The Risk of Discovery
This essay argues that biographies of famous scientists tend to edit out their mistakes, leading us to underestimate the risks they took. Using Newton as an example, it shows that he worked on physics, alchemy, and theology, all of which seemed equally promising at the time. Only physics paid off, but all three were risky bets. The piece encourages a more nuanced understanding of scientific discovery as a gamble rather than a straight path.
Because biographies of famous scientists tend to edit out their mistakes, we underestimate the degree of risk they were willing to take. And because anything a famous scientist did that wasn't a mistake has probably now become the conventional wisdom, those choices don't seem risky either.
由于著名科学家的传记往往会删去他们的错误，我们低估了他们愿意承担的风险程度。而且，任何著名科学家做过的非错误之事，如今可能已成为常识，这些选择看起来也就不再冒险了。
Biographies of Newton, for example, understandably focus more on physics than alchemy or theology. The impression we get is that his unerring judgment led him straight to truths no one else had noticed. How to explain all the time he spent on alchemy and theology? Well, smart people are often kind of crazy.
例如，牛顿的传记可以理解地更侧重物理学而非炼金术或神学。我们得到的印象是，他准确无误的判断使他直接发现了别人未曾注意的真理。如何解释他花在炼金术和神学上的所有时间？嗯，聪明人常常有点疯狂。
But maybe there is a simpler explanation. Maybe the smartness and the craziness were not as separate as we think. Physics seems to us a promising thing to work on, and alchemy and theology obvious wastes of time. But that's because we know how things turned out. In Newton's day the three problems seemed roughly equally promising. No one knew yet what the payoff would be for inventing what we now call physics; if they had, more people would have been working on it. And alchemy and theology were still then in the category Marc Andreessen would describe as "huge, if true."
Newton made three bets. One of them worked. But they were all risky.
但也许有一个更简单的解释。也许聪明和疯狂并不像我们想象的那样泾渭分明。物理学在我们看来是值得研究的有前景领域，而炼金术和神学显然是浪费时间。但那是因为我们知道事情的结果。在牛顿的时代，这三个问题看起来大致同样有希望。没有人知道发明我们今天所谓的物理学会有怎样的回报；如果有人知道，更多人就会去研究它。而炼金术和神学当时仍属于马克·安德森所称的“如果为真，则影响巨大”的类别。
牛顿下了三个赌注。其中一个成功了。但它们全都充满风险。