万物静默如谜

德国博特教授（Walther Bothe），于1954年与麦克思·蓬因发展了测量宇宙线用的方法而获得了诺贝尔奖，他于1957年2月逝世。本文是他去世前几个星期写的一篇文章，里面有许多切身经验之谈，虽然他的观点和方法我们不完全同意，但有些他的经验对我们有用处，因此译出来供大家参考。

——译者：何泽慧 陆祖荫

有些人曾经在一个适当的时机产生了一种想法，从这种想法出发，他建立了他的科学活动生涯。可是一般的规律却与这不同，在一个人想出的100个想法当中，可以证明其中90个是无法实现的、不合实际的、无足轻重的、错误的或者诸如此类；可是在余下的10个想法当中，总会有一个想法是最有希望、最实际而又最容易实现的，需要花时间把它找出来。一旦找到了这个想法，就要全力实现它。

尽管使用罐头铁皮和封蜡的黄金时代已经过去，还是应当尽量使你的实验装置越简单越灵活越好。最理想的实验装置应当是在实验目的达到之后，装置就坏掉了。装置仪器最好从房间的中央开始，做一个新的实验，首先是把它从头到尾粗略的做一遍，尽管这样会引起许多麻烦，还是应当把这做一个规矩来执行。这样做的好处是，你可以知道各种困难所在和产生误差的来源，最大的困难常常会出现在完全没有预料到的地方。物理学家也只是人，不可能一切都预先料到。

时常会发现原来实验的计划和目的，无法再坚持下去。在放弃这个实验之前，你必须弄清楚为什么它行不通，然后也要有勇气来中断它。只要正确的操作，就会使仪器发挥它最好的作用。

即使是可以做得下去的实验，为了另一个更基本的目的去改变它，也是值得的。如维恩所说，当你做实验时，你的眼睛要睁着。为了在需要的时候可以很快的改变实验方向，实验设备一定要简单明了，而且可以移动；附属的设备，例如复杂的电子学线路等，必须是良好的。附带说一句，不设法修好损坏了的仪器，而简单的送还库房是物理学家该死的罪过。

每天应该安排一个日程表，常常你会不按照它行事，那么你就应当找出原因来。没有日程表，一件工作就会消磨下去，而得不到实际的结果。一个日程表，会鼓励人集中精力在一个具体的目标上，防止他消耗在一些枝节的小事情上。物理学家要有一定程度的休息，但休闲时亦必须进行思想的活动。

不止一次发生过，从一个不合理的甚至是不正确的叙述开始，得到了意想不到的结果。即便是一个愚蠢的实验，如果不太花费时间，也完全可以冒一次险去做一下。要经常去了解文献，但不要因为自己在无意中重复了别人的工作而感到非常害怕，即使两个工作者做的是同样的工作，但这还不等于是完全相同，至少两个人的着重点是不同的。

这也是一个会犯不少错误的地方。应当避免将测量结果写在活页本或者零散的纸上。如果已经记在上面了，那么应该立即把它贴在工作记录本上或者重新抄上去。一般来说，应该把所有的东西马上记在里的工作记录本上，右边记测得的数据，左边记下计算、实验装备草图、备注和结果。本子上要标注页码，从本子上撕下纸张或者取下活页也是犯不得的错误。当一个实验必须暂停、中断或者不得不放弃时，必须将使人信服的应该中断的原因写在本子左边。所有的记录本都要妥善保管好，因为当初有些以为是错的东西，可能过些时候甚至是许多年后才会发现它的重要意义。

写文章要开始得越早越好，最迟当测量测完就应该马上开始，无论如何都不可以等到仪器拆掉后才开始。在测量完后去休假，过了几个星期或几个月再开始写总结是很不好的行为。因为第一是记录本上可能有不清楚的地方需要在大脑对测量情况记忆犹新时写总结，第二是人们往往只有到写报告的时候才注意到论证中还有缺陷，而这些缺陷往往只需要在原来的仪器装置上再额外做一点实验就可以解决。稍微夸张一点说，到测量结束时，你的手稿应该除了还需要填入最后的结果以外，大部分已经写完了。

多考虑一下报告的风格常常是值得的，总的目标应当是简洁清楚，句子要短，不要用曲折啰嗦的句子。首先应当考虑如何明确地叙述你所得到的结果和结论。

写好以后，让这手稿放一两个星期，然后再用对你的工作只是稍感兴趣而抱怀疑态度的读者的眼光再来看一遍，于是就可以进行最后的润饰定稿。

一般来说，如果你做工作而不能完全被工作迷住，就最好别做它。每个人必须认识到，不仅要使自己在工作时间内，而且要在工作时间以外都在酝酿工作中的问题才行，如果做不到这一点，那么这是一个不好的标志。

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英文译文

译者的话：Professor Bothe wrote these observations at Christmas time, 1956, just a few weeks before his death. Although directed mainly to the young experimenter, his remarks based on the experience of a distinguished, productive scientific career have much to recommend them to anyone undertaking a piece of scientific work.

MANY a person has had a single fruitful idea at the right time and has built his scientific life’s work upon it. As a rule, however, things are somewhat different. Of a hundred ideas that one carries around with him, ninety prove on closer scrutiny to be incapable of realization, inopportune, trivial, false, or something of the sort. Of the remaining ten, there is always one that is most promising, most practical, and easiest to execute. It takes time to find this one; instinct and intuition often play a decisive role here. Once you have found this idea, use all your energies to put it into practice, lest it be anticipated by others.

Even though the golden age of string and sealing wax is past, strive to keep your experimental setup as simple and flexible as possible. The ideal experimental arrangement is the one that breaks down as soon as its purpose is fulfilled. It is best to begin building your apparatus in the middle of the room.

Make it a rule to go through a new experiment from beginning to end in rough fashion, even though it may mean no end of trouble. The advantage is that in this way one sees at once the individual difficulties and sources of error. The worst difficulties are often found to lie in quite other places than anticipated. Physicists are only human, and cannot presume to know everything in advance. But later, every blow must count. Often a change in the method of attack is helpful, as Rutherford has pointed out.

It often turns out that the original program and aim cannot be held to, but it would be a mistake to give up such an investigation before finding out just why it did not succeed. Once this is established, have the courage to terminate the experiment. Given the right handling, the apparatus always does its best!

Even in cases where the experiment seems inherently feasible, it often pays to change to a more fundamental aim. As W. Wien has remarked, the main thing is to keep your eyes open when you experiment. In order to be able to change course whenever it may seem desirable, the experimental setup must be simple, clear, and mobile. Subsidiary components, e.g. complicated circuitry, must not be allowed to become an end in themselves. Incidentally, one of the deadliest sins of the experimental physicist is to replace, covertly, damaged equipment in the storeroom without seeing to its repair.

MAKE a daily schedule. Often, you will not be able to adhere to it; then it becomes your business to find out why. There is a grain of truth in W. Pauli’s jest that in the PT Reichsanstalt [German Bureau of Standards] the cosmic radiation is turned off at quitting time each day. In the absence of a time schedule, there is always the danger that a piece of work will peter out with no tangible result. A timetable encourages concentration on a concrete goal and prevents one from getting lost in trivialities. A certain degree of laziness is proper for a physicist, but it must go hand in hand with mental flexibility.

It has happened more than once that, starting from an irrational or even false formulation of a question, unexpected results have been attained. There is an old military rule to the effect that it is better to do something wrong than to do nothing. One should occasionally take a chance on even a “stupid” “experiment if it does not involve too great an expenditure of time. Acquaint yourself with literature, but do not have an abnormal fear of inadvertently repeating the work of another person. When the same ground is covered by two workers it is still not exactly the same thing. At least the emphasis is different.

HERE is a place where many sins are committed. Avoid in principle the keeping of records of measurements on loose or removable pages. Paste them into the book at once, or copy them in. Geiger told of an instance to the contrary that occurred when he was working with Rutherford. The master was counting scintillations. Geiger sat beside him and wanted to take down the results as Rutherford called them out, but found, unfortunately, that he did not have his record book at hand. When he timidly explained this to Rutherford the latter screamed at him: “Write on your cuffs!”

In general, write everything down at once in your book–observational data on the right, computations, sketches of the setup, notes and results (framed in heavy lines) on the left. The pages should be numbered consecutively. The tearing out of pages and the throwing away of loose leaf pages filled with data also belong to the deadliest sins. When an experiment must be interrupted or discontinued it is imperative that the reason for this be marked on the left-hand page. All record books should be carefully put away, for even years later something that was originally thought to be wrong may attain significance.

BEGIN this as soon as possible, at the latest right after finishing the measurements. Under no circumstances wait until the apparatus has been dismantled. It is a mistake in organization, amounting to gross misconduct, to take a vacation after finishing your measurements, only to begin weeks or months later to write things up. There are good reasons for saying this: First, the measurements must still be fresh in your memory when you write, in case there are places in the record that are not clear. Second, one often notices only when writing the report that there may still be gaps in the argument–gaps that can often be closed by a short additional experiment if the apparatus is still available. With only slight exaggeration, one may say that the manuscript should be finished, to the point of merely inserting the final results, at the time the measurements are concluded.

Concern over the style of your report always pays off. Simple, clear, short sentences should be the aim. The first thing to consider is the decisive formulation of your results and conclusions.

Let the manuscript rest for a week or two and then look at it again with the eyes of a reader who is only half interested and somewhat unfriendly. Then it is time to do the final polishing.

One last word:

He who is not completely wrapped up in a piece of work had better leave it strictly alone. One must be able to admit that one’s problems ripen in the subconscious even outside of working hours. It is a poor sign if things are otherwise.

END