书城外语在哈佛听演讲
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第52章 我们的时代需要冒险(2)

Since,because of Jermy"s leadership the faculty of Arts and Sciences,the curiculum in science,is much stronger than it was a decade ago.But I say to you that,in this room and I believe too much among our student body -it would be unacceptable and embar rassing to admit to total ignorance of Shakespear,but not knowing the difference between a gene and chromosome or not knowing the meaning of exponential growth-well,those are considered technical subjects and it is OK not to fully understand them.

That might have been all right a half centry ago,it might even have been all right when I went to college a qurter centry ago.But a time when you have to understand the life sciences to go to a doctor,at a time when you have to understand cognitive science and the nature of inteligence to function effectively on computers and with the Internet;at a time when the very conception of what it means to be a human is at issue with the development of cloning technologies;at a time when we are also fortunate to be alive,when mankind is able to sit on this planet,in buildings,people who live for a human life span,and understand what happend inthe first billionth of a second-in detail-of the cosmos six billions years ago.We areindeed fortunate enough to be alive when all of that is happening.

We have to expect more,develop more and do more to promote a general understanding of science.And as was always true at a university like this one,what happens in teaching is has to be linked and connected with whathappens in research.And the nature of science is changing very profoundly in some areas.There are academic papers now published in particle physics that have 350co-authors.Process in the life science is coming,in substancial part,from projects that cost over a billion dollars.

We don"t know what thing we are going to go,exactly.What I think we do know is that the traditinal apprenticeship system-professor who teaches and works with six gradute students,graduate students become post-docs,post-docs work in the lab,eventually they leave to a scparate laboratory-that apprenticeship model of science will always have its place,but it will not be the whole story or science in the years ahead,Part of that is accommodating the scale of science;part of that is finding the right ways to cooperate with the private sector in the scientific area;part of that is finding ways of promoting combination across all parts of our university.

This is particicularly important in the life science.You know,life expectancy in 1900for an American was to live to the same age that I am right now.My daughters can plausibly hope to live to more than 100,if science continue its progress,and the 20th was the centry of physics;the 21st century is going to be the century of biology.And we will needto ma ke su re t hat ou r medica l school that our faculty of Arts and Sciences,are cooperating as effectively as they can inthose areas.

We will need also to embrace what are the twin phenomena that are changing the global systerm:information technology and globalization.You know one is never sure about how and when to use cliches.On the one hand,cliches are cliches.On theother hand,they become cliches because they are true.And I believe the proposition that the Internet is the most fundamental change in the way knowledge is created and disseminated since the printing press is both a cliche and a truth.

We do not yet know how it will change the work of the university.What we"ve always found in the past with disruptive technologies is that the first and successfull stage is when they are used to do things that were being done before a bit better,and that the real change comes when different things can be done because of the new technology.

I had the highly "cautionary"experience over the summer,of reading President Pusey"s 1958address to the Harvard College fund,at which he stressed the fact that the world was going to be transformed by educational television.So one does need to be cautious and one does need to insist on standards,and I have observed,by the way,that those who have accents like those of Dean Knowles tend to be extraordinary resistant to the droping of standards,in favor of new innovation.And on behalf of all of us,we are very glad it is so.