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为什么物理学家或其他领域的科学家竟然花大量时间、精力向公众普及科学知识呢?这里所说的不仅是向《科学美国人》写文章(它是供科学爱好者和其他领域科学家阅读的),也不仅是教本科生入门课程,而是真正尽力通过报纸、电视、杂志和对一般公众的讲演,来传播科学知识和科学方法。科学研究的资助主要来自公共基金。由此容易得出片面的原因:科学家要向纳税人解释自己所做的工作。若仅以此来看,便会吃惊地发现更多的科学家并不从事科学普及工作。从大的方面来说,存在着大量的重大社会问题,从温室效应和臭氧层洞到核竞赛和艾滋病,解决这些问题的关键是科学。科学的结果导致其中一些问题的产生和恶化,同时很显然,没有深入的科学研究,不可能有解决这些问题的方法。我们的真正危险在于构造了一个基本上依赖于科学和技术的社会,而几乎没有人懂科学和技术。这就是“治病”的“良方”(例如,在国会535名议员中,大科学家出身的人屈指可数)。但这里我想要讨论的是普及科学的其他原因,这种科学普及工作是科学家职业日程的重要部分。
Why do physicists or scientists in other fields devote a great deal of time and energy to popularizing scientific knowledge to the public? What we are talking about here is not only writing articles for “Scientific Americans” (for science lovers and scientists in other fields) , It is not just teaching introductory courses for undergraduates, but actually trying to spread scientific knowledge and scientific methods through newspapers, television, magazines and lectures to the general public. Funding for scientific research comes mainly from public funds. It is easy to draw one-sided reason: scientists explain to taxpayers what they do. If this is the case, we will be surprised to find that more scientists are not engaged in science popularization work. On the larger side, there are a large number of major social problems, and the key to solving these problems is science from the greenhouse effect and the ozone layer to the nuclear race and AIDS. The result of science has led to the emergence and deterioration of some of these problems, and it is clear that there can be no solution to these problems without deep scientific research. The real danger of us lies in the construction of a society that is fundamentally dependent on science and technology, and few people know science and technology. This is the “recipe” for “healing” (for example, among the 535 parliamentarians, there are only a handful of large scientists). But here I want to talk about other reasons for universalizing science, a science popularization job that is an important part of a scientist's career agenda.