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Lesson 4 Understanding “Who questions much, shall learn much, and remember much.”– Francis Bacon (1561–1626) It seems obvious now how we acquire knowledge and understanding. To start with, you need questions. Then, to find answers, you observe the world around you and study the facts. After that you consider possible answers and test each to find the right ones. Although today we are more accustomed to typing a few key words into a search engine and waiting for the Internet to spit the answer out for us, modern scientists and thinkers are still solving the world's problems with this type of analysis — luckily for us. However, in the 17th century when Francis Bacon suggested that this type of thinking was the way to gain knowledge, he was going against the views of the day. Bacon held an important rank under King James (1566–1625) of England but his true interest was not the day to day bureaucratic details of the government, but the worthy search for knowledge. This was certainly not the interest of most people in his day. At that time, people believed more in religion than in facts and people like Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), who proved scientific ideas such as “the Earth is not the centre of the universe”, were often punished by the church with no one coming to their defence. The church and many people tended to ignore the facts and were unwilling to challenge what they had always comfortably believed. They preferred to make assumptions about the world based on the experience of others. In fact, when Galilei proved that the Earth was not the centre of the universe, instead of believing him, people chose to believe views that were almost 2000 years old! It is not surprising that people wanted to believe these ancient views as they had been put forward by the great philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BC). He said that the Earth must be the centre of the universe because it felt like the Earth was standing still. Galilei disagreed. At first, people approved of his studies and urged him to continue, but later when he proved Aristotle wrong, they grew angry and put him in prison. They didn't want to challenge what they'd always thought was true. This also shows how people didn't want to search for their own understanding or educate themselves. And this is still often true today. People feel that if someone important and respected says that something is right, then it must be so. But even though Aristotle was a great man who inspired many great scientists and philosophers after him, he was wrong at times. And Galilei too made mistakes. He is now known as the father of astronomy but he believed that the earth moved round the sun in a perfect circle. He was wrong. Therefore our understanding of the world around us is constantly growing and changing. In other words, we learn more every day and none of us can ever sit back and say, “We know it all”. We need to thank the great men of the past for the wisdom to know that we don't know it all and probably never will, for that would mean a world without questions. So much of our knowledge and understanding of the world today is due to people like Bacon and Galilei, who were brave enough to step out from the shadows of conventional thought in order to find the kingdom of knowledge that today's civilisation is built upon. These men knew that knowledge and understanding are things to fight for; more vital to a man, and more beneficial to mankind, some might say, than all the money in the world. “All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.” Tapescript Man: Well, I went to a traditional British public school. I left four years ago. The school is in the city. It has about 700 students, and it's mostly a boarding school. There are lots of facilities for sport – tennis courts, swimming pool, that sort of thing. There are also good science laboratories and lots of computers. The classes are small, so if you fall behind with your work the teacher will go over it with you. It may have changed now, but we did a lot of subjects and we even had lessons on Saturday mornings! We had some free afternoons when we could get together. They gave us lots of homework and we had tests all the time. I remember that after-school clubs were quite popular. I was in a drama club – we once put on a performance of Hamlet – and I also set up a school radio station! There were lots of rules and discipline was strict. We could only leave the school grounds at certain times, and we had to wear a uniform. I didn't get into trouble very often, but one of my friends did. He got punished a lot – he wasn't allowed to go out at the weekend, and once he was sent home for three weeks. Woman: My school was very different from most schools. It was in a lovely old house in a forest. There were only sixty pupils. There weren't many facilities, but there was a good library if you wanted to look up information or catch up with your work. You won't believe this, but we didn't have to go to lessons! And there was no homework or tests, or anything like that. We could do what we wanted – if we felt like it, we could play all day. If we wanted to study, we just went to the teachers and asked them to help us. At first, I did nothing, I put off studying for weeks! Then I got interested in science and computers, and I studied science with a teacher who I got on with. I liked it so much that now I'm studying engineering at university and I want to go on to do further research. There were lots of other activities at school you could take up if you wanted – sports, painting and acting. I guess the best thing was that we were free, and the school was democratic. Everything was decided at school meetings, and everyone could vote – each student had the same vote as the teachers. We decided all kinds of things – we even selected the teachers! And discipline, well, we all decided on rules and punishments when one of us did something wrong. A lot of people don't believe me, but it worked really well. 第四课 理解 “多问，多学，多得。”弗兰西斯o培根（1561-1626） 如今我们获取知识和理解的方式似乎显而易见。你需要以问题开始。然后，为了寻找答案，你观察你身边的世界，研究事实。在你找到合理的答案之后，对每个答案进行测试来找到正确的答案。尽管我们现在更习惯于在搜索引擎中敲进几个关键词，等待因特网为我们找出答案；然而幸运的是，当代科学家和思想家们还是用这种分析的方法为我们解决世界上的难题。 然而，当弗兰西斯o培根在17世纪提出这种想法是获取知识的方法时，他与当时的观点是相悖的。培根在英国詹姆斯国王（1566-1625）的统治下担任着一个重要的职务，但是他真正的兴趣并不是日复一日的政府官僚细节，而是对知识的崇高探求。 这也表明了人们有多么不想找寻他们自己的理解，多么不想让自己受教育。 而且现今这一点常常也是事实。 人们觉得，如果某个受人敬仰的重要人物认为某事是对的，那它就一定是对的。 但是，尽管亚里斯多德是一个伟人，他激励了许多随后的伟大科学家和哲学家，但他有时也会错。 伽利略也犯过错误。 现在大家都知道他是天文学之父，但是他也曾相信地球呈精确的圆形围绕太阳运动。他也错了。 因此，我们对周围世界的理解是不停增长、不停改变的。 换句话说，我们一天比一天学得多；没有人能什么都不做就说，“我们全都知道”。 我们需要感谢过去的伟人的智慧，他们知道我们不完全了解，而且可能永远都不会完全了解。因为那就意味着这个世界没有了疑问。 我们今天这么多的知识和对世界的了解都要归功于像培根和伽利略这样的人，他们勇敢地从守旧思想的阴影中站出来，为了找到建立现代文明的根基—知识王国。这些人知道知识和理解是需要力争的；有人可能会说，相比世界上所有的钱财，知识和理解对个人来说更重要，对人类来说更有益。 “所有的真理一旦被发现就很容易理解；关键就在于发现他们。”—伽利略o伽利莱（1564-1642） |
