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2500多年以前，古希腊哲学家赫拉克利特观察到一切事物都处于永恒的变化中。“一切事物都处在流变之中，”他说，“没有什么是静止不变的。”
做了近50年的科学研究，我确信赫拉克利特是对的。在我的人生经历中，我看到太多的变化，这些变化包括个体和我们对世界的理解。
1970年的我还是个年轻人，第一次搭飞机从故乡威尔士飞到巴黎，准确地说，是搭了好几次飞机。因为这一趟旅程我就换乘了三架飞机，花了整整一天的时间。很多年以后，我飞到北京所花的时间比那次飞到巴黎要少得多。从飞机座位前的电子屏幕上，我还可以看到这趟旅程飞越了无数山脉和海洋。
这几十年来，还发生了很多其他的技术飞跃。在我小的时候，计算机很庞大，如今经过一步步的小型化，出现了可以随身携带的笔记本电脑和智能手机。通过互联网，人们可以分享更多的知识。
作为一个年轻人，我曾经见证了人类第一次踏上月球并且安全返回。通过电视这个新媒介，所有国家的人都从太空的角度看到了地球，意识到我们生活在一个共同的家园里。很多年后，我又见证了中国发射了自己的空间站，这代表中国的科技取得了非凡的进步。
但是我发现，有些变化在给我所熟悉的人们和社区的发展带来益处的同时，也带来了困扰。
我在威尔士的朗达山谷里长大。那里因为发展煤炭和钢铁工业而闻名，这也为当地提供了很多就业机会。我的岳父参与设计和建造了当地最大的钢铁厂，我的父亲曾为一家工业陶瓷厂工作。制造业就围绕在我的身边。
后来，我离开了朗达山谷去牛津大学读书，而我的故乡也在经历着变化。工业逐渐衰退，随之而来的便是工人失业和经济困难。原来很多适合当地年轻人的工作岗位逐渐消失，人们似乎只能去别的地方或别的行业中找工作了。
但我从不认为成为一个科学家就可以脱离熟练工人所具备的工程技术能力。我的父亲使我清晰地认识到，即使动脑过日子也不能离开动手的技巧。将理论与实践分离开来一定是错的。
作为一个物理学家，我深深地了解这一点。所有有成就的科学家都会告诉你，他们之所以可以得出重要的发现，无论是研究宇宙还是病毒，无论是设计大型粒子对撞机还是基因排序，都要依靠出色的动手能力。我们的通信依赖半导体技术，空间站依赖高质量的金属和加工这些金属的技能。
因此，我意识到，在这个“第四次工业革命”的时代，把我现在所做的研究和我儿时就已熟悉的制造业结合在一起会给社会带来巨大的影响。这个时代把我们的最新技术突破与传统制造业中真正做实业的人和地区联系了起来。
对于像我的故乡威尔士一样受锈带问题困扰的后工业化地区，这是一个新生的机会。发生同样问题的地区还有英格兰北部和中国的工业中心，这些地方也面临着来自海外更廉价的劳动力和工作机会流失的挑战。
让我尤其兴奋的是，这也意味着为年轻人创造更多的机会，重塑工人的尊严，他们可以在新工厂里使用数字技术，同时结合他们已经具有的工程技术来重新塑造未来。在曾经的旧工厂和矿区，新的研究机构给社区创造了更多的就业机会，也为当地企业带来了订单。一度颓废的工业城市如今焕发了生机。
能推动这种转变的人需要有远见和敢为天下先的勇气。而回报将体现在愿意做出转变的人的工作和生活中。在这个过程中，我们也会发展更加绿色的工业技术，把一个充满更加新鲜的空气和充足的自然资源的地球留给后人。
子曰，智者动，仁者静，智者乐，仁者寿。这本书结合了我们已知的经验和最新的研究发现，来讲述在这一转变中我们如何把事情做得更好，从而进一步改善人们的生活。
这本书旨在帮助中国的政府、工业界、研究人员和工程师了解后工业化社会中的制造业升级这种转变是如何实现的。我在牛津大学的学生马兆远教授为此付出了巨大的努力，像他当年从事物理学研究一样富有热情。他相信这种转变会使中国和全球其他地方受益。因此，我向读者推荐这本书，希望它有益于我们为未来人类建设一个更好的社会和世界。
（特此附上推荐序的英文原文）
Over two and a half thousand years ago, the Ancient Greek Philosopher Heraclitus observed that the one constant in life was change.“All is flux,”he said.“Nothing stays still.”
As a scientist for almost five decades, I can confirm that Heraclitus was correct. In my lifetime I have seen enormous changes for individuals and our understanding of the world.
As a young man in 1970 I took my first flight to Paris from my home in Wales. It should I say flights. The journey was broken into three parts and took a full day. Years later it took me less time to fly to Beijing, tracking my journey on the monitor in front of me as I travelled over mountains and oceans.
There have been so many other breakthroughs too. The large computers of my youth were miniaturized until they could fit on a desk or even into a phone. They were networked together so knowledge could be shared.
As a young man I saw a man set foot on the moon and then safely return to our planet. Through the new medium of television, all nations viewed our earth from space and realised we shared a common home. Years later I would watch China launch its own space station, a sign of its extraordinary technological development.
But some of the changes I saw brought problems as well as benefits for the people and communities I knew best.
I grew up in the Rhondda Valley in Wales, a place famous for mining and steel manufacture which provided local employment. My father-in-law helped design and build one of the great steel works of the region and my father worked for a company that made industrial ceramics. Manufacturing was all around me.
I left my valley to study at Oxford University but my home region was already changing and facing industrial decline. With it came unemployment and economic difficulties. The jobs which has once been so plentiful for local young people dried up. It seemed that the jobs of the future would be found in other places and lines of work.
But I never accepted the ideas I was learning as a scientist should be separated from the technical abilities of skilled workers. My father had made it clear to me that the life of the mind should not be separated from the skills of the hand. To separate theory from application was an error.
I knew this was true from my work as a physicist. All good scientists will readily tell you that their ability to make important discoveries about the nature, the universe or the makeup of a virus is dependent on outstanding technical skills, whether that is in creating a particle collider or sequencing DNA. Our communications needed breakthroughs in semiconductor technologies. The space station needed an understanding of high performance metals and how these could be manufactured.
So it was I came to recognise the powerful impact of bringing together research and the manufacturing industries of my childhood in what has been called a fourth industrial revolution-one that unites our break through technologies with the places and people who make things.
This approach I saw might be the power to bring new life to the struggling post-industrial wastelands of my home valley in Wales, of the North of England or to the manufacturing heartlands of China-now also facing cheaper labour costs from overseas and the loss of employment.
What was especially exciting to me was the possibility that this approach might create opportunities for young people and restore the dignity of the workers who would forge their futures in new factories in which digital technologies would work hand-in-hand with existing skills and craftsmanship. On the very site of former factories and mines, new research campuses could grow which would create jobs for communities and orders for companies. The tired industrial towns and cities could have new life.
Those who make such a change possible need vision and a willingness to do things differently. But the rewards will be seen in the work and lives of those who make this transition. In the process we might also develop greener design industrial processes which do less damage to our environment, which keep the air cleaner and preserve the resources of our planet for generations to come.
The great teacher Confucius said,“They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.”But the change this book is proposing unites what we have long known with what we are just discovering, how to make things better and improve our lives in the process.
This text was written to help the industrialists, policy makers, researchers and workers of China to understand how this shift might take place. It is the work of my former student Professor Ma who has dedicated his energies to this challenge just as he first did to the study of Physics, convinced that this change might benefit the people of China and beyond. I commend it to his readers in the hope that it will help future generations make a better society and world.