舞台上的达尔文

武夷山

 

Nature杂志2004年432卷总7016期 （11月25日出版）发表了Laura Spinney写的一篇戏剧评论，“进化的舞台”( A stage of evolution)。文章说：

科学论文的发表过程往往剥离了科学发现之情绪、诗意和音乐的成分，令人遗憾。法国巴黎高等师范大学的发育神经学家Alain Prochiantz和话剧导演Jean-Francois Peyret两人共同创作了一部话剧“达尔文变奏曲”（The Darwin Variations），希望能反映几分“情绪、诗意和音乐的成分”。

该戏的演出是荒诞派风格的，最后一场演出的情形与首场演出也许都不一样――该戏自身在演化着！无论变得更好了还是更差了，反正戏剧在演化之中。

 

博主：写剧评的Laura Spinney女士生于1971年，英国人，本科是学自然科学的，后来，热衷于为《新科学家》杂志、《卫报》、《每日镜报》等报刊写科普报道。她还发表过几部小说。

Alain Prochiantz先生正率领一个将近20人的团队（包括研究生和博士后）进行发育与神经药理学的研究，是处于科研第一线的人物。Jean-Francois Peyret导演很喜欢用戏剧来反映科学家的生活，除了写达尔文外，他还创作过关于计算机科学家图灵和19世纪俄罗斯女数学家索菲娅. 科瓦列夫斯卡娅的话剧。

下面是Spinney剧评的部分原文（http://www.creationsafaris.com/crev200411.htm）：

The curtain rises, for instance, on an empty stage.  Two actors appear, wearing dark glasses, carrying a bench, a pebble and an egg.  Off stage a blind man on his death-bed debates the existence of God with a priest, based on their different experiences of the natural world.  The conversation shifts, and the question becomes whether, given a choice, a blind man who knows the world by touch alone would choose to have eyes or a longer pair of arms.  Just then, one of the blind men on stage throws up the egg, and the other catches it in mid-air.
    In another scene, a woman sitting on a bench, cutting up newspaper, asks the man beside her if contempt is expressed by a slight pouting and a flaring of the nostrils with a small expiration – one of Darwin’s observations from his book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.  The man doesn’t respond.  She asks him, indignantly, if the expression for disgust resembles that of someone about to spit.  He gazes off into the distance.  Enraged, she threatens him with her scissors.  His face contorts, he throws himself at her, and the scene ends in a fight to the death.

Darwin’s theory of natural selection has been handed down to us as the broad vision of a brilliant man, meticulously researched, comprehensive and self-assured.  We hear less about his doubts, his procrastination and anguished discussions with contemporaries.  Nor is it well-known that, in confronting the implications of his theory, he made himself ill.  “I’m sick to the stomach,” he confesses at times throughout The Darwin Variations.

“Those attending on the last night may see something quite different to those present at the opening – not necessarily any better or worse, just different.”

 

 

 

 

 

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