真正的达尔文主义全是机遇
True Darwinism Is All About Chance
真正的达尔文主义全是机遇
原文作者：Noah Berlatsky
Though the rich sometimes forget, Darwin knew that nature frequently rolls the dice.
尽管有钱人有时忘乎所以，达尔文却告诉我们，未来像掷骰子一样，充满变数。
Chance is an uncomfortable thing. So Curtis Johnson argues inDarwin’s Dice: The Idea of Chance in the Thought of Charles Darwin, and he makes a compelling case. The central controversy, and the central innovation, in Darwin’s work is not the theory of natural selection itself, according to Johnson, but Darwin’s more basic, and more innovative, turn to randomness as a way to explain natural phenomena. This application of randomness was so controversial, Johnson argues, that Darwin tried to cover it up, replacing words like “accident” and “chance” with terms like “spontaneous variation” in later editions of his work. Nonetheless, the terminological shift was cosmetic: Randomness remained, and still remains, the disturbing center of Darwin’s theories.
机遇让人不安，柯蒂斯·约翰逊在《达尔文的骰子：进化论中的机遇思想》一书中如是说。并且，他用令人信服的证据加以说明。约翰逊认为，达尔文的成就中的关键争论和创新并非自然选择学说，而是使用随机性来解释自然现象，这一解释更基础，也更新颖。约翰逊还说，人们就进化论中的随机性争论不休，甚至连达尔文自己都试图用一些诸如“偶然”，“机会”，以及后来的“自发性变异”等词来掩盖这一观点。尽管如此，术语的转变依旧无法掩盖事实：进化论中让人不安的随机性观点仍存在，并将继续存在。
Johnson, a political theorist at Lewis & Clark College, explains that there are two basic kinds of chance in Darwin’s thought. The first—most familiar and least disconcerting—is chance as probability. According to the theory of natural selection, individuals with advantageous adaptations are most likely to survive. A giraffe with a longer neck has a better shot of reaching those lofty leaves and living to munch another day; a polar bear blessed with a warmer coat has a higher probability of surviving a frigid winter than one with less hair. The long-necked giraffe may not always win—it may, for example, be pulverized by a meteor before it can pass on its long-necked genes. But over time, the odds will go its way. There is randomness here, but it is controlled and predictable: It works in accordance with a rule. Natural selection makes sense.
政治理论家约翰逊就职于路易克拉克大学，他解释道，在达尔文的思想中，存在两种基本机遇。第一种机遇是可能性，对此我们很了解，也能接受。根据自然选择学说，更能适应环境的个体更可能生存下去。脖子更长的长颈鹿能够得着更高的树叶，因此又能多获得一天的食物；毛皮更厚更保暖的北极熊比起毛皮较少的同类，更有可能挨过寒冷的冬季。脖子长的长颈鹿也不一定总能活下来，比如，它可能在把长脖子基因传给下一代之前被流星砸个粉碎。但随着时间推移，几率会不断增加。这里面存在随机性，但却可控可预测：其中存在一套规则。因此，自然选择学说成立。
The second kind of chance in Darwin’s work, though, is more mysterious. For natural selection to work, you need to have a range of traits to select among. That range is provided by individual variation, the fact that two different animals (whether giraffe or bear) are different from each other. Some giraffes have longer necks than others. Some bears have thicker fur than others. Why should this be? Darwin’s answer was chance.
然而，在达尔文的贡献中，第二种机遇则更加神秘。在自然选择中，你必须有众多不同特性以供选择。这些特性基于个体变异，也就是说两个不同的动物个体彼此不同（不管是长颈鹿还是北极熊）。一些长颈鹿的脖子更长，一些北极熊的毛皮更厚。为什么会这样？达尔文的答案是机遇。
Sometimes, Johnson writes, Darwin would argue that “chance” stood in for unknown laws—consistent rules which were not yet known, but which, when discovered, would explain exactly why individuals, both within and across species, were different. But “in his more private and less guarded moments,” Johnson explains, Darwin suggested that “the cause of at least some variations is unknowable, even in principle.” And, in fact, as Johnson suggests, this second interpretation—that the cause of variation is unknowable—has only become more persuasive over time. “The mechanisms of variation are better understood than ever,” Johnson writes, “but the ability to predict what variations will occur and what will not is not much better off than when Darwin wrote.” As biologist and feminist theorist Julia Serano argues in her recent bookExcluded, we can’t currently predict whether someone will be homosexual or heterosexual, cis or trans, based on their genetic code, and there’s no reason to think we ever will be able to do so.
约翰逊写道，有时达尔文会说，“机遇”选择的规律并不明了，我们仍未知晓这些规律，但一旦我们发现规律，就能得知为什么无论种内还是种间，个体都存在差异。但约翰逊解释道，达尔文在“更私人和更随意时候”提到过“即使在大体上看，至少还有一些变异是不可知的”。而事实上，正如约翰逊所言，第二种解释——变异的原因是不可知的——随着时间推移，更加让人信服。约翰逊写道：“如今对变异机制的了解超过以往，但预测何种变异会发生，何种不会，比起达尔文时代，也好不到哪儿去”。作为生物学家和女性主义者，茱莉亚·塞拉诺在她的新书《排除：让女性主义和酷儿运动更具包容性》中称，目前，根据基因密码组，我们还不能预测人们的性取向，不管是反式构象还是顺式构象，而且，也没有任何迹象说明我们将来能做到。
Thinkers in Darwin’s day had largely made their peace with Newton, and were therefore able to see God’s hand behind the operation of natural laws. But for Darwin, variation did not conform to laws. Instead, God appeared to be playing dice with creation—and as Einstein would later suggest, a dice-playing God begins to look like not a God at all. For Darwin, in particular, the fact that variations were as likely to be negative as positive created serious problems for his faith. As Johnson writes:
达尔文时代的思想家大都与牛顿和解，因此，也都能看到自然法则背后的上帝之手。但对达尔文来说，变异并不遵循自然法则。事实上，万物似乎是上帝掷骰子创造的——爱因斯坦后来也提到过，掷骰子的上帝开始变得不像上帝。变异对物种的好处同坏处一样明显，这一事实对达尔文而言，尤其挑战了他的信仰。约翰逊因此写道：
Some creatures are born so ill-adapted that they do not really have any chance at all to survive or at least to propagate. That did not seem to Darwin to reflect intelligence…. How could a good God plan a world destined to be filled with so much senseless death and evidence misery?
一些生物生来就不适应环境，它们根本不太可能生存，或者至少不能繁衍后代。这对达尔文而言，并不能反映上帝的智慧……全善的上帝怎么可能创造出一个注定充满无谓死亡和处处苦难的世界？
Attributing variation to chance leads inevitably to a particularly sticky version of the theodicy problem. If God is all powerful, how can he roll the dice with each infant, doling out disadvantages and, at worst, crippling, painful, terminal birth defects? Darwin had no answer, which is why he appears to have lost his faith in God, and why he hid his commitment to chance from his theistic colleagues and the public. Eventually, Johnson suggests, Darwin quietly adopted a full-blown materialist determinism, in which natural forces governed all aspects of life. Since unknown laws of chance were responsible for individual character and appetites, Darwin thought, there was no space left for free will.
将变异归因于机遇将不可避免地挑战神正论，让问题变得非常棘手。如果上帝是全善全能的，那他又是怎样拿新生儿当作骰子掷，决定每个新生儿的命运，随意赋予他们各种缺陷，残疾，致命的先天缺陷呢？达尔文没有答案，这让达尔文转而相信机遇，也让他向他的神学同事以及公众隐瞒了他对于机遇理论的坚持。约翰逊在结尾处提到，达尔文悄然接受了发展成熟的物质决定论。在物质决定论中，自然力量掌控了生命的全部。由于个体特性和嗜好是由未知的机遇法则决定的，那么，达尔文想，留给自由意志的空间已经所剩无几了。
Johnson does not take the story of Darwin and chance beyond the naturalist’s own lifetime. It seems clear, though, that even our more secular age is uncomfortable with this aspect of Darwin’s thought. Natural selection became popularized through Social Darwinism and eugenics, and still resonates in discussions around meritocracy. The argument that those who succeed are the most fit to succeed has a reassuring teleology; CEOs, venture capitalists, politicians, or, for that matter, freelance writers, can look to Darwin to assure themselves they have succeeded not by chance, but by skill and/or virtue.
约翰逊并非完全赞同达尔文的理论，尤其是对连这位博物学家自己一生都没有解决的问题有所保留。很明显，就连我们世俗化的时代都对达尔文这一思想感到不安。通过社会达尔文主义和优生学，自然选择学说流行了起来，并仍在精英阶层的争辩中时常出现。成功人士的成功是因为具备成功的能力，采取这一观点的目的是为了让某些人安然自得；执行总裁，投机资本家，政客，或者，就此事而言的自由作家，他们都指望达尔文，依靠他的学说让自己确信他们的成功并非运气，而是技能或美德，或技能美德兼具。
Similarly, pop evolutionary psychology retails stories in the same vein, about how men are from Mars and women are from the savannah. They explain social interactions in terms of an all-purpose predictive rubric, one which rationalizes everything—from attitudes toward short skirts to the Oscars—in terms of mating probabilities. Darwin himself recognized that not all variations were necessarily beneficial—that some traits or behaviors might have no grand effect on survival, or might even be harmful but not harmful enough to be selected against. But in pop culture, the shadow of meaninglessness is dispersed, and, in some way, Darwin’s theories are used to make what could otherwise be seen as random seem predictable and meaningful.
进化心理学大行其道，其同进化论一脉相承，也在同样贩售什么男人来自火星女人来自大草原的故事。他们指定用哪都能使得上的大红字，以及交配概率来解释社会现象，合理化所有事儿——从对短裙的态度到奥斯卡奖。达尔文本人意识到，并非所有变异都有利，一些特点或行为对维持生存效果甚微，或虽不至淘汰，但也不利生存。但在流行文化下，人生无意义的毒瘤危害甚广，甚至在某种程度上，有人利用达尔文的理论，让那些本就可以当作随机的事件看上去是可以预测的并且具有意义。
Johnson’s book challenges us, at least implicitly, to rethink these comforting Darwinisms. In particular, acknowledging chance seems like it could be a way to think about the arbitrariness of success and power. Meritocracy is false for a lot of reasons, but Johnson’s Darwin points to a very basic flaw—namely, that individuals are not responsible for their own merits, whatever those merits may be. Whatever skills or talents or character traits you have, whatever self you were born with, is the product of random variation. Darwin can be used to tell the rich that they amassed their wealth by being the fittest, perhaps, but he can also be used to point out to the rich that they really could just as easily have been someone else. The person you’re stepping on—it’s only the roll of a dice that that person isn’t you.
约翰逊的书挑战了我们对达尔文主义的认识，或者至少暗示我们去重新思考那些让人聊以安慰的达尔文主义。重新思考达尔文主义，承认机遇的存在似乎可以让我们认识到，其实成功和权力是任意随机的。精英体制是错的，原因很多，但基于达尔文的理论，约翰逊指出了精英体制的根本错误——个体不能决定自身优点，不管这优点是什么。不管你拥有什么技能什么才艺什么特点，不管你生来如何，都是随机变异的结果。达尔文的理论可以用来教育有钱人，他们的财富可能是因其能适应环境而得来的，但达尔文理论却同样警告有钱人，他们也极有可能变成穷人。你踩在脚底的人之所以不是你，也只是掷骰子的运气好罢了。
Beyond that, chance opens materialism to something, or somewhere, else. Darwin rejected miracles adamantly, but surely if the creation of each individual is radically unpredictable, then each individual is (as Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons argue inWatchmen) a miracle in him-, her-, or zir-self. Natural selection is often used to argue that the individual is defined by the struggle for survival. But random variation seems to suggest instead that people (and not just people) are too random to be predicted or defined. We can’t predict why, or how, a new baby will vary from everyone before or since. Life after Darwin is still, and in some ways more than ever, a mystery. For Darwin, chance meant determinism, but it seems like it could just as easily mean possibility.
除此之外，机遇的观点也将唯物主义引向了其他事物，或其他领域。达尔文对神迹嗤之以鼻，但如果每个个体的创造都完全不可预测，那么每个个体自身必然是神迹(正如阿兰·摩尔及大卫·吉布斯在《守望者》一书中所说)。自然选择学说通常用来说明个体必须努力生存下去，但机遇却似乎暗示着人类（以及其它生物）过于随机，以至于根本无法预测或定义。我们没法预测未来的一名新生儿以何种方式同古往今来的任何人都不同，也不清楚究竟为何。达尔文之后，生命依然是个谜，甚至从某种角度讲，变得更加神秘。对达尔文而言，机遇意味着决定论，但其实机遇同样可能意味着可能性。
原文来源：Pacific Standard
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