James Gleick：It's obvious to go to the future!

訪談嘉賓： James Gleick（詹姆斯·格雷克），國際知名的科普作家。1987年，他的首部作品《混沌》入圍美國國家圖書獎和普利策獎決賽，併成為暢銷書，使得“混沌”、“蝴蝶效應”的說法家喻戶曉。其後他又陸續出版了《費曼傳》（1992）、《越來越快》（1999）、《牛頓傳》（2003）等書。他的上一部書《資訊簡史》（2011）榮獲英國皇家學會科普圖書獎、美國筆會愛德華·威爾遜科普文學獎、英國筆會赫塞爾-蒂爾特曼獎（簡體中文版榮獲2014年第九屆文津圖書獎），併成為國際性暢銷書。他的作品已被翻譯成三十種語言。

在成功地為資訊作傳（《資訊簡史》）之後，詹姆斯·格雷克又一次為“時間旅行”作傳！

• 時間真的存在嗎？
• “過去”和“未來”有區別嗎？
• “未來”有沒有可能早就已經既定？並不是我們認為的“充滿不確定”？
• “時間旅行”這個概念什麼時候產生的？
• 真的有“時間旅行機”嗎？它長什麼樣？
• ......

《時間旅行簡史》通過追溯“時間旅行”這個概念的起源、它在文學和科學中的演化，以及它對我們之於時間本身理解的影響，將帶領我們踏上一段極富啟迪的、追尋“時間旅行”的時間之旅。

在這段旅途中，我們不僅能夠遇見一眾科幻作家（威爾斯、海因萊因、阿西莫夫等），還能夠邂逅眾多文學家（艾略特、普魯斯特、博爾赫斯等）、科學家（愛因斯坦、哥德爾、霍金等），以及哲學家（柏格森、詹姆斯、羅素等）；其中不僅有精彩的科幻故事，還有時間旅行題材的影視劇；不僅有通常意義上的時間旅行，還有通過掩埋與我們一道進入未來的時間艙，以及我們每個人都有切身體驗的一種時間旅行（在閱讀一本書時，通過翻前翻後實現的時間旅行）。

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Interview Transcript:

See the Chinese version

Mr. Gleick was graduated from Harvard College and studied English and Linguistics. Why would you engage in science reporting and writing? In China, graduates in Arts and Science usually have significantly different interests.

The divide between arts and science is an issue in the West as well as the East. My work straddles these domains, and as far as my personal history is concerned, that may be an accident. I write about science, yet I was never trained as a scientist. That creates obvious difficulties—to begin with, I have to work extra hard even to get a basic understanding of the issues I write about.

I began writing about science as a journalist, for the New York Times, and I believe that every journalist—whether covering politics or sports or the arts or science—begins every story by asking questions. Every story is a learning process. So I tried to treat science as if it were any of those subjects: looking for what's new, what's important, what matters to people in their daily lives.

What's your idea on the relationship between art and science?

What I believe passionately is that science is a fundamental part of our culture. It isn’t separable from the arts. It is intertwined with them. You can see that throughout my Time Travelbook. We begin with H. G. Wells, a fiction writer. We continue with scientists, philosophers, writers of cheap pulp fiction for young people and the greatest literary figures of the twentieth century and beyond. They’re all breathing the same air, sharing the same ideas.

Due to the writing about complex subjects through the techniques of narrative nonfiction, Mr. Gleick has been recognized as "one of the great science writers of all time”. So, in order to explain those complex subjects, what things do you need to do in advance?

For me, the essential thing is never to think of explaining as the goal.

When I wrote about chaos theory in science, or information, or the nature of time in Time Travel, I didn’t set out to explain what those things are. I set out to tell a story. In the case of chaos, it was the story of how some original and iconoclastic scientists, leaving the beaten path, created a new branch of science and a new kind of scientific discovery. Along the way, of course, the reader (like me) will learn what chaos is, what chaos means. But the story comes first.

‍‍‍‍For fans, the latest book Time Travel seems to be very different from your earlier books. It is more an exploration of a branch of literature than a non-technical introduction to a branch of science. Do you have any reasons for such a change?

Actually I don't think it's so different, though it does appear that way at first. My subject is not just a branch of literature. The reader will discover that the book is really an exploration of time itself, and once again, there's a story, which has to do with a profound transformation in the way we, as humans, have thought about time and understood it. The protagonists include writers, but they also include scientists and philosophers and psychologists. The story begins just over a century ago and continues to the present day—because in the world of cyberspace, our sense of time is changing yet again.

Once you've also said Time Travel wasn't a real science book. What do you think it belong to ?

I hate trying to figure out what categories my books belong in.

If you were a time traveler, where would you go, the past or the future?

I asked many people that question while I was working on the book! My own answer has changed a bit. I used to think it was obvious to go to the future, even though personally I’ve written about people in the past and it might be fun to go back and meet them. (I'm thinking of Isaac Newton, for example.) These days we seem to have more and more worries about the future. Will it be a happy place?

Time Travelmakes people to rethink the concept of time. What do you think people should get after reading it?

Sometimes we look for simple answers to difficult questions. What is time? We all like to ask that, as if we could get an answer, once and for all. But it's possible to know many different things about time, all at once, and keep them together in our minds, even if some of it seems contradictory. I imagine people finishing my book and thinking, Oh! I knew more about time than I thought.

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