情推動我接著走。年輕的時候，在乎結果多些，現在知道自己真的不是愛翁開頭提的第二種人，所以為現在所擁有的心懷感激。 附錄維基上找來的部分英文翻譯, 再加上愛翁 理解宗教的一段。
Principles of Research (1918)
Address at the Physical Society, Berlin, for Max Planck's 60th birthday
In the temple of science are many mansions, and various indeed are they that dwell therein and the motives that have led them thither. Many take to science out of a joyful sense of superior intellectual power; science is their own special sport to which they look for vivid experience and the satisfaction of ambition; many others are to be found in the temple who have offered the products of their brains on this altar for purely utilitarian purposes. Were an angel of the Lord to come and drive all the people belonging to these two categories out of the temple, the assemblage would be seriously depleted, but there would still be some men, of both present and past times, left inside. Our Planck is one of them, and that is why we love him.
I am quite aware that we have just now lightheartedly expelled in imagination many excellent men who are largely, perhaps chiefly, responsible for the buildings of the temple of science; and in many cases our angel would find it a pretty ticklish job to decide. But of one thing I feel sure: if the types we have just expelled were the only types there were, the temple would never have come to be, any more than a forest can grow which consists of nothing but creepers. For these people any sphere of human activity will do, if it comes to a point; whether they become engineers, officers, tradesmen, or scientists depends on circumstances.
Now let us have another look at those who have found favor with the angel. Most of them are somewhat odd, uncommunicative, solitary fellows, really less like each other, in spite of these common characteristics, than the hosts of the rejected. What has brought them to the temple? That is a difficult question and no single answer will cover it.
The state of mind which enables a man to do work of this kind is akin to that of the religious worshiper or the lover; the daily effort comes from no deliberate intention or program, but straight from the heart.
Man tries to make for himself in the fashion that suits him best a simplified and intelligible picture of the world; he then tries to some extent to substitute this cosmos of his for the world of experience, and thus to overcome it. This is what the painter, the poet, the speculative philosopher, and the natural scientist do, each in his own fashion. Each makes this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his emotional life, in order to find in this way the peace and security which he cannot find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience.
Variant translation: One of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought. With this negative motive goes a positive one. Man seeks to form for himself, in whatever manner is suitable for him, a simplified and lucid image of the world, and so to overcome the world of experience by striving to replace it to some extent by this image. This is what the painter does, and the poet, the speculative philosopher, the natural scientist, each in his own way. Into this image and its formation, he places the center of gravity of his emotional life, in order to attain the peace and serenity that he cannot find within the narrow confines of swirling personal experience.
As quoted in The Professor, the Institute, and DNA (1976) by Rene Dubos; also in The Great Influenza (2004) by John M. Barry
The supreme task of the physicist is to arrive at those universal elementary laws from which the cosmos can be built up by pure deduction. There is no logical path to these laws; only intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding of experience, can reach them. In this methodological uncertainty, one might suppose that there were any number of possible systems of theoretical physics all equally well justified; and this opinion is no doubt correct, theoretically. But the development of physics has shown that at any given moment, out of all conceivable constructions, a single one has always proved itself decidedly superior to all the rest.
Religion and Science (1930)
New York Times Magazine (November 9, 1930)
Everything that the human race has done and thought is concerned with the satisfaction of deeply felt needs and the assuagement of pain. One has to keep this constantly in mind if one wishes to understand spiritual movements and their development. Feeling and longing are the motive force behind all human endeavor and human creation, in however exalted a guise the latter may present themselves to us.
The desire for guidance, love, and support prompts men to form the social or moral conception of God. This is the God of Providence, who protects, disposes, rewards, and punishes; the God who, according to the limits of the believer's outlook, loves and cherishes the life of the tribe or of the human race, or even or life itself; the comforter in sorrow and unsatisfied longing; he who preserves the souls of the dead. This is the social or moral conception of God.
The Jewish scriptures admirably illustrate the development from the religion of fear to moral religion, a development continued in the New Testament. The religions of all civilized peoples, especially the peoples of the Orient, are primarily moral religions. The development from a religion of fear to moral religion is a great step in peoples' lives. And yet, that primitive religions are based entirely on fear and the religions of civilized peoples purely on morality is a prejudice against which we must be on our guard. The truth is that all religions are a varying blend of both types, with this differentiation: that on the higher levels of social life the religion of morality predominates.
Variant translation: It is easy to follow in the sacred writings of the Jewish people the development of the religion of fear into the moral religion, which is carried further in the New Testament. The religions of all civilized peoples, especially those of the Orient, are principally moral religions. An important advance in the life of a people is the transformation of the religion of fear into the moral religion.
Common to all these types is the anthropomorphic character of their conception of God. In general, only individuals of exceptional endowments, and exceptionally high-minded communities, rise to any considerable extent above this level. But there is a third stage of religious experience which belongs to all of them, even though it is rarely found in a pure form: I shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it.
The individual feels the futility of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought. Individual existence impresses him as a sort of prison and he wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole. The beginnings of cosmic religious feeling already appear at an early stage of development, e.g., in many of the Psalms of David and in some of the Prophets. Buddhism, as we have learned especially from the wonderful writings of Schopenhauer, contains a much stronger element of this. The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it. Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with this highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes also as saints. Looked at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi, and Spinoza are closely akin to one another.
How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it.
The man who is thoroughly convinced of the universal operation of the law of causation cannot for a moment entertain the idea of a being who interferes in the course of events — provided, of course, that he takes the hypothesis of causality really seriously. He has no use for the religion of fear and equally little for social or moral religion. A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him for the simple reason that a man's actions are determined by necessity, external and internal, so that in God's eyes he cannot be responsible, any more than an inanimate object is responsible for the motions it undergoes. Science has therefore been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hopes of reward after death.
Variant: "It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere" has been cited as a statement that precedes the last three sentences here, but this might have originated in a paraphrase, a transcription error, or a misquotation; it does not appear in any editions of the essay which have thus far been checked.
It is therefore easy to see why the churches have always fought science and persecuted its devotees. On the other hand, I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research. Only those who realize the immense efforts and, above all, the devotion without which pioneer work in theoretical science cannot be achieved are able to grasp the strength of the emotion out of which alone such work, remote as it is from the immediate realities of life, can issue. What a deep conviction of the rationality of the universe and what a yearning to understand, were it but a feeble reflection of the mind revealed in this world, Kepler and Newton must have had to enable them to spend years of solitary labor in disentangling the principles of celestial mechanics! Those whose acquaintance with scientific research is derived chiefly from its practical results easily develop a completely false notion of the mentality of the men who, surrounded by a skeptical world, have shown the way to kindred spirits scattered wide through the world and through the centuries. Only one who has devoted his life to similar ends can have a vivid realization of what has inspired these men and given them the strength to remain true to their purpose in spite of countless failures. It is cosmic religious feeling that gives a man such strength. A contemporary has said, not unjustly, that in this materialistic age of ours the serious scientific workers are the only profoundly religious people.
