购买
下载掌阅APP,畅读海量书库
立即打开
畅读海量书库
扫码下载掌阅APP

Preface

Nature is the world's most influential science journal. It has published some of the most important discoveries in modern science, and has carried contributions from leading scientists, ranging from Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein to James Watson, Francis Crick and Stephen Hawking. Since its earliest days it has reported on all areas of science, from the study of human origins to the structure of the universe, from genetics to nuclear physics.

So it is surprising that no substantial overview of Nature 's publication history has been attempted until now. And while Nature is known globally, access to its full archive has been rather less easy outside of Western countries (although the full archive is now available online). That is why this collection, titled Nature: the Living Record of Science , will provide an indispensable resource. It supplies an unparalleled view of how the preoccupations and priorities of science have changed over the last century and more, often in a way that reflects currents in the broader social and political landscape. The collected papers—more than 840 selected from over 100,000 published in the journal over the past century and a half—offer a vision of what society wants from science, and what science has given society.

The evolution of Nature

Nature is almost unique in publishing leading research in every area of science. The journal was begun in 1869 by the enterprising English astronomer J. Norman Lockyer. Its aim, announced (for reasons now forgotten) only in the second issue of 11 November, was:

“First, to place before the general public the grand results of Scientific Work and Scientific Discovery; and to urge the claims of Science to a more general recognition in Education and in Daily Life;

And, secondly, to aid Scientific men themselves, by giving early information of all advances made in any branch of Natural knowledge throughout the world, and by affording them an opportunity of discussing the various Scientific questions which arise from time to time.”

That is a fair statement of Nature 's goal today. In the first issue, the reader could find Lockyer's description of a recent total solar eclipse in America, Thomas Henry Huxley's analysis of some newly discovered dinosaur fossil bones from the Triassic period, some observations of the absorption and radiation of heat by the German physicist Heinrich Gustav Magnus, and an obituary of the Scottish chemist Thomas Graham, the father of colloid chemistry. Such breadth of subject matter has been characteristic of the journal ever since.

The first issue of Nature appeared at a time when periodical publishing was booming and science was increasingly seen as an integral part of daily life. There was a general consensus that scientists deserved greater respect, social distinction and financial support. At the same time, there was a calling for scientific education to be expanded and interest in science to be encouraged. From its inception, Nature has been produced by the British publishers Macmillan & Co., although there is now no record of how that arrangement came about.

Lockyer was an astronomer and civil servant who had been elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society six months before Nature first appeared in print. He was well connected in the scientific community, counting the biologist Thomas Henry Huxley and the physicist John Tyndall among his circle of associates. He called on the services of both men in the early days of Nature , helping to establish its authoritative status. As editor, Lockyer displayed from the outset some of the characteristics that Nature went on to display in later times. He was unashamed to parade his own enthusiasms, making the journal particularly welcoming to research on the physics of the sun. He gave it an international flavour, including reports on meetings in such places as St. Petersburg, Vienna and Philadelphia. He was willing, indeed eager, to include news and gossip from within the scientific community, and happy to court controversy and to report it plainly: some of the arguments that rage in the early pages have an acerbic tone that reveals a hands-off editorial touch. And he was ready to offer robust opinions on public affairs and matters of state that might seem only tangentially relevant to science.

Yet despite Nature 's mission statement to “place before the general public the grand results of Scientific Work and Scientific Discovery”, the journal made few concessions to the non-scientist. It was not until well into the following century that Nature underwent its metamorphosis. John Maddox became editor in 1966 and set about making the journal less scholarly and more engaging to readers, while in no way compromising its academic stature. It was Maddox's hope that everyone would be able to read and understand reports of new discoveries in any area of science.

That was an ambitious goal. Even now, the research papers in Nature are not easy reading for the lay person with no scientific education, and with the increasing specialization of science it is often difficult even for scientists to understand papers outside their own field. On the other hand, the expansion of Nature into a publishing group with many “sister” journals, such as Nature Genetics, Nature Geoscience and Nature Materials , as well as the advent of new media for communicating and providing content such as news, has given Nature further tools and avenues for reaching new, broader audiences. It remains the most highly cited interdisciplinary science journal.

Probably the most famous, and arguably the most influential, paper to appear in Nature was that written by Francis Crick and James Watson, published in 1953, describing the structure of DNA, the molecule that carries every organism's genes. It was quickly seen as a major breakthrough in understanding how heredity works: the molecule's structure, in which genetic information is encoded in the sequence of chemical building blocks as a four-letter code, immediately suggested how this information might be copied and passed on from one generation to the next. This was the missing link in Darwin's theory of evolution, showing how genes work at the molecular scale. The understanding that flowed from Crick and Watson's epoch-defining paper paved the way to developments such as the decoding of the entire human genome and the cloning of Dolly the sheep, also both reported first in Nature , in papers included in this collection.

Several other disciplines have been transformed by discoveries that Nature has reported. The theory of plate tectonics, advanced in the 1930s, was verified by the discovery of seafloor spreading by Fred Vine and Drummond Matthews in 1963. The birth of nuclear physics, which profoundly affected not only physical science but society and international relations, was traced in contributions to Nature from the likes of Ernest Rutherford, Niels Bohr, Otto Hahn, Irène Joliot-Curie and Otto Frisch in the 1920s and 30s. The quantum-mechanical nature of matter was revealed by the discovery in 1927 by Clinton Davisson and Lester Germer of wave-like properties in beams of electrons. This collection also records the birth of key developments in atmospheric and environmental sciences, from the discovery in 1985 of the destruction of ozone in the stratospheric layer above Antarctica to the gradual recognition of human-made global warming and the interactions between the biosphere, oceans, geological earth and ice sheets in bringing about the climate fluctuations of the past.

Tribute to John Maddox, Co-Editor-in-Chief

Sir John Maddox died, aged 83, while this project was in its final stages. He served as chief editor of Nature from 1966 to 1973, and then again from 1980 to 1995. Under his leadership, Nature was transformed from a rather austere periodical to a publication that combined the strengths of a major scientific journal of record and a magazine that made the latest advances in science understandable to a wider audience. This character reflected that of Maddox himself, who trained as a physicist at King's College London before, in 1955, becoming one of the leading science journalists of his day at the Manchester Guardian (now the Guardian ).

It was his journalistic instinct that enabled Maddox to restore Nature 's position as an influential voice in the scientific community. In the tradition of Lockyer, he was willing to make the journal vigorously outspoken on matters that demanded it, as for example when Nature campaigned against the dangerous and damaging claims made by the Sunday Times newspaper in the early 1990s that HIV was not the cause of AIDS. This forthright attitude earned Maddox something of a reputation as a maverick, and he himself adopted a contrarian stance against some aspects of scientific orthodoxy—he remained sceptical about the Big Bang (which he worried was “too neat”), and for many years expressed doubts about the notion that human activity was causing global warming. (Maddox later changed his mind on this.) Most famously, perhaps, Maddox published a paper from French scientists that appeared to lend scientific support to homeopathy. He argued that “there are good and particular reasons why prudent people should, for the time being, suspend judgment” about the experiments, and soon after he led an equally controversial investigation into the claims.

Nonetheless, Maddox was a tireless opponent of what he viewed as anti-scientific and anti-rational views. A lifelong atheist, his funeral service was conducted in a tent just outside the church grounds in which he was buried.

Maddox was also a strong advocate of international research, and acutely aware of the social impacts of scientific advance—he was a member of the Pugwash Group that campaigns for nuclear non-proliferation. In 1995 he was awarded a knighthood, which he said he accepted for the sake of Nature rather than himself, and in 2000 he was the first person ever to be elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society, an accolade almost unheard of in recent times for anyone whose career has not been primarily in scientific research. A scientific polymath, it was sometimes said that John Maddox was one of the few people capable of reading Nature from cover to cover and understanding more or less all of it. Certainly, it is hard to think of anyone else with the breadth of knowledge needed to oversee this collection.

Selection of papers for Nature: the Living Record of Science

The well-known papers mentioned above were obvious candidates for inclusion, and are among the 840 odd papers which make up this collection. The initial selection was made by John Maddox, who chose over 2,000 of Nature 's most prestigious articles. This expansive list was then condensed and supplemented by Philip Ball, then a consultant editor for Nature and a freelance writer on all areas of science, who became the Managing Editor of the project in October 2007.

It was clearly necessary for all the papers to have been “important” in some sense, but the process to assess the worthiness of each paper was by no means straightforward. For one thing, most of the truly important currents in science are more aptly seen as tidal swells than tsunamis: they arrive by steady accumulation, not in one sudden inundation. It was sometimes necessary to arrive at a compromise between the need to do justice to the important themes in scientific research, as they were reflected in the pages of Nature , and the absence of any single contribution that was transformative to a given theme.

There are several ways in which a paper can be deemed important. Some may have helped to establish a particular field of enquiry—for example, the search for gravity waves in space, or for planets around other stars—even if the actual findings reported in the paper itself have not stood the test of time. Such papers are not necessarily of only historical interest. They might, for example, illuminate what was happening in other areas of science, and shed light on how the ideas of the time were received. This seems true of the many discussions in Nature , for at least 50 years after the publication of Charles Darwin's Descent of Man , of eugenics: efforts to engineer the genetics of human populations by selective breeding. These ideas are now discredited, but it would seem not only dishonest in historical terms to ignore them but also a distortion of how biologists at that time were interpreting Darwinian theory.

One underlying principle of the selection process was to maintain an international perspective on the importance of each paper, rather than a bias towards scientific discoveries related to China, or of discoveries made by Chinese scientists. Within this context, the important findings of Chung-yao Chao, Pei-ji Chen and Zhi-ming Dong are included in the collection purely for their substantial contributions to the global scientific community.

Some papers may look, from today's perspective, to be of limited relevance—often simply because their findings have been so thoroughly assimilated. For example, some of the early studies in the chemistry of vitamins, or attempts to understand the nature of the atomic nucleus and its constituent particles, might not seem like “classics” in their own right, but at the time they were key stepping-stones in the journey towards a deeper understanding of the phenomena in question.

A few papers in the collection are not just “wrong”, but notoriously so. The “polywater” affair of the late 1960s and 1970s, in which Soviet scientists claimed to have discovered a new, ultra-viscous form of water, proved groundless, most probably being an artefact of experimental contamination. But both it and the putative “memory of water” reported in Nature in 1988 not only illustrate how science is done (and how it may be done badly) but also highlight ongoing themes in the investigation of water's molecular structure. The papers included here that investigate the alleged “cold fusion” of hydrogen not only serve to mark this prominent scientific controversy of the late 1980s but also played an important role in showing it to be the result of faulty experimentation. The same is true of the papers that uncover the palaeontological fraud of “Piltdown Man”.

Some reviews of the state of play of a discipline by leading scientists have been included, even though they do not in themselves report new discoveries, in part because such contributions serve as landmarks that, with the imprimatur of Nature , established the work they describe as now a solid part of the body of science and helped to gain its recognition from a wide audience. That is true, for example, of the sole contribution in the collection by Albert Einstein, a 1921 survey of the historical development of his theory of relativity. By this time, general relativity was widely accepted, especially after the demonstration in 1919 by Arthur Eddington that light from distant stars is bent by gravity as the theory predicts. Yet a paper in Nature was still a powerful signal to readers in the English-speaking world that general relativity was here to stay.

Such review-type papers were an important component of what Nature published in the pre-war era. Whereas in recent decades there has been a rather clear demarcation between original research papers, reviews, and commentary on developments reported elsewhere, in earlier times the distinctions were more fluid, and strictly new research was less prevalent in the journal's pages. Without these “overview” papers, much of what was happening in science at that time would have been missed. This is increasingly true the further back one goes, so that in its first several decades Nature seems more a kind of “scientific newspaper”, reporting at least as much gossip, rumour, curiosities and accounts of learned meetings as any novel research. Perhaps this is a reflection of how the reporting of science has become increasingly professionalised and standardised—with both advantages and drawbacks.

In general, however, the selected papers in this collection are primary scientific contributions, not comments on work reported elsewhere, or editorials, book reviews, obituaries and so forth. That is a reflection of the intended aims of this collection, although it means that it provides only a partial view of the “flavour” of the journal itself. Some of the liveliest writing has appeared in these “excluded” genres, and the reader will need to look elsewhere for a more general sense of the journal's full character—most notably, it can be sampled in A Bedside Nature (W. H. Freeman, 1997), edited by Walter Gratzer (who also assisted the current selection process) and providing a miscellany of contributions between 1869 and 1953.

Introductions to the papers

Each of the selected papers is accompanied by a brief introduction that explains the key findings and places them in the context of their times. These introductions, which were written by John Maddox and several members of Nature 's current and former editorial staff, strive to sketch (they can do no more, given space constraints) the broader picture: why the work was important, how it changed or contributed to thinking at the time and how the conclusions have been vindicated, modified or rendered obsolete by later work. Occasionally they provide a glimpse of the paper's author(s), who are often figures extremely eminent in their time (if perhaps less known today)—or people who were later to become so. One of the most rewarding aspects of the process of editing Nature: the Living Record of Science was that it served as a reminder of what an extraordinary range and depth of research has been announced in Nature , and by what a remarkable collection of scientists. Inevitably, the collection can do only partial justice to that—but the introductory pieces go some way to compensating for what could not be included, by filling in some of the gaps and forging links that are not immediately evident from the papers themselves. In some cases, it is only with hindsight that the significance of a particular discovery becomes apparent, and we have occasionally needed to point out implications that were not even clear to a paper's author(s).

Scientific publishing in China

Publishing and the media have played a significant role in spreading and promoting modern science. In late 19 th century China, for example, translations of Western natural and social science works added tremendous momentum to the country's movement from a feudal society into the modern age. One of the most influential translations was that of Thomas Henry Huxley's Evolution and Ethics by the scholar Yan Fu (1854-1921), who studied at the Naval Academy in Greenwich, England, in 1877-1879. It immediately became essential reading for progressive young thinkers, and the ideas of natural selection that it described influenced several generations of intellectuals. Huxley was one of the key figures in the development of Nature , and made many contributions to early issues. Charles Darwin, whose ideas Huxley expounded, was also a reader and correspondent, and one of his contributions features in the first volume of this collection. The implications of his evolutionary theory stimulated many discussions in Nature 's pages, and indeed continue to do so today, as illustrated in the special issue of Nature in 11 February 2009 to celebrate the 200 th anniversary of Darwin's birth and the 150 th anniversary of the publication of his On the Origin of Species .

With the rapid growth of its economy and an increasing output of scientific research in the past three decades, China is now regarded as a major scientific force in the Asia-Pacific region and in the world at large. The number of active scientists and researchers in China is now second only to that of the United States, and the number of research papers they generate overtook those from the United Kingdom and Japan in 2008. These developments make it ever more important that high-quality scientific research papers, both past and present, be readily accessible within China. Most of the scientific literature is not available in the Chinese language; this collection takes the first step to change that situation, with the original articles represented as they first appeared in Nature and the translations strictly reviewed for faithfulness. The articles are arranged in chronological order, and an index of classification is provided for quick reference.

An unprecedented collection

Nature: the Living Record of Science is unprecedented in that it represents the first ever large collection of science articles of any sort written for students and researchers worldwide—regardless of their nationality. The collection covers a wide range of disciplines, from biology to the earth and environmental sciences, materials science and physics. It is translated into the Chinese language and published in bilingual format so as to bridge different cultures in a fashion that can stimulate international research.

We wish to take this opportunity to thank all the translators, reviewers and editors for their painstaking efforts in making the project a success. We also look forward to closer cooperation between the Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, the Macmillan Publishing Group and Nature Publishing Group in providing more high-quality science works for scientists and students, and other interested readers in China. Such cooperation, we believe, will effectively promote the exchange of ideas and sharing of achievements between Chinese and Western scientists.


Editor-in-Chief of Nature 7FwFNondhsHlQm+/+sHH/R4IvMZ68IDgL5ATyYLEOjmbK3SIS1lG0P9WM+yalWMO



前言

《自然》是全世界最具影响力的科学期刊。它报道过现代科学中一些最重要的发现,并刊登过如查尔斯·达尔文、阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦、詹姆斯·沃森、弗朗西斯·克里克、斯蒂芬·霍金等顶尖级科学家的文章。从创立初期,《自然》就涵盖了所有科学领域,从人类的起源到宇宙的结构、从遗传学到核物理学。

然而,令人颇为诧异的是,此前居然没有任何关于《自然》出版历史的有分量的概述。虽然《自然》是全球发行的,但在西方国家之外查阅其全文并不容易(当然,现在可以通过网络进行全文检索)。因此,《〈自然〉百年科学经典》这套选集可能会成为相关研究的第一手资料。通过这套选集提供的独特视角,读者可以了解过去一个多世纪中科学的前沿和热点经历了怎样的变迁,这通常能够折射出当时更为广阔的社会和政治生活的变化趋势。从《自然》在过去近一个半世纪里发表过的十万多篇论文中精选出来的这八百四十余篇文章,展现了社会对科学的冀求和科学对社会的贡献。

《自然》的变迁

《自然》几乎是独一无二的发表所有科学领域中开创性研究成果的杂志,由非常有魄力的英国天文学家约瑟夫·诺曼·洛克耶于1869年创立。其办刊宗旨发表在当年11月11日的《自然》第2期上(为什么没有发表在第1期上原因不详),内容如下:

首先,将科学研究和科学发现的重大成果呈现给公众,并促使科学理念在教育和日常生活中得到更为普遍的认可。

其次,帮助科学家自己,为他们提供自然科学各个分支在世界范围内取得的所有进展的最新信息,为他们探讨不时出现的各种科学问题提供交流平台。

上述内容也是对《自然》现在的办刊宗旨的一个恰当诠释。在《自然》第1期中,读者们可以读到洛克耶对当时的美洲日全食的描述,托马斯·亨利·赫胥黎对最新发现的一些三叠纪恐龙化石的分析,德国物理学家海因里希·古斯塔夫·马格努斯对热辐射和热吸收的一些观察数据,还有胶体化学之父、苏格兰化学家托马斯·格雷姆的讣告。自那时起,如此广泛的学科覆盖就一直是《自然》的特色。

《自然》第1期的面世恰逢期刊出版蓬勃发展之时,科学也日益成为日常生活中不可或缺的一部分。当时的普遍共识是科学家们理应得到更多的尊重、社会荣誉和资金支持。同时,人们呼吁普及科学教育并倡导对科学的兴趣。《自然》从创刊至今一直由英国麦克米伦公司出版,至于缘何这样安排,并没有任何记录。

洛克耶是天文学家,同时也是公职人员,在《自然》首期刊印半年以前,他当选为英国皇家学会会员。他与科学界保持着良好的关系,生物学家托马斯·亨利·赫胥黎和物理学家约翰·廷德尔都与他有来往。在《自然》创刊之初,洛克耶就邀请上述两位为《自然》供稿以确立《自然》的权威地位。作为主编,洛克耶从一开始就展示了《自然》后来一直坚持的一些特色。他不回避个人兴趣,从而使《自然》特别欢迎太阳物理学方面的研究。他赋予《自然》国际化的特色,刊登对各地(诸如圣彼得堡、维也纳和费城等)举行的学术会议的报道。他愿意甚至热衷于报道科学界的新闻和杂谈,也乐于引发争论并坦率地进行报道:早期刊载的一些激烈论战,就显示出未经编辑的尖锐语调。洛克耶还不吝对公众事务和国家大事发表立场鲜明的观点,这些看上去都与科学没有太大关联。

尽管《自然》的宗旨是“将科学研究和科学发现的重大成果呈现给公众”,但它并没有为一般读者降低专业水平,这种状况直到进入之后的一个世纪才有所改观。约翰·马多克斯于1966年成为《自然》的主编,他决定降低这本杂志的专业性以增加它对普通读者的吸引力,同时保证其学术水准。马多克斯希望每一个人都能够阅读和理解关于任何科学领域中的新发现的报道。

这是一个雄心勃勃的目标。即使是现在,《自然》刊登的研究论文对于未受过科学教育的普通人来说也是很有难度的;随着科学专业化程度的提高,对于科学家来说,理解自己专业领域以外的论文常常也是很困难的。另一方面,《自然》已经成为了一个拥有众多“姊妹”刊物的出版物集群,诸如《自然-遗传学》、《自然-地球科学》、《自然-材料学》等,这种扩展与传播和提供新闻之类的内容的新媒体的出现一起,使得《自然》有了更多的工具和渠道来发展新的、更宽泛的读者群。迄今为止,《自然》仍然是被引用得最多的跨学科科学期刊。

发表在《自然》上最有名的、也可能最具影响力的文章当数弗朗西斯·克里克和詹姆斯·沃森对DNA这一携带有机体基因的分子的结构的描述,该文章发表于1953年。它很快被视为理解遗传机制的重大突破:这种将遗传信息存储在由特定的化学组成单元构成的四码系统中的分子结构,立即揭示了这种信息被复制并遗传到下一代的可能方式。这是达尔文的进化论中缺失的环节,它显示了在分子尺度上基因是如何工作的。正是基于对沃森和克里克的这篇划时代文章的理解,才有了诸如解码人类基因组和克隆多莉羊等一系列进展,这些结果都由《自然》首先发表,并被收录在本套选集中。

其他的一些学科也曾因为《自然》刊载过的发现而发生彻底的改变。形成于20世纪30年代的板块构造学说被1963年弗雷德里克·瓦因和卓门·马修斯发现的海底扩张所证实。核物理学的诞生不仅深深地影响了物理科学,也对社会甚至国际关系产生了深远的影响,而这正是基于20世纪二三十年代欧内斯特·卢瑟福、尼尔斯·玻尔、奥托·哈恩、伊雷娜·约里奥-居里和奥托·弗里施等人在《自然》上发表的文章。物质的量子力学本质被克林顿·戴维森和莱斯特·革末在1927年进行的电子束的波动性实验所证实。本套选集还见证了大气和环境科学中出现的许多重大进展,从1985年发现南极上空平流层的臭氧被破坏到逐渐意识到人类活动导致的全球变暖,以及生物圈、海洋、地壳和冰盖之间相互作用导致的过去的一系列气候波动。

悼念主编约翰·马多克斯

在这个项目的最后阶段,约翰·马多克斯与世长辞了,享年83岁。1966~1973年和1980~1995年,他两度担任《自然》的主编。在他的领导下,《自然》从一个完全针对专业人士的期刊转型成为一个集记录科学与将科学的最新进展以易于理解的方式呈现给读者为一体的出版物。这一特质恰恰与马多克斯本人的特点相符,他在伦敦的国王学院接受学习并被培养成为专业的物理学家,而到1955年他成了当时《曼彻斯特卫报》(现称《卫报》)的顶尖级科学新闻记者。

记者的本能使马多克斯将《自然》重新变为科学界很有影响力的声音。他继承了洛克耶的传统,愿意就重大事件在杂志上直言不讳地发表看法,比如,《自然》就曾对《星期日泰晤士报》在20世纪90年代初提出的HIV不是艾滋病的起因这一危险而且危害极大的观点展开论战。这一直率的态度为马多克斯赢得了特立独行的评价,他对科学界有些所谓的正统观点采取不同立场,生前一直对宇宙大爆炸持怀疑态度(他认为这一理论“过于完美”),他还在相当长的时间里对人类活动造成全球变暖的观点表示怀疑(但他后来改变了看法)。最使马多克斯名噪一时的,可能是他刊登了一篇几位法国科学家关于顺势疗法似乎有科学依据的文章。他认为,对这些实验而言,“当时有很多令人满意的、详尽的理由去解释为什么谨慎的人应该终止他们的偏见”,在那之后不久他又领导了一次同样有争议的顺势疗法调查。

马多克斯一生都抵制反科学、反理性的观点。作为终生的无神论者,他的追悼会是在教堂陵地外的一个帐篷中举行的,而他就葬在那片陵地中。

马多克斯也大力倡导研究的国际化,对科学进步产生的社会影响有着敏锐的洞察力——他是致力于核不扩散的帕格沃什组织的成员。1995年他获得了爵士头衔,他强调能获此殊荣是因为《自然》而不是因为他自己。2000年,他当选为英国皇家学会名誉会员,之前几乎从未听说有非专业从事科学研究的人士获此荣誉。作为一个博学者,马多克斯被认为是少数几位能够从头至尾阅读《自然》并且大致理解全部内容的人士之一。很难想象还有其他人能够具备足够宽的知识面来筹划这一选集。

文章的遴选

上面提到的那些著名的文章很明显应该被收录在这套选集之中,然而整套选集由八百四十余篇文章组成,遴选的难度相当大。最初的选篇工作由约翰·马多克斯完成,他选出了大约两千篇《自然》上最有影响的文章。这些篇目后来由菲利普·鲍尔进行了浓缩和补充,他当时是《自然》的顾问编辑和针对科学各领域进行写作的自由撰稿人,他于2007年10月成为本选集的项目执行编辑。

很显然,所有曾经在某种程度上“重要”的文章都有被收录的必要,但操作起来并不像看上去那么容易。首先,科学中真正重要的发现更像潮水涨潮而非海啸:它们是经过稳步积累而逐渐显露出来的,而不会如洪水般乍现。有时候必须在两种情况之间折衷:一是需要对科学研究中的重点论题予以公正的评判,像《自然》的字里行间体现出来的那样,二是不能忽略任何为某一学科带来重大变革的工作。

一篇文章被视为重要的原因有多种。其中一些可能是由于为某一特定的探索领域的确立提供了帮助,例如,寻找空间中的重力波,或者探寻地外行星,尽管文章中的实际发现并没有经受住时间的检验。这样的文章并不只是具有历史价值,它们可能对科学的其他领域发生的事情有启示作用,并说明了当时的概念是如何被接受的。例如,就《自然》中的许多讨论而言上述说法看上去都是正确的,在查尔斯·达尔文的《人类起源》发表至少50年之后,《自然》发表了许多关于优生学的讨论:通过选择性生育来调控人类的遗传。这些想法在现代社会已被摒弃,但是忽略掉它们不仅是对历史的不忠实,也会使读者曲解当时的生物学家对于达尔文理论的解释。

选篇的重要原则之一是从国际化的视角考虑每篇文章的重要性,并不偏向与中国相关的或中国科学家的发现。因此,中国科学家们(赵忠尧,陈培基,董枝明等)的研究成果的入选,纯粹是基于其对全球科学界的重大贡献。

还有一些文章从今天的视角来看价值有限——往往是因为对它们的发现已经有了透彻的理解。比如,一些关于维生素化学的早期研究,或者试图理解原子核的本质及其构成粒子的早期研究,这些研究看上去并不是那么“经典”,但它们当时是深入理解相关现象过程中的关键基石。

选集中也有少数文章不仅仅是“错误的”,而且简直算得上是臭名昭著。20世纪60年代末和20世纪70年代的“聚合水”事件中,前苏联科学家声称发现了一种新的超黏滞性的水,这一结果被证明是毫无根据的,很可能是实验中的人为因素造成的。但是,它和1988年《自然》发表的推测“水的记忆”的文章一起,不仅揭示了科学研究是如何进行的(以及可能是如何错误地进行的),也凸显了当时进行的对水分子结构研究的主题。本选集还收录了一些调查所谓氢的“冷核聚变”的文章,它们不仅在今天再现了20世纪80年代末那场尖锐的科学争论,而且在当时揭示那是一个错误实验的过程中也发挥了重要作用。那些揭露古生物学中“皮尔当人”骗局的文章也具有同样的意义。

我们还选入了一些顶级科学家对某一学科进展的综述,尽管它们本身没有报道新的发现。这在某种程度上是因为这些文献是科学发展中的里程碑,借助于《自然》的认可,它们确立了所报道的工作后来成为今天科学重要组成部分的地位,并在当时使其得到广大读者的认可。阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦1921年对他的相对论的历史回顾的文章入选,就是基于上述原因。那时,广义相对论已经被广泛接受,尤其是1919年阿瑟·爱丁顿证实了遥远星体发出的光会被引力弯曲,正如广义相对论所预言的那样。尽管如此,刊登在《自然》上的这篇文章仍然给予英语世界的读者一个强有力的信号——广义相对论确立了。

战前这些综述性的文章是《自然》的重要组成部分。最近几十年,原创的研究论文、综述和对别处发表的科学进展的评论之间有明晰的界限,而早些时候三者之间的区别并不明确,而且当时杂志所报道的严格意义上的新研究不像后来那么多。没有这些“综述”文章,当时科学界的许多事件都会无人知晓。越久远的时期越是这样,所以在《自然》初创的前几十年里,它更像是一份“科学新闻”,在报道新颖研究和学术会议的同时,也报道了至少同样多的杂谈、传闻和奇闻轶事。也许这反映了科学报道越来越专业化和标准化的过程,这一变化有利也有弊。

从总体上看,本选集收录的文章都是重要的科学论文,而不是对发表于别处的研究工作的评论、社论、书评、讣告或诸如此类的文章。这是本选集宗旨的体现,尽管这样只能够展示《自然》的部分“特色”。一些最活泼的论述就包含在那些“被排除”的文体中,读者需要在其他地方寻找对《自然》所有特点的记述——显而易见, A Bedside Nature (弗里曼著,1997年出版)就是一个这样的尝试,这本书由沃尔特·格拉泽(他也参与了本选集的选篇工作)编辑,收录了1869~1953年的各类文章。

每篇文章的导读

本选集收录的每篇文章都配有一篇简短的导读,介绍该文主要的发现并介绍当时的研究背景。这些导读由约翰·马多克斯和《自然》的几位现任和前任编辑撰写,力图勾勒出(受篇幅限制,他们只能点到为止)一幅更为广阔的图景:为什么这项研究很重要?它如何改变或者深化当时的思想?以及这个结论如何被证明、改进或者如何被后来的研究结论替代?有些导读会简略介绍一下文章的作者,他们或者在当时特别杰出(也许现在少有人知),或者后来变得非常杰出。遴选和编辑这套选集的过程中最有价值的方面之一,就是让我们意识到《自然》曾经报道过这么宽广而有深度的研究,以及众多非凡的科学家。不可避免的是,本选集做不到面面俱到,但是导读填补了一些空白并建立起了文章之间并不明显的联系,从某种程度上弥补了未能收录某些文章而造成的遗憾。有些情况下,只有事后才能明白一个发现的重要性,因此我们偶尔需要指出某项研究可能的影响,而那些文章的作者当时可能并不清楚。

中国的科学出版

出版和传媒在传播和促进现代科学的发展方面发挥着重要的作用。比如,在19世纪末的中国,西方自然科学和社会科学著作的翻译作品极大地推动了中国从封建社会进步到现代社会的步伐。最有影响力的翻译作品之一就是学者严复(1854~1921年)翻译的托马斯·亨利·赫胥黎的作品《天演论》(严复于1877~1879年在英国格林尼治海军学院学习)。这一作品立即成为当时进步的年轻学者们的必读书,书中自然选择的思想影响了几代知识分子。赫胥黎是《自然》发展过程中的重要角色,在杂志的早期发表过很多文章。查尔斯·达尔文也是《自然》的读者和作者,赫胥黎传播的就是他的思想,在选集的第1卷中就收录有他的文章。关于达尔文的进化论的讨论占据了《自然》相当大的篇幅,而且时至今日依然如此,正如2009年2月11日《自然》庆祝达尔文诞辰200周年暨《物种起源》发表150周年的专刊所示。

随着最近三十年经济的快速增长和科研产出的日益增加,中国已成为亚太地区和全世界重要的科技力量。中国的一线科研研究人员的数量仅次于美国,他们发表的研究论文的数量在2008年已经超过了英国和日本。这也使得能够在中国方便地获得过去及现在的高水平研究论文变得前所未有的重要。大部分科学文献都没有中文版本,这套选集第一次尝试改变这种状况,我们对原文未作任何改动,对译文进行了严格的审订以确保其准确性。所有文章都按发表时间顺序排列,每卷附有按学科分类的文章索引以便快速查找。

一部开创性的选集

《〈自然〉百年科学经典》的开创性在于,此前从未有过如此鸿篇巨制的科学论文选集,而且针对的是全世界的学生与研究人员。它涵盖广泛的学科领域,从生物学到地球与环境科学、材料科学及物理学等等。我们以英汉双语形式出版的目的是为了促进不同文化之间的沟通并激发国际化的研究。

我们希望借此机会感谢所有的译者、审稿专家和编辑,是他们的精心努力成就了本套选集。我们也希望外语教学与研究出版社、麦克米伦出版集团和自然出版集团能够更加紧密地合作,向中国的科学家、学生和科技爱好者提供更多高水准的科学作品。我们相信,这样的合作一定会有效地促进中国科学家和西方科学家之间的思想交流与成果共享。

菲利普·坎贝尔
《自然》主编 7FwFNondhsHlQm+/+sHH/R4IvMZ68IDgL5ATyYLEOjmbK3SIS1lG0P9WM+yalWMO

点击中间区域
呼出菜单
上一章
目录
下一章
×