Why did modern humans develop a growing belief in their ability to obtain new powers through research? What forged the bond between science, politics and economics? This chapter looks at the unique nature of modern science in order to provide part of the answer. The next two chapters examine the formation of the alliance between science, the European empires and the economics of capitalism.
开篇的介绍，以这些问题开始，让人从一章的开始就能带着具体的问题或者自己的疑惑继续读下去~
In 1620 France Bacon published a scientific manifesto tided The New Instrument. In it he argued that"knowledge is power". The real test of"knowledge" is not whether it i true, but whether it empowers us. Scientists usually assume that no theory is 100 percent correct.
In fact, in all these cases the vanquished enjoyed superior military and civilian technology.
These creeds taught people that they must come to terms with death and pin their hops on the afterlife, rather than seek to overcome death and live for ever here on earth. The best minds were busy meaning to death, not trying to escape it.
这样的观点应该是现在大多数人所欢迎的~活在当下，而不是把希望寄托到下一世。只有清醒地认识death,才知道自己该怎么活，要怎么活，就不至于浑浑噩噩过一生了吧~很多人包括自己穷极一生都在寻找活着的意义也有很多人包括自己不知道怎么去过这一生又是怎么活过这一生…
When the gods created man, Gilgamesh had learned, they set death as man's inevitable destiny, and man must learn to live with it.
突然脑海里就冒出来网络上一个段子;我来这世上一遭，就没打算活着回去。看到这句话的第一反应是哈哈大笑~大道至简，正如作者的文思风格~
For men of science, death is not an inevitable destiny, but merely is a technical problem. People die not because the gods decreed it, but due to various technical failure- a heart attack, an infection. And every technical problem has a technical solution.
True, at present we cannot solve all technical problems. But we are working on them. Our best minds are not wasting their time trying to give meaning to death. Instead, they are busy investigating the physiological, hormonal and genetic systems responsible for disease and old age.
这样看来，自古以来人类的本性就没有变过，本质一样方式和说法不同。
People avoid the issue of death because the goal seemed too elusive. Why create unreasonable expectation? We're now at a point, however, where we can be frank about it. The leading project of the Scientific Revolution is to give humankind eternal life.
From a historical perspective it is fascinating to see that most late-modern religions and ideologies have already taken death and the afterlife out of the equation. Until the eighteenth central , religions considered death and its aftermath central to the meaning of life. Begining in the eighteenth century, religions and ideologies such as liberalism, socialism and feminism lost all interest in the afterlife.
这大概是关于ideologies of death的 一些历程
The only modern ideology that still awards death a central role is nationalism. In its more poetic and desperate moments, nationalism promises that whoever dies for the nation will forever live in its collective memory. Yet this promise is so fuzzy that even most nationalists do not really know what to make of it.
看起来好像是作者说的这么个回事…不知道有没有反驳的地方，从他的premise到他的conclusion…
We are living in a technical age. Many are convinced that science and technology hold the answers to all our problems. We should just let the scientists and technicians go on with their work, and they will create heaven here on earth. But science is not an enterprise that takes place on some superior moral or spiritual plane above the rest of human activity. Like all other parts of our culture, it is shaped by economic, political and religious of interests.
To channel limited resources we must answer questions such as "What is more important?" and "What is good?" And these are not scientific questions. Science can explain what exists in the world, how things work, and what might be in the future. By definition, it has no pretensions to knowing what should be in the future. Only religion and ideologies seek to answer such questions.（读到这里的时候思维有点混乱，不太明白作者的看法，因为在前面的文段里有讲科学能解决很多问题，能提供有效有力有量的数据或证明来解释一件事，为什么到这里的时候却说只有宗教和意识形态才能回答这些问题。不过，接着往下读的时候，便能找到作者自己给出的一套解释 ; There is no scientific answer to this question. There are only political, economic and religious answers . 作者还在下文提供很清晰明了的例子来说明; But as long as she lives in a society that values the commercial potential of milk and the health of its human citizens over the feelings of cows, she'd best write up her research proposal so as to appeal to those assumptions.这跟现阶段的学术界本质方向差不多吧~ 说不上好也说不上坏，我能简单或愚蠢地把它归因为历史的发展历程吗~）
Science is unable to set its own priorities.It is also incapable of determing what to do with its discoveries.
In short, scientific research can flourish only in alliance with some religion or.ideology. The ideology justifies the costs of the research. In exchange, the ideology influences the scientific agenda and determines what to do with the discoveries.
Two forces on particular deserve our attention imperialism and capitalism. The feedback loop between science, empire and capital has arguably been history's chief engine for the past 500 years.（啊~越来越能感受到作者遣词造句的美感了~或者说是能对句子结构和形态有那么一丢丢小感觉了，比如说这句的中心语是 the two forces,于是便以它为主语的构句形式，还有词汇比如说deserve our attention, loop between, chief engine等。这样简洁但很有味的文笔方式和培根的文章有异曲同工之妙啊，比如那句"study serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight, is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse, and for ability, is in the judgment, and disposition of business."这种感觉，只能用美来形容，很能让人感觉到英文的魅力，而不是教材里索然无味的话。）同样，作者在章结尾的时候会引述出下章的内容，终于能get到作者文章的direction了，跟着作者的思路往下读;The following chapters analyse its workings. First we'll look at how the twin turbines of science and empire were latched to one another, and then learn how both were hitched up to the money pump of capitalism.