博士研究生英语精读翻译及原文

第1课知识的悖论The Paradox of Knowledge

The greatest achievement of humankind in its long evolution from ancient hominoid ancestors to its present status is the acquisition and accumulation of a vast body of knowledge about itself, the world, and the universe. The products of this knowledge are all those things that, in the aggregate, we call "civilization," including language, science, literature, art, all the physical mechanisms, instruments, and structures we use, and the physical infrastructures on which society relies. Most of us assume that in modern society knowledge of all kinds is continually increasing and the aggregation of new information into the corpus of our social or collective knowledge is steadily reducing the area of ignorance about ourselves, the world, and the universe. But continuing reminders of the numerous areas of our present ignorance invite a critical analysis of this assumption.

In the popular view, intellectual evolution is similar to, although much more rapid than, somatic evolution. Biological evolution is often described by the statement that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"--meaning that the individual embryo, in its development from a fertilized ovum into a human baby, passes through successive stages in which it resembles ancestral forms of the human species. The popular view is that humankind has progressed from a state of innocent ignorance, comparable to that of an infant, and gradually has acquired more and more knowledge, much as a child learns in passing through the several grades of the educational system. Implicit in this view is an assumption that phylogeny resembles ontogeny, so that there will ultimately be a stage in which the accumulation of knowledge is essentially complete, at least in specific fields, as if society had graduated with all the advanced degrees that signify mastery of important subjects.

Such views have, in fact, been expressed by some eminent scientists. In 1894 the great American physicist Albert Michelson said in a talk at the University of Chicago:

While it is never safe to affirm that the future of Physical Science has no marvels in store even more astonishing than those of the past, it seems probable that most of the grand underlying principles have been firmly established and that further advances are to be sought chiefly in the rigorous application of these principles to all the phenomena which come under our notice .... The future truths of Physical Science ate to be looked for in the sixth place of decimals.

In the century since Michelson's talk, scientists have discovered much more than the refinement of measurements in the sixth decimal place, and none is willing to make a similar statement today. However, many still cling to the notion that such a

state of knowledge remains a possibility to be attained sooner or later. Stephen Hawking, the great English scientist, in his immensely popular book A Brief History of Time (1988), concludes with the speculation that we may "discover a complete theory" that "would be the ultimate triumph of human reason--for then we would know the mind of God." Paul Davies, an Australian physicist, echoes that view by suggesting that the human mind may be able to grasp some of the secrets encompassed by the title of his book The Mind of God (1992). Other contemporary scientists write of "theories of everything," meaning theories that explain all observable physical phenomena, and Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg, one of the founders of the current standard model of physical theory, writes of his Dreams of a Final Theory (1992).

Despite the eminence and obvious yearning of these and many other contemporary scientists, there is nothing in the history of science to suggest that any addition of data or theories to the body of scientific knowledge will ever provide answers to all questions in any field. On the contrary, the history of science indicates that increasing knowledge brings awareness of new areas of ignorance and of new questions to be answered.

Astronomy is the most ancient of the sciences, and its development is a model of other fields of knowledge. People have been observing the stars and other celestial bodies since the dawn of recorded history. As early as 3000 B.C. the Babylonians recognized a number of the constellations. In the sixth century B.C., Pythagoras proposed the notion of a spherical Earth and of a universe with objects in it chat moved in accordance with natural laws. Later Greek philosophers taught that the sky was a hollow globe surrounding the Earth, that it was supported on an axis running through the Earth, and chat stars were inlaid on its inner surface, which rotated westward daily. In the second century A.D., Ptolemy propounded a theory of a geocentric (Earth-centered) universe in which the sun, planets, and stars moved in circular orbits of cycles and epicycles around the Earth, although the Earth was not at the precise center of these orbits. While somewhat awkward, the Ptolemaic system could produce reasonably reliable predictions of planetary positions, which were, however, good for only a few years and which developed substantial discrepancies from actual observations over a long period of time. Nevertheless, since there was no evidence then apparent to astronomers that the Earth itself moves, the Ptolemaic system remained unchallenged for more than 13 centuries.

In the sixteenth century Nocolaus Copernicus, who is said to have mastered all the knowledge of his day in mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and theology, became dissatisfied with the Ptolemaic system. He found that a heliocentric system was both

mathematically possible and aesthetically more pleasing, and wrote a full exposition of his hypothesis, which was not published until 1543, shortly after his death. Early in the seventeenth century, Johannes Kepler became imperial mathematician of the Holy Roman Empire upon the death of Tycho Brahe, and he acquired a collection of meticulous naked-eye observations of the positions of celestial bodies chat had been made by Brahe. On the basis of these data, Kepler calculated that both Ptolemy and Copernicus were in error in assuming chat planets traveled in circular orbits, and in 1609 he published a book demonstrating mathematically chat the planets travel around the sun in elliptical orbits. Kepler's laws of planetary motion are still regarded as basically valid.

In the first decade of the seventeenth century Galileo Galilei learned of the invention of the telescope and began to build such instruments, becoming the first person to use a telescope for astronomical observations, and thus discovering craters on the moon, phases of Venus, and the satellites of Jupiter. His observations convinced him of the validity of the Copernican system and resulted in the well-known conflict between Galileo and church authorities. In January 1642 Galileo died, and in December of chat year Isaac Newton was born. Modern science derives largely from the work of these two men.

Newton's contributions to science are numerous. He laid the foundations for modem physical optics, formulated the basic laws of motion and the law of universal gravitation, and devised the infinitesimal calculus. Newton's laws of motion and gravitation are still used for calculations of such matters as trajectories of spacecraft and satellites and orbits of planets. In 1846, relying on such calculations as a guide to observation, astronomers discovered the planet Neptune.

While calculations based on Newton's laws are accurate, they are dismayingly complex when three or more bodies are involved. In 1915, Einstein announced his theory of general relativity, which led to a set of differential equations for planetary orbits identical to those based on Newtonian calculations, except for those relating to the planet Mercury. The elliptical orbit of Mercury rotates through the years, but so slowly that the change of position is less than one minute of arc each century. The equations of general relativity precisely accounted for this precession; Newtonian equations did not.

Einstein's equations also explained the red shift in the light from distant stars and the deflection of starlight as it passed near the sun. However, Einstein assumed chat the universe was static, and, in order to permit a meaningful solution to the equations of relativity, in 1917 he added another term, called a "cosmological constant," to the equations. Although the existence and significance of a cosmological constant is still

being debated, Einstein later declared chat this was a major mistake, as Edwin Hubble established in the 1920s chat the universe is expanding and galaxies are receding from one another at a speed proportionate to their distance.

Another important development in astronomy grew out of Newton's experimentation in optics, beginning with his demonstration chat sunlight could be broken up by a prism into a spectrum of different colors, which led to the science of spectroscopy. In the twentieth century, spectroscopy was applied to astronomy to gun information about the chemical and physical condition of celestial bodies chat was not disclosed by visual observation. In the 1920s, precise photographic photometry was introduced to astronomy and quantitative spectrochemical analysis became common. Also during the 1920s, scientists like Heisenberg, de Broglie, Schrodinger, and Dirac developed quantum mechanics, a branch of physics dealing with subatomic particles of matter and quanta of energy. Astronomers began to recognize that the properties of celestial bodies, including planets, could be well understood only in terms of physics, and the field began to be referred to as "astrophysics."

These developments created an explosive expansion in our knowledge of astronomy. During the first five thousand years or more of observing the heavens, observation was confined to the narrow band of visible light. In the last half of this century astronomical observations have been made across the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation, including radio waves, infrared, ultraviolet, X-rays, and gamma rays, and from satellites beyond the atmosphere. It is no exaggeration to say chat since the end of World War II more astronomical data have been gathered than during all of the thousands of years of preceding human history.

However, despite all improvements in instrumentation, increasing sophistication of analysis and calculation augmented by the massive power of computers, and the huge aggregation of data, or knowledge, we still cannot predict future movements of planets and other elements of even the solar system with a high degree of certainty. Ivars Peterson, a highly trained science writer and an editor of Science News, writes in his book Newton's Clock (1993) that a surprisingly subtle chaos pervades the solar system. He states:

In one way or another the problem of the solar system's stability has fascinated and tormented asrtonomers and mathematicians for more than 200 years. Somewhat to the embarrassment of contemporary experts, it remains one of the most perplexing, unsolved issues in celestial mechanics. Each step toward resolving this and related questions has only exposed additional uncertainties and even deeper mysteries.

Similar problems pervade astronomy. The two major theories of cosmology,

general relativity and quantum mechanics, cannot be stated in the same mathematical language, and thus are inconsistent with one another, as the Ptolemaic and Copernican theories were in the sixteenth century, although both contemporary theories continue to be used, but for different calculations. Oxford mathematician Roger Penrose, in The Emperors New Mind (1989), contends that this inconsistency requires a change in quantum theory to provide a new theory he calls "correct quantum gravity."

Furthermore, the observations astronomers make with new technologies disclose a total mass in the universe that is less than about 10 percent of the total mass that mathematical calculations require the universe to contain on the basis of its observed rate of expansion. If the universe contains no more mass than we have been able to observe directly, then according to all current theories it should have expanded in the past, and be expanding now, much more rapidly than the rate actually observed. It is therefore believed that 90 percent or more of the mass in the universe is some sort of "dark matter" that has not yet been observed and the nature of which is unknown. Current theories favor either WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles) or MACHOs (massive compact halo objects). Other similar mysteries abound and increase in number as our ability to observe improves.

The progress of biological and life sciences has been similar to that of the physical sciences, except that it has occurred several centuries later. The theory of biological evolution first came to the attention of scientists with the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859. But Darwin lacked any explanation of the causes of variation and inheritance of characteristics. These were provided by Gregor Mendel, who laid the mathematical foundation of genetics with the publication of papers in 1865 and 1866.

Medicine, according to Lewis Thomas, is the youngest science, having become truly scientific only in the 1930s. Recent and ongoing research has created uncertainty about even such basic concepts as when and how life begins and when death occurs, and we are spending billions in an attempt to learn how much it may be possible to know about human genetics. Modern medicine has demonstrably improved both our life expectancies and our health, and further improvements continue to be made as research progresses. But new questions arise even more rapidly than our research resources grow, as the host of problems related to the Human Genome Project illustrates.

From even such an abbreviated and incomplete survey of science as this, it appears that increasing knowledge does not result in a commensurate decrease in ignorance, but, on the contrary, exposes new lacunae in our comprehension and confronts us with unforeseen questions disclosing areas of ignorance of which we

were not previously aware.

Thus the concept of science as an expanding body of knowledge that will eventually encompass or dispel all significant areas of ignorance is an illusion. Scientists and philosophers are now observing that it is naive to regard science as a process that begins with observations that are organized into theories and are then subsequently tested by experiments. The late Karl Popper, a leading philosopher of science, wrote in The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (1960) chat science starts from problems, not from observations, and chat every worthwhile new theory raises new problems. Thus there is no danger that science will come to an end because it has completed its task, clanks to the "infinity of our ignorance."

At least since Thomas Kuhn published The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), it has been generally recognized that observations are the result of theories (called paradigms by Kuhn and other philosophers), for without theories of relevance and irrelevance there would be no basis for determining what observations to make. Since no one can know everything, to be fully informed on any subject (a claim sometimes made by those in authority) is simply to reach a judgment that additional data are not important enough to be worth the trouble of securing or considering.

To carry the analysis another step, it must be recognized that theories are the result of questions and questions are the product of perceived ignorance. Thus it is chat ignorance gives rise to inquiry chat produces knowledge, which, in turn, discloses new areas of ignorance. This is the paradox of knowledge: As knowledge increases so does ignorance, and ignorance may increase more than its related knowledge.

My own metaphor to illustrate the relationship of knowledge and ignorance is based on a line from Matthew Arnold: "For we are here as on a darkling plain...." The dark chat surrounds us, chat, indeed, envelops our world, is ignorance. Knowledge is the illumination shed by whatever candles (or more technologically advanced light sources) we can provide. As we light more and more figurative candles, the area of illumination enlarges; but the area beyond illumination increases geometrically. We know chat there is much we don't know; but we cannot know how much there is chat we don't know. Thus knowledge is finite, but ignorance is infinite, and the finite cannot ever encompass the infinite.

This is a revised version of an article originally published in COSMOS 1994. Copyright 1995 by Lee Loevinger.

Lee Loevinger is a Washington lawyer and former assistant attorney general of the United States who writes frequently for scientific c publications. He has

participated for many years as a member, co-chair, or liaison with the National Conference of Lawyers and Scientists, and he is a founder and former chair of the Science and Technology Section of the American Bar Association. Office address: Hogan and Hartson, 555 Thirteenth St. NW, Washington, DC 20004.

人类从古类人猿进化到当前的状态这个长久的进化过程中的最大成就是有关于人类自身、世界以及宇宙众多知识的获得和积聚。这些知识的产物就是那些我们总称为―文化‖的所有的东西，包括语言、科学、文学、艺术、所有的物质机器、仪器、我们所用的结构以及社会所依赖的物质基础设施。我们之中大多数人认为现代社会中各种知识在不断增长，与此同时社会或群体对新知识的积累也在稳步减少我们对人类自身、世界及宇宙的未知。然而，现有的无垠的未知领域在不断提示着我们需要批判性地分析这个设想。

普遍的观点认为，智力的演变与身体的发育相似，虽然要快上许多。生物的进化经常被描述为―个体的进化重演物种的进化‖，意思就是个体的胚胎在其从受精卵发展到人类胎儿的过程中经历了几个阶段，在这些阶段中个体胚胎类似人类物种的祖先形式。普遍的观点认为人类从天真无邪的状态进步的，这个状态可以比作婴儿，然后逐渐的获得越来越多的知识，就像一个小孩通过学习通过了教育体系的几个年级一样。这种观点中暗含着一种臆断，那就是种系发育类似个体发育，知识的积累最终能达到一个基本完整的阶段，至少在特定的领域中是如此，就好像社会已获得了所有的高等学位，这些学位表明它已经掌握了各个重要学科的知识。

实际上，一些杰出的科学家已经表达了这样的观点。1894年伟大的物理学家Albert Michelson在芝加哥大学的一个演讲中讲到：虽然不能断言未来的物理学不会再取得比过去更惊人的成就，但很可能大多数的重要的基本原理都已经牢固的确立了，那么，进一步的发展将可能主要是如何将这些基本原理精确地应用到我们注意的现象上去。人们很难在物理学领域再作突破。

在迈克尔逊讲述上一段话之后的一个世纪，科学家们在物理学上的发现远远超出了对小数点第六位测量的改进，而今天没有人会再进行与Michelson相似的阐述。但是仍有许多人坚持认为知识有迟早达到穷尽的可能性。英国伟大的科学家斯蒂芬·霍金在他的非常流行的<<时间简史>>一书中, 推测得出以下结论, 我们可以―发现一种终极理论,那将是人类理性的最终胜利, 那时候我们将知道上帝在想什么‖。澳大利亚物理学家保罗·戴维斯附和斯蒂芬·霍金的观点，在他的书名为《上帝的智慧》一书中提出人类才智能使人类掌握一些上帝的思想的一些秘密。其他一些同时代的科学家有提及―万物之理‖，也就是解释所有可以观察到的物理现象的理论。物理理论的现代标准模型的构建者之一诺贝尔奖获得者斯蒂芬·温伯格则提到他的著作《终极理论之梦》。

尽管这些科学家和现代的其他科学家做出了卓越贡献并且对知识孜孜以求，但是在科学史上没有任何事情表明任何对于科学知识体系增加的数据和理论曾经给任何领域的所有问题提供答案。相反，科学史表明，增加的知识使人们认识

到新的无知的领域并带来新的问题。

天文学是最古老的科学，它的发展是其他领域知识发展的模型。自从有史记载以来，人们一直在观察星星和天体。早在公元前3000年，巴比伦人认识了一定数量的星座。在第一个五千年或者更早一些的时间，天文学观察仅限于狭窄的可见光波长范围内。在过去的这半个世纪，天文学观察已经可以在电磁辐射波长（包括广播电波、红外、紫外、X射线、伽玛射线）范围内进行，还可以通过大气层外的卫星来观察。可以毫不夸张地说，自从第二次世界大战以来收集的天文学数据，比在人类持续的几千年历史中收集的数据还要多。

然而，虽然仪器的应用有了长足的改进，由于计算机以及大量数据和知识的积累，分析和计算的复杂程度有了大幅度的提高，但是我们仍然难以预测出行星未来的运动以及另一些原理甚至是太阳系中被高度确定的原理。一个训练有素的科普作家以及科学新闻的编辑Ivars Peterson，在他的书―牛顿的时钟‖里提到一种奇妙的细微的混乱弥漫着太阳系中。他写到：

两百多年以来，太阳系的稳定性问题以一种或是另一种方式吸引着并且困扰着天文学家和数学家。而这仍然是天体力学中最为困扰并且未能解决的问题，当代的科学家们对此也感到很尴尬。每一步对于此问题以及与此相关的问题的解决都会产生而外的不确定的问题甚至是更深的奥秘。

相似的问题在天文学中中也很流行。关于宇宙的最主要的两个理论，广义相对论以及量子力学不能够用形同的数学语言来表达，因此两者是不一致的，就像16世纪时托勒密和哥白尼的理论一样，虽然当代的理论仍在被应用，但是所用的计算公式不同。牛津大学的数学家Roger Penrose在他的书―新思想的帝国‖中提到由于量子论中存在不可调和的争论，因此他提出了一种名为―修正的量子重力―理论‖。

生物和生命科学的发展过程与物理学的发展过程相似，只是它的发生晚了几个世纪。生物进化论第一次引起科学家的注意是在1859年达尔文的―物种起源―的出版。但是达尔文没有解释造成性状遗传和变异的原因。孟德尔在1865年和1866年发表的论文中运用了基于基因的数学理论解释了这些原因。

按照Lewis Thomas的观点，医学是最年轻的科学，二十世纪三十年代才成为真正的科学。正在进行的和将要进行的研究产生了很多不确定东西。有些是关于一些基本的概念，比如：生命是何时诞生的，是怎样诞生的，死亡会在什么时候发生；并且我们现在花费数十亿美元来设法了解我们对于人类的基因能够知道多少。现代医学显著的提高了我们的寿命和健康状况，而且随着研究过程的深入将来还会继续改善。但是新的问题的出现速度要比我们得到的研究成果的增长速度快得多，比如说在有关人类基因工程项目中所出现的大量的问题。

仅仅通过对科学如此粗略而浅显的认识来看，认识的增加并没有造成无知相称的减少，相反揭露了我们理解中的新的空缺，还使我们面临着意料之外的问题，这些问题揭开我们不可预料的未知领域。

因此，把科学作为能够包围和消除一切重要无知领域的不断扩充的知识的这

种观念只不过是一种错觉。科学家和哲学家正在认识到，把科学简单的看成先观察，然后根据观察的结果总结成理论再被随后的实验验证的过程，这是很幼稚的。已故的科学哲学先驱Karl Popper，在他1960年的著作《科学知识的发展》中提到，科学起源于问题而非观察，每个有真实价值的新科学理论都引出新的问题。因此不用担心科学会因完成它的使命而走到尽头，这归功于无穷无尽的未知。

至少自从Thomas Kuhn在1962年出版了《科学革命史》一书以来，人们普遍认为观测只不过是科学理论的结果，这种观点常常被Kuhn和其他哲学家拿来作范例，这是由于如果没有恰当的和不恰当的理论，要做什么样观察就将没有决定基础。既然没有任何人能够知道一切，那么在某一领域获得全面的了解（有时是权威的观点）只不过达到一种判断（境界），即另外的信息都不重要了，不值得去费神求证和考虑了。

进一步分析，我们必须认识到理论是问题的产物而问题是已认知的未知的产物。因此，正是未知引起了探究，探究产生知识然后反过来揭开了新的未知领域。这就是知识的矛盾之处：未知随着知识的增长而增长且有可能比其相关知识增长的更多。

我对知识和未知两者关系的形容来自Matthew的一句话：―我们如同置身于一个黑暗笼罩的平原上……‖，笼罩我们并包裹着我们的世界的这片黑暗，就是未知。知识是由我们能提供的所有―蜡烛‖散发出来的光芒。光照的面积随着我们点亮越来越多的―蜡烛‖而扩大，但是光照之外的面积也在几何增长。因此，知识是有限的，而未知是无限的，有限囊括无限永远是不可能的。

第二课Modular ManbyAlvinToffler

Urbanism -- the city dweller's way of life – has preoccupied sociology since the turn of the century. Max Weber pointed out the obvious fact that people in cities cannot know all their neighbors as intimately as it was possible for them to do in small communities. Georg Simmel carried this idea one step further when he declared, rather quaintly, that if the urban individual reacted emotionally to each and every person with whom he came into contact, or cluttered his mind with information about them, he would be completely atomized internally and would fall into an unthinkable mental condition.

Louis Wirth, in turn, noted the fragmented nature of urban relationships. ―Characteristically, urbanites meet one another in highly segmental roles ...‖ he wrote,― Their dependence upon others is confined to a highly fractionalized aspect of the other's round of activity. ‖Rather than becoming deeply involved with the total personality of every individual we meet, he explained, we necessarily maintain superficial and partial contact with some. We are interested only in the efficiency of the shoe salesman in meeting our needs; we couldn't care less that his wife is an alcoholic.

What this means is that we form limited involvement relationships with most of the people around us. Consciously or not we define our relationships with most people in functional terms. So long as we do not become involved with the shoe salesman's problems at home, or his more general hopes, dreams and frustrations, he is, for us, fully interchangeable with any other salesman of equal competence. In effect, we have applied the modular principle to human relationships. We have created the disposable person: Modular Man.

Rather than entangling ourselves with the whole man, we plug into a module of his personality. Each personality can be imagined as a unique configuration of thousands of such modules. Thus no whole person is interchangeable with any other. But certain modules are. Since we are seeking only to buy a pair of shoes, and not the friendship, love or hate of the salesman, it is not necessary for us to tap into or engage with all the other modules that form his personality. Our relationship is safely limited. There is limited liability on both sides. The relationship entails certain accepted forms of behavior and communication. Both sides understand, consciously or otherwise, the limitations and laws. Difficulties arise only when one or another party oversteps the tacitly understood limits, when he attempts to connect up with some module not relevant to the function at hand.

Today a vast sociological and psychological literature is devoted to the alienation presumed to flow from this fragmentation of relationships. Much of the rhetoric of

existentialism and the student revolt decries this fragmentation. It is said that we are not sufficiently ―involved‖ with our fellow man. Millions of young people go about seeking ―total involvement.‖

Before leaping to the popular conclusion that modularization is all bad, however, it might be well to look more closely at the matter. Theologian Harvey Cox, echoing Simmel, has pointed out that in an urban environment the attempt to ―involve‖ oneself fully with everyone can lead only to self-destruction and emotional emptiness. Urban man, he writes, ―must have more or less impersonal relationships with most of the people with whom he comes in contact precisely in order to choose certain friendships to nourish and cultivate.His life represents a point touched by dozens of systems and hundreds of people. His capacity to know some of them better necessitates his minimizing the depth of his relationship to many others. Listening to the postman gossip becomes for the urban man an act of sheer graciousness, since he probably has no interest in the people the postman wants to talk about.

Moreover, before lamenting modularization, it is necessary to ask ourselves whether we really would prefer to return to the traditional condition of man in which each individual presumably related to the whole personality of a few people rather than to the personality modules of many. Traditional man has been so sentimentalized, so cloyingly romanticized, that we frequently overlook the consequences of such a return. The very same writers who lament fragmentation also demand freedom -- yet overlook the un-freedom of people bound together in totalistic relationships. For any relationship implies mutual demands and expectations. The more intimately involved a relationship, the greater the pressure the parties exert on one another to fulfill these expectations. The tighter and more totalistic the relationship, the more modules, so to speak, are brought into play, and the more numerous are the demands we make.

In a modular relationship, the demands are strictly bounded. So long as the shoe salesman performs his rather limited service for us, thereby fulfilling our rather limited expectations, we do not insist that he believe in our God, or that he be tidy at home, or share our political values, or enjoy the same kind of food or music that we do. We leave him free in all other matters as he leaves us free to be atheist or Jew, heterosexual or homosexual, John Bircher orCommunist. This is not true of the total relationship and cannot be. To a certain point, fragmentation and freedom go together.

All of us seem to need some totalistic relationships in our lives. But to decry the fact that we cannot have only such relationships is nonsense. And to prefer a society in which the individual has holistic relationships with a few, rather than modular relationships with many, is to wish for a return to the imprisonment of the past -- a past when individuals may have been more tightly bound to one another, but when they were also more tightly regimented by social conventions, sexual mores, political and religious restrictions.

This is not to say that modular relationships entail no risks or that this is the best of all possible worlds. There are, in fact, profound risks in the situation. Until now, however, the entire public and professional discussion of these issues has been badly out of focus.

城市居民的生活方式，已经成为社会学家在世纪之交研究的重点。马克思.韦伯指出这样一个明显的事实：因为住在城市里的人交流范围的缩窄，使得他们并不能与所有的邻居保持一种亲密的关系。GXX进一步阐述了这样一种观点，他更巧妙的指出：如果单个城市居民与他周围所有人都保持情感交流，或者他满脑子都被周围这些人的信息所包围，那么他会陷入―精神分裂‖，以及难以想象的精神状况中。

LXX，进一步指出，城市居民关系的不完整特性：―这很典型，现在城市居民只与其他人中的很少一部分人保持联系‖，他写道：―他们与其周围人的相互依赖，被局限在高度分割的一些方面里。‖他解释道，我们并不是将遇到的每一个个体都去深度涉及他的完全个性。我们只需要与他们保持一种表面的、部分的关系就可以了。我们只关心卖鞋人的工作效率，我们并不需要关心他的老婆是不是一名酒鬼。

这个论点的意思是：我们与周围大多数人形成一种限制关系。自不自觉中，我们以功能来定义我们与周围人的关系。只要我们不被牵涉进卖鞋人的家庭问题、或者他自己的希望、梦想和挫折中，那么他对于我们来讲，在能力上他与其他卖鞋人就是可以完全互换的了。实际上，我们将模块化原理应用到了人际关系中。我们创造了一种可以随意处理的人：模块化的人。

我们将他的个性进行模块化，而不是将我们自己卷入到他的整个人性里。这样，我们可以想象每一种个性都具有独特的特性，它是由成千上万的模块组合而成的。因此，没有一个人是可以与其他人进行互换的。但是，特定的模块可以。只要我们的目的只是为了买鞋，而不是为了交朋友，无论对这位卖鞋人或爱或恨，我们都不必卷入或者与构成他个性的所有模块建立联系。我们的友谊是安全有限制的。这种限制依靠双方。人际关系必须只承担行为和交流的特定方面。双方都必须有意识的建立这种理解，或者通过其他手段，例如禁令或者法律。当你或者对方部分的逾越了这种心照不宣的限制，即当他试图与他自己并无关联的功能模块进行接触时，一种功能上的困境就会随之发生。

今天，大量的社会学和心理学文献认为异化的发生是来源于这种人际关系的破碎。很多存在主义者和学生用斥责的言词反对这种破碎。他们声称我们并不是与我们的同伴保持―肤浅‖的关系。成千上万的青年人正在寻找一种―全面的参与‖。

在立即做出模块化都是不好的这一流行结论前，我们应该更加深入的看待这一问题。神学家XX，回应XX时指出：在城市环境中，那些试图将自己完全―融入‖到其他人当中，只会导致他的自我毁灭和精神空虚。他写到：城市人，―必需与大多数人保持一种或多或少的非个人的关系，他与这些人保持这种关系目的是