双语畅销书《艾伦图灵传》第8章:面朝大海(279)

His ruthless, raw view of science was something that Lyn Newman again captured with an image of him as 'the Alchemist' of the seventeenth century or before—recalling a time when science was not shrouded in titles and patronage and respectability, but was nakedly dangerous.

他对待科学的那种冷酷而纯粹的态度，令琳·纽曼印象颇深。

There was a Shelley in him, but there was also a Frankenstein—the proud irresponsibility of pure science, concentrated in a single person.

在图灵的人格中，似乎活着一个弗兰肯斯坦，他把纯科学本身那些疯狂的、不负责任的侧面，全都汇集到了一起。

It was indeed that terrific concentration, combined as it was with an ability to throw out all that seemed irrelevant, and with a will to think about questions that everyone would have said were hopelessly difficult and complex, that was his secret.

这种汇集非常恐怖，这意味着摒弃一切他自认为无关的东西，然后怀着一种意念，去挑战那些所有人都深感绝望的难题。这就是图灵隐秘的一面。

It was this process of abstracting a simple, clear principle, and then demonstrating its truth in some concrete way, that was his strength—it was this rather than the solving of problems within a given framework.

他不愿意在别人的框架中解决问题，他会把问题高度抽象，变成一个简洁而优雅的模型，然后再用一种具体的方法，让这个模型运转起来。

But this kind of strength did not lend itself to some of the more subtle problems that were raised by his model of 'intelligence'.

这是他最擅长的手段，但即使是这种手段，也没能帮助他解决"智能"的问题。

He had, wrote Robin, 'a lack of reverence for everything except the truth', and his insistence on an uncompromising materialism was motivated by that obsession for keeping truth untainted by 'emotional' ideas about intelligence and consciousness.

图灵曾经给罗宾写信说："我对任何东西都没有敬意，除了真理。"图灵坚信唯物主义，矢志不渝地守护自然真理，使它不受人类情感的玷污。

But in his concern to cut away the irrelevant he had brushed aside some fundamental questions about intelligence, communication, and language, questions which arose from the embodiment of brains in a human social world.

然而，在他关心的那些关于智能、交流和语言的基本问题中，却蕴含着许多人类社会的元素。

This was not, however, so much the deficiency in his thought, as a reflection upon the method of science.

但这并不是图灵一个人的缺陷，而是主流科学方法的反映。

His model of 'intelligence', using chess and mathematics as its paradigm, was one which simply reflected the orthodox view of science as the repository of objective truth.

图灵以象棋和数学问题作为范式而提出的"智能"模型，正是体现了这种正统的科学观，即科学就是客观事实的集合。