Knowledge_and_Wisdom 研究生 吉林大学 原文级翻译.doc

Knowledge and Wisdom 论知识和智慧 Bertrand Russell 白兰.罗素 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Science is organized knowledge.Wisdom is organized life.---by Immanuel Kant 科学是分门别类的知识；智慧是井井有条的生活—伊曼纽尔.康德 Most people would agree that, although our age far surpasses all previous ages in knowledge, there has been no correlative increase in wisdom. But agreement ceases as soon as we attempt to define `wisdom and consider means of promoting it. I want to ask first what wisdom is, and then what can be done to teach it. 我们时代的知识远远超越以前的时代，但是智慧却没有相应的增加，大多数人都同意这样的看法，但是一旦我们试图定义智慧并且思考增进它的方法，人们就会有不同的意见。我想问首先智慧是什么，其次是传授智慧的方法。 There are, I think, several factors that contribute to wisdom. Of these I should put first a sense of proportion: the capacity to take account of all the important factors in a problem and to attach to each its due weight. This has become more difficult than it used to be owing to the extent and complexity fo the specialized knowledge required of various kinds of technicians. Suppose, for example, that you are engaged in research in scientific medicine. The work is difficult and is likely to absorb the whole of your intellectual energy. You have not time to consider the effect which your discoveries or inventions may have outside the field of medicine. You succeed (let us say), as modern medicine has succeeded, in enormously lowering the infant death-rate, not only in Europe and America, but also in Asia and Africa. This has the entirely unintended result of making the food supply inadequate and lowering the standard of life in the most populous parts of the world. To take an even more spectacular example, which is in everybodys mind at the present time: You study the composition of the atom from a disinterested desire for knowledge, and incidentally place in the hands of powerful lunatics the means of destroying the human race. In such ways the pursuit of knowledge may become harmful unless it is combined with wisdom; a