双语畅销书《艾伦图灵传》第3章:思考什么是思考(33)
日期:2016-11-02 09:58

(单词翻译:单击)

Alan did not in fact go to see Russia for himself.

艾伦实际上并没有去看苏联,

But even if he had, he would have found himself ill-disposed to become an enthusiast for the Soviet system.

即使他去了,他也会发现,自己对苏维埃体制毫无兴趣。

Nor did he become a 'political' person in the Cambridge of the 1930s.

他没有成为剑桥30年代的政治人物,

He was not sufficiently interested in 'mere power'.

他对只会使蛮力的发动机没兴趣。

Buried in the Communist Manifesto was the declaration that the ultimate aim was to make society 'an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.' But in the 1930s, to be a communist meant identifying with the Soviet regime, which was a very different matter.

共产党宣言说,终极的目标,是建设这样一个社会,在这个社会中,每个人的自由发展,是所有人自由发展的条件。但是在30年代,要想成为共产主义者,就意味着认同苏维埃政体,而后者却是完全不同的概念。

Those at Cambridge who perceived themselves as members of a responsible British prefect class might well identify with the Russian rulers as with a sort of better British India, collectivising and rationalising the peasants for their own good.

在剑桥,那些觉得自己富有责任感的、级长阶级的成员,也许很认同苏联统治者,他们正想把英属印度改造成那样,为了自己的利益把农民集体化。

For products of the English public school, apt to despise trade, it was but a small step to reject capitalism, and place faith in greater state control.

对英国公学的产物来说,他们比较看不起商贸,这只是反对资本主义的一个小原因,更主要的问题是宏观调控。

Alan Turing, however, was not interested in organising anyone, and did not wish to be organised by anyone else.

然而艾伦.图灵没有兴趣搞组织,也不想被任何人组织起来。

He had escaped from one totalitarian system, and had no yearning for another.

他刚从一个极权体制中逃脱,不想再陷入另一个。

Marxism claimed to be scientific, and it spoke to the modern need for a rationale of historical change that could be justified by science.

马克思主义号称是科学的,它提出了一个可以科学证明的历史发展规律。

As the Red Queen told Alice, 'You may call it nonsense if you like, but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary.'

正如红色皇后告诉爱丽丝:你可以说它没意义,但这只是因为你的字典里没有这个词。

But Alan was not interested in the problems of history, while the marxist attempts to explain the exact sciences in terms of 'prevailing modes of production' were very remote from his ideas and experience.

艾伦对历史问题没兴趣,马克思主义试图把科学联系到生产制度上,可艾伦的字典里没有这个词。

The Soviet Union judged relativity and quantum mechanics by political criteria, while the English theorist Lancelot Hogben sustained an economic explanation of the development of mathematics only by restricting attention to its most elementary applications.

苏联用政治眼光评判相对论和量子论,而英国思想家兰斯洛.赫本则用经济眼光评判数学的发展。

Beauty and truth, which motivated Alan Turing as they had always inspired mathematicians and scientists, were lacking.

那些启迪艾伦和其它科学家的美好真理,他们全然不关心。

The Cambridge communists took upon themselves something of the character of a fundamentalist sect, with the air of being saved, and the element of 'conversion' met in Alan Turing the same scepticism as he had already turned upon Christian beliefs.

剑桥的共产主义者,有一种正统基督教派的特征,带着救赎和皈依的氛围,而这正是信仰基督的艾伦.图灵所怀疑的东西。

With his fellow sceptic Kenneth Harrison he would mock the communist line.

像另一位怀疑论者肯尼斯.哈里森一样,艾伦蔑视共产主义。

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