爱因斯坦的真实语音（爱因斯坦真的说过那个吗）

■ 原文链接：Did Einstein really say that?（https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05004-4）

Albert Einstein in Caputh, Germany, in 1929.Credit: Ullsten Bild via Getty

（阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦于1929年在德国卡普斯）

Beyond his towering contribution to physics, Albert Einstein was an avid commentator on education, marriage, money, the nature of genius, music-making, politics and more. His insights were legion, as we are reminded by this month’s publication of volume 15 inThe Collected Papers of Albert Einstein. Even the website of the US Internal Revenue Service enshrines his words (as quoted by his accountant): “The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.”

除了对物理学的杰出贡献，阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦（Albert Einstein）还是一位热心的评论家，他对教育、婚姻、金钱、天才的本质、音乐创作、政治等问题都有自己的见解。正如本月（2018年4月）出版的《阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦论文集》（The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein，https://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/）第15卷所提醒的那样，他的见解可谓数不胜数。甚至连美国国税局的网站都把他的话奉为圭臬（正如他的会计师所引用的）：“世界上最难理解的是所得税。”

“There appears to be a bottomless pit of quotable gems to be mined from Einstein’s enormous archives,” notes Alice Calaprice, editor of The Ultimate Quotable Einstein (2011); one detects a hint of despair. Indeed, Einstein might be the most quoted scientist in history. The website Wikiquote has many more entries for him than for Aristotle, Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin or Stephen Hawking, and even than Einstein’s opinionated contemporaries Winston Churchill and George Bernard Shaw.

《终极可引用的爱因斯坦》（The Ultimate Quotable Einstein，2011年）的编辑爱丽丝·卡拉普莱斯（Alice Calaprice）指出：“从爱因斯坦的巨大档案中，似乎有一个无底洞可以挖掘出可引用的宝石。”你可能察觉到一丝绝望。事实上，爱因斯坦可能是历史上被引用最多的科学家。维基语录（Wikiquote）网站上有关爱因斯坦的条目比亚里士多德、伽利略、艾萨克·牛顿、查尔斯·达尔文和斯蒂芬·霍金都要多，甚至比爱因斯坦同时代的固执己见的温斯顿·丘吉尔和乔治·萧伯纳都要多。

But how much of this superabundance actually emanated from the physicist? Take this: “astrology is a Science in itself and contains an illuminating body of knowledge. It taught me many things and I am greatly indebted to it.” These lines, displayed by some astrology websites as Einstein’s, were exposed as an obvious hoax by the magazine Skeptical Inquirer in 2007. The real source was the foreword to a reissued book, Manuel d’astrologie (1965), first published by Swiss-Canadian astrologer Werner Hirsig in 1950. Einstein’s only known comment on astrology is in a 1943 letter to one Eugene Simon:

但这种超级丰富实际上有多少来自这位物理学家？举个例子：“占星学本身就是一门科学，它包含着一套富有启发性的知识体系。它教会了我很多东西，我非常感激它。”2007年，一些占星学网站上显示的这句话被《怀疑论者》（Skeptical Inquirer）杂志曝光为一个明显的骗局。真正的来源是一本再版的书《占星术手册》（Manuel d’astrologie，1965年）的前言，该书于1950年由瑞士-加拿大占星家维尔纳·赫西格（Werner Hirsig）首次出版。爱因斯坦关于占星术唯一已知的评论是在1943年的一封信中，写给一位名叫尤金·西蒙（Eugene Simon）的人：

“I fully agree with you concerning the pseudo-science of astrology. The interesting point is that this kind of superstition is so tenacious that it could persist through so many centuries.”

“关于占星术的伪科学，我完全同意你的观点。有趣的是，这种迷信是如此顽强，以至于可以持续这么多世纪。”

Among the hundreds of quotes that Calaprice notes are misattributed to Einstein are many that are subtly debatable. Some are edited or paraphrased to sharpen or neaten the original. “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler” might, says Calaprice, be a compressed version of lines from a 1933 lecture by Einstein: “It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience.” More certain is the provenance of “The most incomprehensible thing about the Universe is that it is comprehensible”. That rewords a passage in a 1936 article in the Journal of the Franklin Institute: “The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility … The fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle.”

卡拉普莱斯（Calaprice）指出，在数百条被误认为是爱因斯坦的语录中，有许多都是有争议的。有些是经过编辑或改写的，以使原文更清晰或更简洁。卡拉普莱斯说，“一切都应该尽可能简单，但不要过分简单”，可能是爱因斯坦1933年演讲中的一句话的压缩版：“几乎不能否认，所有理论的最高目标是使不可还原的基本要素尽可能简单且少，而不必放弃对单一经验数据的充分表示。”更确定的是“宇宙最令人费解的地方是它是可理解的”的出处。这句话改写了1936年《富兰克林研究所杂志》（Journal of the Franklin Institute）上一篇文章中的一段话：“世界永恒的奥秘在于它的可理解性……它是可以理解的这个事实是一个奇迹。”

Even “God does not play dice”, arguably Einstein’s most famous quote, isn’t quite his words. It derives from a letter written in German in December 1926 to his friend and sparring partner, theoretical physicist Max Born. It is published in the new volume of Einstein’s papers, in which the editors comment on its “varying translations” since the 1920s. Theirs is: “Quantum mechanics … delivers much, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the Old One. I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not play dice.” Einstein does not use the word ‘God’ (Gott) here, but ‘the Old One’ (Der Alte). This signifies a “personification of nature”, notes physicist and Nobel laureate Leon Lederman (author of The God Particle, 1993).

即使是爱因斯坦最著名的名言“上帝不掷骰子”也不是他的原话。这句话源于1926年12月（爱因斯坦）用德语写给他的朋友兼辩论对手、理论物理学家马克斯·玻恩（Max Born）的一封信。它发表在爱因斯坦论文的新卷中，编辑们在其中评论了自20世纪20年代以来的“不同翻译”。他们的观点是：“量子力学…… 提供了很多，但并没有真正让我们更接近那位老者的秘密。一、 无论如何，我相信他不会掷骰子。”爱因斯坦在这里没有使用“上帝”（Gott）这个词，而是使用“那位老者”（Der Alte）。物理学家、诺贝尔奖得主莱昂·莱德曼（Leon Lederman，《上帝粒子》的作者，1993年）指出，这意味着“自然的拟人化”。

Einstein’s name has also been affixed since his death to quotes from elsewhere. “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results,” for instance, was traced by Einstein archivist Barbara Wolff to US writer Rita Mae Brown’s Sudden Death (1983). “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted,” was penned by sociologist William Bruce Cameron in his Informal Sociology (1963).

爱因斯坦去世后，他的名字也被贴在其他地方的语录上。例如，“精神错乱的定义是，反复做同样的事情，期待不同的结果。”被爱因斯坦档案馆员芭芭拉·沃尔夫（Barbara Wolff）溯源于美国作家丽塔·梅·布朗（Rita Mae Brown）的《猝死》（1983）。“不是所有可以计算的东西都有价值，也不是所有有价值的东西都可以计算。”撰写于社会学家威廉·布鲁斯·卡梅伦（William Bruce Cameron）的《非正式社会学》（Informal Sociology，1963年）。

This cosmos of quotes — real, massaged and faked — speaks to Einstein’s status. More than 60 years after his death, his fame remains paramount. I feel there are at least four reasons why we are still fascinated by him.

这一系列的语录—真实的、被篡改的和伪造的—说明了爱因斯坦的地位。在他去世60多年后，他的名声仍然至高无上。我觉得至少有四个原因让我们仍然对他着迷。

One is that Einstein’s discoveries are elemental and existential, unifying concepts of space and time, mass and energy and forces. They shifted our picture of reality. And he made more than a stab at explaining them to the non-physicist. Hence his part-joking encapsulation of relativity to the hungry press in 1921, on his first visit to the United States: “It was formerly believed that if all material things disappeared out of the universe, time and space would be left. According to relativity theory, however, time and space disappear together with the things.”

一是爱因斯坦的发现是重要的、与人类存在有关的，统一了空间和时间、质量、能量和力的概念。它们改变了我们对现实的看法，而且他还试图向非物理学家解释这些问题。因此，他在1921年第一次访问美国时，向如饥似渴的新闻界半开玩笑地讲述了相对论：“以前人们认为，如果所有物质都从宇宙中消失了，时间和空间就会留下来。然而，根据相对论，时间和空间会随着事物一起消失。”

There is also widespread empathy for Einstein’s resilience in his long struggle for security. His performance at his German school was good, but far from brilliant; he disliked the school for its regimentation and eventually abandoned it. He failed to get an academic position after graduation from university, partly because he mocked his physics teachers. In 1901, although semi-starving, he recognized the value of not conforming. He wrote to his fiancée that “impudence” was his “guardian angel”. It would guide him throughout his life.

人们也普遍同情爱因斯坦在长期的安全斗争中的韧性。他在德国学校的表现很好，但远称不上出色；他不喜欢学校的条条框框，并最终放弃了它。大学毕业后，他没能获得学术职位，部分原因是他嘲笑了自己的物理老师。1901年，尽管他处于半饥饿状态，但他认识到了不顺从的价值。他给未婚妻写信说，“无礼”是他的“守护天使”。这将指导他一生。

Einstein was also highly engaged politically and socially, and often in the public eye. He supported the creation of a Jewish home in Palestine, helped to establish the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and in 1952 was offered Israel’s presidency. Yet he had written in a speech in 1938: “My awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power.” In 1933, he had publicly opposed Nazi Germany, fleeing to the United States by way of Britain, under some risk of assassination. Despite encouraging US president Franklin D. Roosevelt to build an atomic bomb in 1939, he was horrified by its use in 1945 in Japan. He spoke out against racial and ethnic discrimination in the United States. In the 1950s, he trenchantly criticized the hydrogen bomb and Mc Carthyism, and, right up to his death in 1955, he was targeted for deportation as a Soviet agent by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.

爱因斯坦还深度参与政治和社会活动，并经常受到公众的关注。他支持在巴勒斯坦建立犹太人之家，帮助建立耶路撒冷希伯来大学，并于1952年被邀请担任以色列总统。然而，他在1938年的一次演讲中写道：“以我对犹太教本质的认识，我反对建立一个有国界、有军队、有一定世俗权力的犹太国家的想法。”1933年，他曾公开反对纳粹德国，冒着被暗杀的风险，经由英国逃往美国。尽管他1939年鼓励美国总统富兰克林·D·罗斯福（Franklin D. Roosevelt）制造原子弹，但他对1945年在日本使用原子弹感到震惊。他公开反对美国的种族和民族歧视。20世纪50年代，他尖锐地批评了氢弹和麦卡锡主义，直到1955年去世，他一直是联邦调查局局长J·埃德加·胡佛（J. Edgar Hoover）作为苏联间谍驱逐出境的目标。

Finally, there is Einstein’s ineffable wit. It is encapsulated by this aphorism, composed for a friend in 1930 (really: I’ve checked with the Einstein Archives in Jerusalem): “To punish me for my contempt of authority, Fate has made me an authority myself.”

最后，还有爱因斯坦妙不可言的智慧。1930年为一位朋友写的这句格言概括了这一点（是事实：我在耶路撒冷的爱因斯坦档案馆查询过了）：“为了惩罚我对权威的蔑视，命运让我自己成为了权威。”

Nature 557, 30 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-05004-4

本文2018年4月30日刊发于《自然》（Nature）杂志“书籍与艺术”（Books and Arts）专栏，Did Einstein really say that?（https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05004-4），风云之声翻译。

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