2015考研英语通过阅读识单词：反科学
作者：科大科院考研网 发表时间：2014-04-26 来源：科大科院考研网
Science has long had an uneasy relationship with other aspects of culture. Think of Galileo’s 17th century trial for his rebelling belief before the Catholic Church or poet William Blake’s harsh remarks against the mechanistic worldview of Isaac Newton. The schism between science and the humanities has, if anything, deepened in this century.
Until recently, the scientific community was so powerful that it could afford to ignore its critics - but no longer. As funding for science has declined, scientists have attacked “anti-science” in several books, notably Higher Superstition, by Paul R. Gross, a biologist at the University of Virginia, and Norman Levitt, a mathematician at Rutgers University; and The Demon-Haunted World, by Carl Sagan of Cornell University.
Defenders of science have also voiced their concerns at meetings such as “The Flight from Science and Reason,” held in New York City in 1995, and “Science in the Age of (Mis)information,” which assembled last June near Buffalo.
Anti-science clearly means different things to different people. Gross and Levitt find fault primarily with sociologists, philosophers and other academics who have questioned science’s objectivity. Sagan is more concerned with those who believe in ghosts, creationism and other phenomena that contradict the scientific worldview.
A survey of news stories in 1996 reveals that the anti-science tag has been attached to many other groups as well, from authorities who advocated the elimination of the last remaining stocks of smallpox virusto Republicans who advocated decreased funding for basic research.
Few would dispute that the term applies to the Unabomber, those manifesto, published in 1995, scorns science and longs for return to a pretechnological utopia. But surely that does not mean environmentalists concerned about uncontrolled industrial growth are anti-science, as an essay in US News & World Report last May seemed to suggest.
The environmentalists, inevitably, respond to such critics. The true enemies of science, argues Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University, a pioneer of environmental studies, are those who question the evidence supporting global warming, the depletion of the ozone layer and other consequences of industrial growth.
Indeed, some observers fear that the anti-science epithet is in danger of becoming meaningless. “The term ′anti-science′ can lump together too many, quite different things,” notes Harvard University philosopher Gerald Holton in his 1993 work Science and Anti Science. “They have in common only one thing that they tend to annoy or threaten those who regard themselves as more enlightened. ”
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科学与文化的其他方面的关系一直都很不稳定。想想看，17世纪伽利略由于他叛逆性的信仰而遭受到天主教会的审判，诗人威廉·布莱克对艾萨克·牛顿的机械论世界观进行尖锐地批判。本世纪，科学与人文之间的分裂加剧了。
直到前不久，科学界有着如此之强大的权威以致可以对其批评者不予理会——但是现在不是这样的情况了。由于科研经费减少，所以科学家出了几本书对 “反科学”势力进行批评，其中值得注意的有弗吉尼亚大学生物学家保罗·R·格罗斯和拉特格斯大学的数学家诺曼·莱维特合著的《高级迷信》及康奈尔大学的卡尔·萨根著的《鬼怪世界》。
科学的捍卫者们也在一些会议上表示了他们的担忧。比如，1995年在纽约市召开的“远离科学和理性”会议，以及去年6月在布法罗市召开的“信息(迷信)时代的科学”会议。
显然，对于不同的人反科学有着不同的含义。格罗斯和莱维特主要对质疑科学客观性的社会学家、哲学家和其他学者进行批评。萨根则更关注那些相信鬼怪、上帝造物论和其他与科学世界观不同的人。
1996年的一项新闻调查报道表明，反科学的标签也贴在了许多其他的群体上，例如从提倡消灭所有现存的天花病毒的官员到支持削减基础研究基金的共和党人大都有着反科学的倾向。
如果把这一词用在仇视现代文明的恐怖主义者身上，也不会引起太多的争议，因为他们曾在1995年公开发表过对科学的蔑视并且渴望回到前技术时代理想社会的声明。但是并不意味着那些对毫无控制的工业发展表示忧虑的环境主义者也是反科学的，正如去年5月份一篇刊登在《美国新闻和世界报导》的文章似乎暗示过这样的例子。
环境主义者毫无疑问要对此类的批评做出回应。斯坦福大学的保罗·埃利希是环境研究的先驱者，他认为，科学的真正的敌人是那些对工业增长带来的全球变暖、臭氧层稀薄及其他后果的证据提出质疑的人。
确实，一些观察者担心反科学这个词正处于消失的边际。哈佛大学的哲学家杰拉尔德·霍尔顿在1993年的著作《科学和反科学》的一书中写道“‘反科学’这个词可以包含很多迥然不同的东西，他们只有一点是相同的，就是会激怒或威胁那些自以为比别人更有见识的人。”
