|||
Hugh Williams的第六个主题是发现(Discovery)。人类历史当然也是发现和发明的历史。Daniel J.Boorstin写的一个历史系列就包含《发现者》、《创造者》和《探索者》。写发现容易写成科学史或技术史(或科学技术史),这儿的事情也差不多:
1) Archimedes of Syracuse 287-212 BC
2) The Chinese invention of printing, seventh century AD
3) Leonardo da Vinci 1452-1519
4) Vasco da Gama discovers a sea route to India 1498
5) Sir Isaac Newton Publishes the Principia 1687
6) Australia’s first Colony 1788
7) John Logie Baird demonstrates the first moving television imagines 1926
8) The discovery of the structure of the DNA helix 1953
9) Apollo 11 lands on the Moon 1969
10) The creation of the Worldwide Web 1990
其中最有趣的是达芬奇。写达芬奇与科学的书很多,新近买了一本The Science of Leonardo,后来才注意到作者原来是30多年前写《物理学之道》(The Tao of Physics, 1975)的那位Fritjof Capra。他为什么写达芬奇呢?
后人读达芬奇留下的笔记,感觉是零散而杂乱的,但Capra认为达芬奇头脑里的科学图景是和谐统一的,只是没来得及整理——当然,他的图景与伽利略、笛卡尔和牛顿的图景是大大地不同。
Capra回忆了他在白金汉宫女王画廊看达芬奇绘画的情景:
As I gazed at those magnificient drawings juxtaposing, often on the same page, architecture and human anatomy, turbulent water and turbulent air, water vortices, the flow of human hair and the growth patterns of grasses, I realized that Leonardo’s systematic studies of living and nonliving forms amounted to a science of quality and wholeness that was fundamentally different from the mechanistic science of Galileo and Newton. At the core of his investigations, it seemed to me, was a persistent exploration of pattern, interconnecting phenomena from a vast range of fields.
所以,达芬奇的科学图景就是我们今天的复杂性,而复杂性也是作者从“现代物理学”联想到“东方神秘主义”的一根红头绳儿。
但是,在我看来,古人的科学多是直观地“复杂性”的,要理性地认识那些复杂,还是需要“简单的”分析方法。我们看今天的复杂性科学,看那些混沌图样,不都是靠本来是“局域的”微分方程来认识和描述的么?东方的神秘就是一直没有从复杂系统跳出来,所以今天与古代一样神秘,似乎没有什么改变。
达芬奇画的水流进池塘产生漩涡
Archiver|手机版|科学网 ( 京ICP备07017567号-12 )
GMT+8, 2024-10-21 02:57
Powered by ScienceNet.cn
Copyright © 2007- 中国科学报社