PBS高端访谈:科学家探寻精神世界（在线收听）

AMNA NAWAZ: One conflict in the ongoing culture wars seems to suggest that science and religion cannot coexist peacefully.

Alan Lightman is a distinguished physicist and a novelist who teaches at MIT.

Tonight, he shares his Humble Opinion on how to make space for both facts and spirituality.

ALAN LIGHTMAN, Physicist: I have worked as a physicist for many years.

And I have always held a purely scientific view of the world.

And by that, I mean that the universe is made of matter and nothing more, that the universe is governed by a small number of laws, and that everything in the world eventually disintegrates and passes away.

And then, one summer night, I was out in the ocean in a small boat.

It was a dark, clear night, and the sky vibrated with stars.

I laid down in the boat and looked up.

After a few minutes, I found myself falling into infinity.

I lost all track of myself, and the vast expanse of time extending from the far distant past to the far distant future seemed compressed to a dot.

I felt connected to something eternal and ethereal, something beyond the material world.

In recent years, some scientists have attempted to use scientific arguments to question the existence of God.

I think these people are missing the point.

God, as conceived by most religions, lies outside time and space.

You can't use scientific arguments to either disprove or prove God.

And for the same reason, you can't use scientific arguments to analyze or understand the feeling I had that summer night when I lay down in the boat and looked up and felt part of something far larger than myself.

I'm still a scientist.

I still believe that the world is made of atoms and molecules and nothing more.

But I also believe in the power and validity of the spiritual experience.

Is it possible to be committed to both without feeling a contradiction?

I think so.

We understand that everything in the physical world is material, fated to pass away.

Yet we also long for the permanent, some grand and eternal unity.

We're idealists and we're realists.

We're dreamers and we're builders.

We experience and we do experiments.

We long for certainties, and yet we ourselves are full of the ambiguities of the Mona Lisa and the I Ching.

We ourselves are part of the yin-yang of the world.

阿姆纳·纳瓦兹：文化战争如火如荼，其中一个冲突似乎表明科学与宗教难以和平共处。

阿兰·莱特曼是一位杰出的物理学家，也是一位在麻省理工大学任教的小说家。

今晚，他做客Humble Opinion栏目，分享他如何让物质与精神共存的观点。

阿兰·莱特曼，物理学家：我做了很多年的物理学家。

一直对世界持一种纯粹的科学观。

因此，我认为宇宙是由物质构成的，除此以外别无他物，宇宙间的定律就那么几条，世界上的一切最终都会瓦解逝去。

然后，在一个夏夜，我驾着一条小船出海。

那个夜晚漆黑、清朗，天空星光璀璨。

我躺在船上抬起头来。

几分钟后，我发现自己落入了无垠的时空。

我失去了一切自我的轨迹，从遥远的过去延伸到遥远的未来，广袤的时间似乎被压缩成了一个点。

我感受到了永恒与虚幻，感受到了超越物质世界的东西。

近年来，一些科学家试图用科学论据来质疑上帝的存在。

我认为这些人没有抓住要点。

上帝，正如大多数宗教所设想的那样，存在于时空之外。

你不能用科学的论据来反驳或证明上帝。

出于同样的原因，你不能用科学的论据来分析或理解那个夏夜的感觉，那一夜我躺在船上，抬头仰望，我感受到了比我更大的东西。

我仍是个科学家。

我仍然相信世界是由原子和分子构成的，没有别的。

但我也相信精神体验的力量和有效性。

是否有可能在不感到矛盾的情况下兼顾两者？

我认为可以。

我们明白物质世界中的一切都是物质的，注定要逝去。

然而，我们也渴望永恒与伟大的统一。

我们是理想主义者，我们也是现实主义者。

我们是梦想家，我们也是建设者。

我们体验，我们也实验。

我们渴望确定性，但我们自己也充满了蒙娜丽莎和易经的模糊性。

我们自己是世界阴阳的一部分。