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We owe that miracle to science; and it is a miracle. But the scientists who have worked it have been neither gods nor witch doctors. They have been men: men who had faith in the future; and they have used no magic. What they have used is at bottom only Darwin's method, because that method is science. Science is experiment; science is trying things. It is trying each possible alternative in turn, intelligently and systematically; and throwing away what won't work,and accepting what will,no matter how it goes against our prejudices. And what works adds one more piece to the slow, laborious, but triumphant understanding of our world.
我们把这种奇迹归功于科学；这确实是奇迹。但创造奇迹的科学家们既不是神，也不是巫医。他们是人，对未来抱有信心的人。他们从未用过什么巫术，他们用的实质上无非是达尔文的方法，因为那种方法就是科学。科学就是实验；科学就是对各种事物进行试验。科学理智地、系统地逐一试验每种可能性，扬弃不可行的，采纳可行的，而不管这种取舍与我们的成见多么相悖。实验证明可行的，则又增加了一点我们对这个世界缓慢费力然而终将成功的了解。
This is not a secret or a mysterious progress. If it sometimes seems so, that is just because the day-to-day work of science is so unspectacular. You hear nothing from the research worker for years, and then, suddenly, there is the result in the headlines: penicillin or the jet engine or nuclear fission. No one tells the layman about the years of experiment and failure. How is he to know what has not been done, or to guess the labor of what has? What is he to think but to marvel at the skill of science, and to fear its power?
科学进步不是什么秘密，也没有什么神秘。如果有时显得神秘莫测的话，那只是因为日常的科研工作根本不会引人注意。许多年来，你听不到科研人员有什么作为，然后，突然看到报纸的头条新闻刊着他们的研究成果：青霉素啦，喷气发动机啦，核裂变啦。门外汉对他们多少年来从事的实验和遭到的失败一无所知。他怎能知道科学上还有什么尚待研究，又怎能猜到为了获得现有的成果科学家们花了多少心血？他除了对科学的技巧惊叹不已、对其威力产生恐惧之外还能有什么别的想法呢？
