CHAPTER 5 ‘The Master of Those Who know’ Aristotle 第5章 “有识之士的大师” 亚里士多德

CHAPTER 5 ‘The Master of Those Who know’ Aristotle 第5章 “有识之士的大师” 亚里士多德

‘All men by nature desire to know’, said Aristotle. You have probably met someone like this, always keen to learn more. Perhaps you've also come across know-it-alls who have lost the curiosity that always remained important to Aristotle. His hopeful view was that people will strive for knowledge about themselves and the world. We know, unfortunately, that this isn't always the case.

“人的本性就是求知”，亚里士多德说。你可能见过这种人，总是渴望学到更多。你可能遇到过求知欲特别强的人，失去了他的好奇心。但对于亚里士多德来说，好奇心一直特别重要，他希望人们总是对自己和周围的世界保持求知的精神。当然我们知道，并不总是这样的。

Aristotle spent his whole life learning and teaching. He was born in 384 BC, in Stagira, Thrace (now Khalkidhiki in Greece). He was the son of a doctor, but from the age of about ten, he was looked after and taught by his guardian Proxenus. When he was about seventeen, Aristotle went to Athens to study at Plato's famous Academy. He stayed there for twenty years. Although Aristotle's approach to the natural world was completely different from Plato's, Aristotle was very fond of his teacher and wrote about his work lovingly after Plato's death in 347 BC. Some say that the history of Western philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato; what this means is that Plato raised many of the questions that philosophers still think about. What is the nature of beauty? What is truth, or knowledge? How can we be good? How can we best organize our societies? Who makes the rules we live by? What does our experience of the things of the world tell us about what they 'really' are?

亚里士多德所有的生命都花在学习和教授上。他生于公元前384年，出生地在色雷斯的Stagira（现在希腊的Khalkidhiki）。他是一个医生的儿子，但从大约10岁开始，他由监护人Proxenus照看和教育。当他大约17岁的时候，亚里士多德去了雅典的著名的柏拉图学院学习。他在那里待了20年，尽管亚里士多德研究自然的方法与柏拉图的完全不一样，他还是非常喜爱老师，在柏拉图公元前347年去世后，记录下钟爱的老师的工作。有人说西方哲学的历史就是柏拉图的一系列注脚，意思是说柏拉图提出了很多现在仍然在思考的哲学问题。美的本质是什么？什么是真相，或知识？我们怎么才能做好？我们怎样才能最好的组织社会？谁制定了我们生活的规则？关于世界上事物的真实本质，我们对它们的经验能告诉我们什么？

Aristotle, too, was intrigued by many of these philosophical questions, but he tended to answer them in a way we might call ‘scientific’. He was, like Plato, a philosopher, but he was a natural philosopher, what we are calling a ‘scientist’. The branch of philosophy that most excited him was logic - how we can think more clearly. He was always busy with the world about him, on the ground and in the skies, and with the way natural things change.

亚里士多德也对这些哲学问题非常入迷，但他回答这些问题的方式我们可以称之为“科学的”。和柏拉图一样，他也是个哲学家，但他也是一个自然哲学家，这也称之为“科学家”。最令他兴奋的哲学分支就是逻辑，就是我们怎样才能更清晰的思考。他一直忙着了解周围的世界，地上的和天上的，而且是以自然变换的方式。

Much of what Aristotle wrote has been lost, but we are lucky to have some of his lecture notes. He left Athens after Plato died, probably because he felt unsafe as a foreigner there. He spent some years in the city of Assos (now in Turkey), where he set up a school, married the daughter of the local ruler and, after she died, lived with a slave girl with whom he had a son, Nicomachos. It was here that Aristotle began his biological investigations, which he continued on the island of Lesbos. In 343 BC, Aristotle took a very important job: tutor to Alexander the Great, in Macedonia (now a separate country just north of Greece). He hoped to turn his pupil into a philosophically sensitive ruler; he didn't succeed, but Alexander came to rule over much of the known world, including Athens, so Aristotle could safely return to that city. Instead of going back to Plato's Academy, Aristotle founded a new school just outside Athens. It had a public walkway (peripatos in Greek), so Aristotle's followers became known as Peripatetics, or those constantly moving around: an appropriate name considering how much Aristotle himself moved from place to place. After Alexander's death, Aristotle lost his support in Athens, so he moved one last time, to Chalcis, in Greece, where he died shortly afterwards.

亚里士多德的很多著作都遗失了，但幸运的是我们还有一些他的演讲说明。柏拉图去世后，他离开了雅典，可能是觉得作为一个外国人在那里不是很安全。他在Assos城市（现在在土耳其）待了几年，在那里他开办了一个学校，娶了一个当地统治者的女儿为妻，她去世后，他与一个女奴隶生活在了一起，并有了一个儿子，名叫Nicomachos。在这里亚里士多德开始了他的生物调查，然后在Lesbos岛上继续了这项工作。在公元前343年，亚里士多德开始了一项非常重要的工作：在马其顿（现在是希腊北面一个独立的国家）给亚历山大大帝当老师。他希望将这个学生变成一个对哲学敏感的统治者，他没有成功，但亚历山大很快就开始统治大部分的已知世界，包括雅典，这使亚里士多德可以安全回到这座城市。他并没有回到柏拉图学院，而是在雅典外开设了一座新学校。其中有一条公共走道（在希腊语中是peripatos），所以亚里士多德的追随者被称为Peripatetics，意为不断走动的人：对于亚里士多德本人来说确实是个合适的名字，因为他不断的从一个地方到另一个地方。在亚历山大死后，亚里士多德在雅典失去了支持，所以他进行了最后一次迁移，到了希腊的Chalcis，不久后就死在了那里。

Aristotle would have been puzzled to be described as a scientist; he was simply a philosopher in the literal meaning of the word: a lover of wisdom. But he spent his life trying to make sense of the world around him, and in ways that we would now describe as scientific. His vision of the earth, its creatures and the heavens around it, influenced our understanding for more than 1,500 years. Along with Galen, he towered over all other ancient thinkers. He built on what had gone before, of course, but he was no armchair philosopher. He actually engaged with the material world as he attempted to understand it.

如果亚里士多德知道自己被称为科学家，肯定会非常困惑；他只是字面意义上的哲学家：智慧的爱好者。但他倾其一生来解释周围的世界，而且是以现在称为科学的方式来解释。他对地球、生物和上天的想象力在之后的1500年内一直影响着我们的理解。他和Galen胜过了其他所有的古代思想家。他的工作当然是在前人的工作基础上，但他不是空想的哲学家。他想了解周围的物质世界，所以他真的进行了深入的调查。

We can separate his science into three parts: the living world (plants and animals, including human beings); the nature of change, or movement, much of which is contained in a work of his entitled Physics; and the structure of the heavens, or the relationship of the earth to the sun, moon, stars and other heavenly bodies.

我们可以将他的科学分为三部分：生物世界（动物和植物，包括人类）；运动或变化的本质，这部分工作后面被称为物理；天空的结构，或者说是地球与太阳、月亮、星星以及其他天体之间的关系。

Aristotle spent much time studying how plants and animals are put together and how they work. He wanted to know how they develop before birth, hatching, or germination, and then how they grow. He had no microscope, but his eyesight was obviously good. He described brilliantly the way chicks develop in an egg. After a batch of eggs had been laid, he cracked one each day. The first sign of life he saw was a tiny speck of blood pulsating in what would become the chick's heart. This convinced him that the heart was the key organ in animals. He believed the heart was the centre of emotion and what we would call mental life. Plato (and the Hippocratics) had located these psychological functions in the brain, and they were correct. Nevertheless, when we are frightened, or nervous, or in love, our hearts beat faster, so Aristotle's theory was not silly. He attributed the functions of higher animals, such as human beings, to the activities of a ‘soul’, which has various faculties, or functions. In humans, there were six main faculties of the soul: nutrition and reproduction, sensation, desire, movement, imagination, and reason.

亚里士多德花了很多时间来研究动植物是怎样一起生活的。他想知道在出生/孵化/发芽之前它们是怎样发展的，以及是怎样成长的。他没有显微镜，但显然他的视力很好，他精彩的描述了小鸡在鸡蛋里的发育过程。在产下一批鸡蛋后，他每天打碎一个进行研究。他发现的第一个生命迹象是一个搏动的血点，后来变成小鸡的心脏。这使他相信，心脏是动物的关键器官。他相信心脏是情绪的中心，我们称之为精神生活。柏拉图（和希波克拉底学派）认为在大脑中进行心理活动，而且他们是正确的。尽管这样，当我们害怕或紧张或者相爱的时候，我们的心脏会跳动的更快，所以亚里士多德的理论并不愚蠢。他将高级动物（比如人类）的功能归于灵魂的活动，灵魂有很多本领和职责。对人类来说，灵魂主要有六项功能：滋养和繁殖，感觉，欲望，运动，想象和推理。

All living beings have some of these capacities. Plants, for instance, can grow and reproduce; insects such as ants can also move and feel. Other bigger and more intelligent animals acquire more functions, but Aristotle believed that only human beings could reason - that is, they could think, analyze and decide on a course of action. Human beings therefore sat at the top of Aristotle's scala naturae (‘scale of nature’, or ‘chain of being’). This was a kind of ladder upon which all living things could be arranged, beginning with simple plants and working upwards. This idea was taken up again and again by different naturalists, people who study nature, especially plants and animals. Look out for it in later chapters.

所有的生物都有一些这样的能力。比如植物，可以生长和繁殖；像蚂蚁这样的昆虫可以运动和感觉。其他更大更智能的动物具有更多的功能，但亚里士多德相信只有人类可以进行推理，也就是说，只有人类可以思考、分析、决定一项活动的过程。人类在亚里士多德的自然的尺度，或生物链（scala naturae）上处于最高位置。这将所有生物排列为梯形，从简单的植物开始向上排列。这个观点一再被不同的自然学家采纳，自然学家是研究自然，尤其是动植物的人。在后面的章节中都可以见到。

Aristotle had a good way of working out what is done by the various parts of a plant or animal, such as the leaves, wings, stomach or kidneys. He assumed that the structure of each part was designed with a particular function in mind. Thus, wings were designed for flight, stomachs for the digestion of food, and kidneys for the processing of urine. This kind of reasoning is called teleological: a telos is a final cause, and this way of thinking focuses on what things are like or what they do. Think about a cup, or a pair of shoes. They both have the shape they have because the person who made them had a specific purpose in mind: to hold liquids for drinking, and to protect feet while walking. Teleological reasoning will appear later in the book, not just in explaining why plants or animals have the various parts that they do, but in the wider physical world as well.

亚里士多德善于研究动植物的各部分的功能，比如叶子，翅膀，胃或肾。他假设每个部件的结构都在头脑中设计好了特殊功能，所以，翅膀是用来飞的，胃是用来消化食物的，肾是用来处理尿液的。这种推理被称为目的论：目的是终极理由，这种思考的方式聚焦在事物是什么样子的，事物是做什么的。想想一个杯子，或一双鞋。它们之所以有现在的形状，是因为当初制造它们的人的脑子里有特定的目的：用来装液体来饮用，走路时用来保护双脚。目的论型的推理在本书后面也会出现，不止用于解释动植物为什么形状是现有的样子，而且在更广阔的物理世界也是如此。

Plants germinate and animals are born, they grow and then die. The seasons regularly come and go. If you drop something, it falls to the ground. Aristotle wanted to explain changes like these. Two ideas were very important to him: ‘potentiality’ and ‘actuality’. Teachers or parents may tell you to reach your potential: that usually means something like getting the best possible marks in a test, or running a race as fast as you can. That is part of Aristotle's idea, but he saw a different kind of potential in things. In his view, a pile of bricks has the potential to become a house, and a lump of stone has the potential to be a statue. Building and sculpting transform these inanimate objects from a kind of potential to a kind of finished thing, or ‘actuality’. Actuality is an end-point of potentiality, when things with potentiality find their ‘natural state’. For example, when things fall, like apples from an apple tree, Aristotle thought that they seek their 'natural' state, which is on the earth. An apple will not suddenly sprout wings and fly, because it and all other things in our world seek the earth, and a flying apple would be very unnatural. That fallen apple may continue to change – it will rot, if no one picks it up and eats it, because that is also part of an apple's cycle of growth and decay. But just by falling it has achieved a kind of actuality. Even birds return to earth after they soar into the sky.

植物发芽，动物出生，它们生长，然后死去。四季定时来去。如果丢下什么东西，它肯定会掉地上。亚里士多德想解释这样的变化。有两个概念对他来说很重要：潜在可能和现实状况。老师或父母会告诉你要发挥潜力：这通常意思是在考试中考到可能的最高分，或在跑的尽可能快。这是亚里士多德观点的一部分，但他在事物中看到了不同的潜力。在他的观点中，一堆砖块可能变成一栋房子，一块石头可能变成一个雕像。建筑和雕刻改变了将这些没有生命的东西从一种潜能变成了完成的作品，或“现实状况”。当有潜在可能的事物找到其自然状态时，现实状况就是潜在可能的终点。比如，当物体掉落时，像苹果从苹果树上掉落，亚里士多德认为它们正在寻找自然状态，也就是在地上的状态。苹果不会突然长出翅膀飞翔，因为它和世界上的其他事物都在寻找大地，飞行的苹果是非常不自然的。掉落的苹果会继续变化，如果没有人捡起来吃掉，它就会腐烂，因为这也是一个苹果生长腐烂的循环。但仅仅掉落就达到了现实状况。即使鸟飞到了天空之中，也会回到大地上。

If the 'natural' resting place of things is on the firm earth, what about the moon, the sun, planets and stars? They may be up there, like an apple hanging in a tree, or a boulder on a mountain ledge, but they never come crashing to earth. Good thing, too. Aristotle's answer was simple. From the moon downwards, change is always happening; this is because the world is composed of the four elements: fire, air, earth and water (and their properties: hot and dry fire, hot and moist air, cold and dry earth, and cold and moist water). But above the moon, things are made instead of a fifth, unchanging element, the quintessence ('fifth essence'). The heavenly bodies move forever in perfect circular motion. Aristotle's universe filled a fixed space but not a fixed time. The sun, moon and stars have been moving for all eternity around the earth, which floats at the centre of it all. There is a lovely paradox here, for the earth, the centre, is also the only part of the universe in which change and decay can take place.

如果物体自然的静止之处是在坚实的大地上，那月亮、太阳、行星和星星呢？它们在上面，像苹果挂在树上，或像一个大圆石在山壁上，但绝不会掉到地球上。这也是好事。亚里士多德对此的答案是简单的。从月亮往下，一直在发生变化；这是因为世界是由四种元素构成的：火，气，土和水（他们的性质：火是热而干的，气是热和湿的，土是冷而干的，水是冷而湿的）。月亮之上，物体是由第五种不变的元素构成的，the quintessence（“第五精华”）。这些天体永远以完美的原型轨迹运动。亚里士多德的宇宙解释了空间，但没有解释时间。太阳、月亮和星星永远围绕着地球转动，地球则漂浮于它们全体的中心。这里有一个可爱的矛盾，对于地球这个中心来讲，也是宇宙的一部分，也是变化和衰败发生的一部分。

What caused all this movement around the earth in the first place? Aristotle was very concerned with cause. He developed a scheme to try to explain causes by breaking them down into four kinds. These were called material, formal, efficient and final causes, and he thought that human activities, as well as what happens in the world, could be broken down and understood this way. Think about making a statue from a lump of stone. The stone itself is the material cause, the matter out of which it is made. The person making the statue arranges things in a certain, formal manner, so that the statue takes shape. The efficient cause is the act of chiseling against the stone to make the shape. The final cause is the idea that the sculptor had in mind - the shape, say, of a dog or horse - which was the plan of the whole activity to begin with.

最初是什么使这些天体围绕地球运动呢？亚里士多德非常关注这个原因。他将其分为四种并设计了一种解释的方法。称之为物质、形式、效率和终极原因，他认为人的行为和世界上发生的事一样都可以被分解成这样的形式理解。想想从一块大石头来制作出一个雕像，石头本身是一个物质的原因，雕塑就是从石头中制作出来的；制作雕像的人以确切的正式的方式进行安排，所以产生的雕像；效率的原因就是对石头雕刻的动作，以形成正确的形状；终极原因是雕刻家脑子里面的想法 – 形状，比如狗或马，就是整个行动开始的计划。

Science has always dealt with causes. Scientists want to know what happens and why. What causes a cell to start dividing endlessly, with the result that a person develops a cancer? What turns leaves brown, yellow and red in the autumn, when they have been green all summer? Why does bread rise up when you put yeast into it? These and many similar questions can be answered in terms of various 'causes'. Sometimes the answers are pretty simple; sometimes they are very complicated. Mostly, scientists deal with what Aristotle called efficient causes, but the material and formal causes are also important. Final causes raise a different set of issues. In scientific experiments today, scientists are content with explaining the processes rather than seeking any larger explanation or final cause, which has more to do with religion or philosophy.

科学总是在寻找原因。科学家总是想知道发生了什么，为什么发生。什么导致了一个细胞无尽的分裂，导致了人得了癌症？什么使树叶在秋天变棕、黄和红，而在夏天的时候都是绿色？面包里放入酵母，为什么会膨胀？这些问题以及其他类似问题可以以各种“原因”来回答。有时候答案很简单，有时候很复杂。通常，科学家只负责亚里士多德说的效率的原因，但物质和形式的原因也非常重要。终极原因提出了一些不同的问题。在今天的科学实验中，科学家总是满足于解释过程，而不是去寻求更大的解释或终极原因，这更多的是与宗教或哲学相关。

Back in the fourth century BC, however, Aristotle believed that these final causes were part of the picture. Looking at the universe as a whole, he argued that there must be some final cause that started off the whole process of movement. He called this the ‘unmoved mover’, and later many religions (Christianity, Judaism and Islam, for example) identified this force with their God. This was one reason why Aristotle continued to be celebrated as such a powerful thinker. He created a world-view that dominated science for almost 2,000 years.

但早在公元前4世纪，亚里士多德相信终极原因也是这其中的一部分。他将宇宙看做一个整体，相信总有一些终极原因开始了这整个的运动过程，他称之为“不变的原动力”，后面很多宗教（比如，基督教，犹太教和伊斯兰）将这种力量归于上帝。这就是为什么亚里士多德一直被认为个强大的思想家的一个原因。他创造了一种统治科学界长达2000年的世界观。