【原】日課｜美文：What Makes a Person a Scientist? 什么使一個人成為科學家？

What makes a person a scientist? Does he have ways or tools of learning that are different from those of others? The answer is no. It is not the tools a scientist uses but how he uses these tools that make him a scientist. You will probably agree that knowing how to use a power saw is important to a carpenter. You will probably agree, too, that knowing how to investigate, how to discover information, is important to everyone. The scientist, however, goes one step further, he must be sure that he has a reasonable answer to his question and that his answer can be confirmed by other persons.

The scientist’s knowledge must be exact. There is no room for half right or right just half the time. He must be as nearly right as the conditions permit. What works under one set of conditions at one time must work under the same conditions at other times. If the conditions are different, any changes the scientist observes in a demonstration must be explained by the changes in the conditions. This is one reason that investigations are important in science. Albert Einstein, who developed the theory of relativity, arrived at this theory through mathematics. The accuracy of his mathematics was later tested through investigation. Einstein’s ideas were shown to be correct. A scientist uses many tools for measurement. Then the measurements are used to make mathematical calculations that may test his investigation.

科學家的知識必須要精確。沒有半對或有時對這種余地。在條件允許時他必須正確。某時在某種條件下起作用的東西必須要在相同條件下的其他時間也起作用才行。如果條件不同，科學家觀察到的任何變化都必須通過條件的變化來解釋。這就是調查在科學中占據重要位置的原因。阿爾伯特·愛因斯坦相對論的發明是通過數學來實現的。他的數學的精確性后來通過研究得以驗證。他的思想被證明是正確的。一個科學家運用很多工具來進行測量，然后測量數據被用于數學計算，這些數學計算或許能驗證他的研究。