何謂真正的“天才”？

The MacArthur Foundation late last month announced its latest crop of “genius grants”, and once again you thought maybe, just maybe, this was your year.

上個(gè)月晚些時(shí)候，麥克阿瑟基金會(huì)宣布了最新一批“天才獎(jiǎng)”獲得者。而再一次，你暗想說不定，真的說不定，今年就該輪到我了。

And why not? These days, we’re all geniuses. We might be “marketing geniuses” or “*culinary geniuses” or “TV geniuses”. We have so *diluted “genius” that it’s fast joining the company of “natural” and “mindful”, words rendered inert through overuse and misuse.

為什么不可能呢?在當(dāng)今，我們?nèi)巳硕际翘觳?。我們可能?ldquo;營銷天才”、“烹飪天才”或者“電視天才”。因?yàn)檫^度使用和誤用，“天才”這個(gè)詞很快和“純天然”、“正念”這樣的詞一樣，被“稀釋”詞義，失去了原有的深度。

Admittedly, the word is tough to nail down. Sometimes we equate genius with raw intelligence. But many of humanity’s greatest breakthroughs were achieved by those with only modest IQs.

不可否認(rèn)，這個(gè)詞的含義很難明確。有時(shí)，我們將天才等同于天生智力超群的人。但很多人類最偉大的突破都是由智力非常普通的人實(shí)現(xiàn)的。

Sometimes we think of the genius as someone extremely knowledgeable, but that definition also falls short. During Albert Einstein’s time, other scientists knew more physics than Einstein did, but history doesn’t remember them. That’s because they didn’t *deploy that knowledge the way Einstein did. They weren’t able to, as he put it, “regard old questions from a new angle”.

有時(shí)，我們認(rèn)為天才是那些學(xué)富五車的人，但這種定義也有缺陷。在愛因斯坦生活的年代，其他科學(xué)家要比愛因斯坦懂得更多的物理學(xué)知識(shí)，但歷史并沒有記住他們。這是因?yàn)樗麄儧]有像愛因斯坦一樣調(diào)配那些知識(shí)。正如愛因斯坦所說，他們不能”用新的視角來看待舊問題”。

The genius is not a know-it-all but a see-it-all, someone who, working with the material available to all of us, is able to make surprising and useful connections. True genius involves not merely an *incremental advance, but a conceptual leap. As philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer put it: Talent hits the target no one else can hit; genius hits the target no one else can see.

智者非知之者而悟之者也，是用人人觸手可及的材料創(chuàng)新且建立有效聯(lián)系的人。真正的智者不僅進(jìn)行量的積累，更能實(shí)現(xiàn)質(zhì)的飛躍。正如哲學(xué)家亞瑟.叔本華所言：能者達(dá)人所不能，智者達(dá)人所未見。

We’ve lost sight of this truth, and too often *bestow the title of genius on talented people hitting visible targets. A good example is the much-*ballyhooed announcement earlier this year that scientists had, for the first time, recorded the sound of two black holes colliding, a billion light-years away. It was a remarkable discovery, no doubt, but it did not represent a *seismic shift in how we understand the universe. It merely confirmed Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

我們已丟失了“天才”這個(gè)詞所蘊(yùn)含的真諦，太過頻繁地將“天才”這一頭銜授予那些實(shí)現(xiàn)了看得見目標(biāo)的有才之人。一個(gè)恰當(dāng)?shù)睦泳褪?，今年早些時(shí)候人們大肆宣揚(yáng)科學(xué)家首次記錄到了10億光年外兩黑洞碰撞的聲音。毫無疑問，這是一個(gè)非凡的發(fā)現(xiàn)，但它不會(huì)對(duì)我們理解宇宙產(chǎn)生任何顛覆性的改變，它只是證實(shí)了愛因斯坦的廣義相對(duì)論。

As Plato observed, “What is honored in a country is cultivated there.” What do we honor? Digital technology, and the convenience it represents, so naturally we get a Steve Jobs or a Mark Zuckerberg as our “geniuses”, which, in point of fact, they aren’t.

正如柏拉圖所說，“一個(gè)國家會(huì)培養(yǎng)他們引以為傲的東西”。我們以何為傲?數(shù)字技術(shù)以及它所帶來的便利讓我們很自然地賦予喬布斯或馬克•扎克伯格“天才”的稱號(hào)，但實(shí)際上，他們不是。

The iPhone and Facebook are *wondrous inventions. In many ways, they make our lives a bit easier, a bit more convenient. If anything, though, a true genius makes our lives more difficult, more unsettled. William Shakespeare’s words provide more *disquiet than *succor, and the world felt a bit more secure before Charles Darwin came along. Zuckerberg and Jobs may have changed our world, but they haven’t yet changed our worldview.

蘋果手機(jī)和臉書都是奇妙的發(fā)明。在很多方面，他們都讓我們的生活更加輕松，更加便捷。然而，如果現(xiàn)在存在真正的天才，那么他會(huì)讓我們的生活更加困難，更加不安。莎士比亞的作品帶給我們更多的是憂慮而非救助。而在達(dá)爾文出現(xiàn)以前，人們感覺世界是更安全的。扎克伯格和喬布斯或許已經(jīng)改變了我們的世界，但他們還沒有改變我們的世界觀。

We need to reclaim genius, and a good place to start is by putting the brakes on Genius Creep.

我們需要收回“天才”這個(gè)詞，而一個(gè)不錯(cuò)的開端就是限制對(duì)這個(gè)詞的濫用。