Chapter 8 george

george Arthur wasn't the only one confused by the Santa Fe Institute.Everyone who comes across Santa Fe for the first time is always going to be a little bit shocked.The old frame was completely destroyed in this place.This is an institution founded by aging academic titans with Nobel Prize laurels on their heads, special status and illustrious reputation.These are the decent people you'd think would be most comfortable with the status quo, but they're actually using their prestige as a platform to start what they call a scientific revolution. The members of this institute are mainly composed of core physicists and computer experts.They came from Los Alamos, the secret military base where nuclear weapons were first developed.Yet the corridors of the institute were filled with exciting discussions about the new science of "complexity."In their minds, complexity is like a universal world that can encompass everything from evolutionary biology to obscure disciplines like economics, politics, and history—not to mention helping people build a more permanent and peaceful world.

In short, the whole thing is a strange thing.If you try to imagine the Santa Fe Institute as happening in the business world, you have to imagine that the director of the institute at IBM's corporate headquarters has left his job and gone back to his garage to start a little new age fortune-telling The consulting services firm then persuaded the chairmen of Xerox, Chase Manhattan and GM to also join. Even more remarkable, the creator of this picture—George Cowan, former director of the Los Alamos Institute—is the very opposite of a New Age figure.Cowan, sixty-seven, is a soft-spoken, near-retirement man.He was wearing a golf top and an open sweater, making himself a bit like Mother Teresa.He is not known for being charismatic.In any group, he was always the one standing by and listening.He certainly wasn't famous for his eloquence.Anyone who asks him why he founded the Santa Fe Institute invariably hears a precise and highly rational statement about the state of science in the twenty-first century and the need to seize scientific opportunity—just Like a serious expert review that could have been published in Science.In fact, listeners will gradually realize that Cowan has his own way of thinking, and he is indeed a passionate and unwavering person.He didn't see Santa Fe as an oddity at all.He believed that what Santa Fe was trying to achieve was far more important than himself, Bilo Alamos, or any other accidental factor that led to Santa Fe's creation.In this regard, it is far more important than the Santa Fe Institute itself.He used to say that if we don't succeed this time, someone else will start from scratch along the lines of twenty years from now.For Cowan, Santa Fe was a mission, an opportunity for salvation and renewal for the entire scientific community.

There was a time, and it certainly seems like a long time now, when it was entirely possible for an idealistic young scientist to devote himself to the development of nuclear weapons for the sake of building a better world.George Cowan never regretted it. "I've had other considerations in my life," he said, "but moral regrets? Never. If there were no nuclear weapons, we might be brought closer to destruction by chemical and biological weapons. I doubt that if many of the forties Would the last fifty years of history have been better for us humans if the event hadn't happened."

Indeed, he said, in those days of the 1940s, the development of nuclear weapons was almost a matter of moral necessity.During World War II, Cowwin and his fellow scientists were in desperate competition with the Nazis.The Nazis still had some of the world's most brilliant physicists at the time and were ahead of the US in bomb design—though that assumption would later prove wrong. "We thought that if we didn't make a breakthrough, Hitler would develop the atomic bomb. That would be the end of it," Cowan said. In fact, he was completely involved in the development of the atomic bomb before the Manhattan atomic bomb project was established. In the autumn of 1941, when he was only twenty-one years old and a freshman in the chemistry department of the Worcester Institute of Technology in his hometown of Massachusetts, he participated in the Princeton cyclotron development project.Physicists there were studying the newly discovered process of nuclear fission and its effect on an isotope called uranium-235.Cowan had planned to take some physics courses there.But on December 7, 1941, the laboratory suddenly changed to a seven-day work week, and his plan was postponed indefinitely.He said that at the time the United States was really very concerned that the Germans were developing an atomic bomb.Physicists can't wait to find out if this is even possible. "And our results are critical to determining whether uranium can have a chain reaction." The answer is yes.The federal government suddenly found Mr. Cowan's services very much needed. "The special academic background of interpenetrating knowledge of chemistry and nuclear physics made me a much-needed expert in many aspects of the nuclear bomb program."

From 1942 until the end of the war, Cowan worked at the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago.Italian physicist Enrico Fermi was in that lab at the time leading research to build the first nuclear reactor—a pile of uranium and graphite blocks that demonstrated a controllable chain reaction.As the most junior member of the task force, Cowan became something of a handyman, doing everything that was required of him, from casting uranium metal to chipping graphite blocks that controlled the reaction rate of the reactor. .Program directors therefore sent him to places like Oak Ridge, Tennessee.At the hastily built nuclear site at Oak Ridge, he helped engineers figure out exactly how much plutonium they had produced. “I was a bachelor at the time, so they sent me all over the country. Whenever there was a bottleneck, I was always on the list of people who might be sent to fix it.” Indeed, Cowan was screened. One of the very few people allowed to shuttle between different departments in the nuclear weapons research program.Due to the need for confidentiality, the various departments of nuclear weapons development are strictly blocked. "I don't know why they trust me so much, I drink as much as everyone else." Cowan laughed.He still has one memento of that time: a letter sent from the Chicago Personnel Department to the Worcester Regional Recruiting Office.The letter certifies that Mr. Cowan possesses special skills indispensable to winning the war and has been granted reprieve by the President himself.Do they ask them not to draft him again?

After the war, American scientists' desperate struggle with Hitler turned into a life-and-death competition with the Soviet Union.It was a treacherous time, Cowan said.Stalin's control of Eastern Europe, the erection of the Berlin Wall, and the ensuing Korean War—all this brought the Cold Warriors very close to triggering an all-out hot war.The Soviets were said to be developing their own nuclear weapons.It seemed that the only way to maintain the precarious U.S.-Soviet balance of power, while at the same time defending democracy and human freedom, was to continue improving the Americans' own nuclear weapons.This sense of urgency brought Cowan back to Los Alamos in July 1949.Before that, he had spent three years earning a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh.This is not an unconscious choice.In fact, Cowan made this choice after careful consideration and torturing his own soul.But that choice was reinforced almost immediately.

A week or two after he arrived in Los Alamos, Cowan recalled, the director of the radiochemistry laboratory visited.He used a kind of secrecy.Asking him again in a roundabout tone, is his new laboratory completely free from radiation contamination.When Cowan gave him an affirmative answer, Cowan and his laboratory equipment were immediately conscripted to do an extremely urgent, top-secret analysis.Air samples were delivered that night.Cowan was not told where the air samples were collected.But he could guess that it had been collected somewhere near the Soviet border.When he and his colleagues discovered that it contained telltale fallout, the inescapable truth was revealed: the Soviets had tested their own nuclear bomb.

"So after that they put me on this panel in Washington. It was a big shift." The secretive panel became known as the Bethe Panel.The first moderator was Cornell physicist Hans Bethe.In fact, it was made up of a group of nuclear experts called in to track the development of Soviet nuclear weapons.Cowan was thirty years old at the time.Top U.S. government leaders initially believed that the fallout detected by the chemists could not mean what the detections clearly indicated.These officials believed that it would be years before Stalin developed the Soviets' own atomic bomb, and that one of the Soviets' nuclear reactors must have exploded. "The beauty of radiochemistry, however, is that it can tell people exactly what's going on," Cowan said.The spread of radioisotopes from a nuclear reactor is very different from the spread of a nuclear bomb explosion. "We had a hard time convincing them of that." The older, wiser White House leaders were finally forced to accept the hard truth.The Soviet nuclear bomb was named "Yo-1" after Joseph Stalin.Thus began the nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union.

That's how it is, Cowan said.No, he didn't want to say sorry for being involved in the development of nuclear weapons.But looking back on those years, he does have a big regret: In his opinion, the scientific community has collectively abdicated its responsibility for what it has done. Scientists, of course, have not abdicated their responsibilities from the very beginning, nor have they completely abdicated their responsibilities. In 1945, some scientists involved in the Manhattan Project in Chicago launched a petition asking the government to test atomic bombs on uninhabited islands and not to drop atomic bombs on the Japanese mainland.Later, after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, ending the war, many of the scientists involved in the nuclear weapons development program in the United States began to form various political movements to lobby the government to impose the strictest possible controls on the use of nuclear weapons— — Civilian control, not military control.Those years saw the emergence of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a journal dedicated to discussions of the social and political implications of atomic weapons as a new form of warfare.There were also political movements such as The Federation of Atomic Scientists, which Cowan also participated in, now known as The Federation of American Scientists. “Scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project went to Washington to make their case and were taken very seriously,” Cowan said. "In the 1940s, when the atomic bomb came out, physicists were regarded as miracle workers. They and the drafting of the McMahon bill (McMahon bill), and the Atomic Energy Commission (the Atomic Energy Commission) created by it, and the idea of ​​putting atomic energy under civilian control."

"However, these efforts have not been fully supported by scientists," Cowan said. After the passage of the McMahon bill in July 1946, these activities of scientists largely disappeared.That may have been inevitable, he said.The culture of science is not very compatible with the culture of politics. “Scientists who go to Washington to give their opinion can hardly stand it when they leave,” he said. "Politics is completely alien to them. Scientists want policy to be based on logic and the facts of scientific experiments, but that may be illusory. For whatever reason, scientific researchers are happy to return to their experiments In doing so, scientists have lost an opportunity to exert their own influence, Cowan said, while doing so. The chance they may never have again.

Cowan does not excuse his return to the lab, despite the fact that he is more socially and politically involved than most.For example, in 1954, at the height of McCarthy's anti-communist witch hunt, he became president of the Roshara Muscovite Society and met frequently with Lewis Strauss, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission.McCarthy, a congressman from Wisconsin, was trying to convince every American that their country was full of communists.Cowin and his colleagues protested against political persecution in the name of anti-communism, calling for greater freedom of information and less confidentiality of information in the laboratory.They also did their best to defend J. Robert Oppenheimer, the former director of the Manhattan Project, though not with much success.Robert Oppenheimer even had his security clearance revoked.The reason was that he might have been involved with some of the people who had attended Communist meetings in the 1930s. As Cowan worked with Besser's group (where he worked for almost three decades), he came to realize what a troublesomely simple place Washington can be.He said that in the days after World War II, the United States emerged from its prewar isolationist policies with a clear understanding of the importance of military power.But after accepting this lesson, all officials no longer care about other things except developing military power.Their point is that you have to get to the point. "But I felt at the time that power was like a symphony orchestra, and too many of us could only play the cello." In fact, Cowan was dismayed to realize at the time that the Soviets understood the complex chords of power far better than Washington. "The Soviets seemed to place a lot of emphasis on the intellectual appeal of power, the emotional and ideological content of power. I thought they were taking the scientific aspect of power very seriously. It turns out we thought they were ten feet tall, but they weren't. More than ten feet tall. Of course I'm looking at it from the perspective of the Russians compared to ours. They play power as if they were playing a big game of chess, and we play power as if we were doing Some kind of game with a single metric." At one point, Cowan said, he even suspected that this was another area where scientists were failing their responsibilities. "Although my awareness was not as clear as it is now, I felt that scientists should be able to see the nature of the postwar world with a more comprehensive perspective." But the fact is, they did not.Rather, he himself was not able to do so, because it was not yet time.Since the Soviets exploded the "Y-1" atomic bomb in August 1949, Los Alamos has devoted himself to the development of a more powerful thermonuclear weapon: the hydrogen bomb.Then, in the fall of 1952, when the first hydrogen bomb was successfully tested, Los Alamos' laboratory continued at full speed to develop a smaller, lighter, more reliable, and easier to handle hydrogen bomb.Against the backdrop of the Korean War and the ongoing confrontation with the Soviet Union in Europe, “there was a sense that nuclear weapons were tipping the balance in the power struggle,” Cowan said. The development of nuclear weapons thus became an extremely important duty of." Most importantly, Cowan has increasingly taken on managerial responsibilities at Los Alamos.Due to the heavy workload, he did not have much time for scientific work.As head of the laboratory, his time for scientific experiments was reduced to weekends. "So I haven't had much success in scientific work," he said, not without sentimentality. But questions of power and responsibility have always plagued him. When Cowan stepped down as director of the Los Alamos Research Center in 1982 and accepted a position as an advisor to the White House Science Council, issues of power and responsibility dominated his work. In his mind, he even foresees the possibility of scientists getting a second chance. If nothing else, a meeting of the White House Science Advisory Council that Cowan attended gave Cowan vivid memories of why researchers in 1949 were so eager to escape to their labs.He and his colleagues sat in a conference room: a group of dignified scientists sat around a conference table in the new executive office building in Washington, proposed by George (Jay) Keyworth II, the president's science adviser. A series of questions, solicit your comments.George had been promoted to the position of science adviser to the president the previous year.Before that, he was Los Alamos' young department head, working under Cowan.Cowan had to admit to himself that he was in no position to comment on the question posed. "There wasn't a lot of talk about AIDS at the time, but there was a sudden sense of alarm," Cowan said. "AIDS was a topic at every meeting. And frankly, I'm not sure how to deal with it. Very confused." AIDS is a public health issue?Or is it a question of ethics?What kind of problem is it?The explanation for this was not very clear at the time. "Another issue was the debate about manned spaceflight versus unmanned space exploration. They heard that Parliament wasn't going to vote on unmanned space exploration. But I don't know if that's true. It's not so much It's more of a scientific question than a political one." Then there was President Reagan's "Star Wars" strategic defense proposal.This is the idea of ​​using a space-based shield to protect the United States from a massive nuclear missile attack.But is it technically possible?Will the implementation lead to the collapse of the US economy?Even if the Star Wars project could be implemented, would it be wise to do so?Wouldn't doing so destabilize the status quo balance of power and lead the world into a new round of destructive arms race? There is also the issue of nuclear power, how to explain it?How do you balance the dangers of nuclear reactor meltdowns and the difficulty of disposing of nuclear waste against the unmistakable greenhouse effect of burning fossil fuels? There are endless questions like this.Cowan found the experience during this time extremely frustrating.“These interconnected issues—in science, policy, economics, the environment, and even religion and morality—taught us challenging lessons,” he says, yet he found himself unable to make meaningful recommendations.The other academic advisors of the American Science Advisory Committee seem to have no good advice.How could they come up with it?These are questions that only experts with extensive knowledge can answer.And most of them, as scientists and administrative officials, have devoted their whole lives to becoming experts in a certain field.Scientific work requires cooperation, which is the culture of science, and this culture requires them to become experts in a certain field. Cowan said: "The road to the glory hall of the Nobel Prize is usually taken by reductionist thinking." That is, breaking down the world as small and simple as possible.You search for a solution to a series of problems that are more or less idealized, but thereby deviate from the real world and limit the problem to the point where you can discover the solution. "This creates more and more fragmentation in science. The real world requires us—I hate that word—to take a more holistic view. Everything affects everything else, and you have to Know the whole web of relationships." Even more frustrating, he sensed that things were getting worse with the younger generation of scientists.In the case of the young scientists who commute to and from Los Alamos, they are brilliant and dynamic, but they are perpetuating a scientific culture that has been forcibly fragmenting scientific wisdom into more and more disparate fragments . From a scientific institution perspective (as opposed to a political one), universities are incredibly conservative.Young Ph. D.s dare not break with tradition.They had to spend their best years desperately pursuing tenure in the department.This means that they are better off doing research that will be recognized by tenured faculty committees.Otherwise, they'll hear things like, "You've worked hard with the biochemists, but how do you show that you're an academic leader here in physics?" Open your eyes and fight desperately for research funding.This meant that they had to organize their research plans into a category acceptable to the Foundation.Otherwise, they will hear something like: "Joe, you have a very good idea, but unfortunately, your research project does not belong to our department." Everyone must strive to have their papers accepted by authoritative academic journals. Accepted and published, and these authoritative academic journals publish almost only papers belonging to recognized fields. Cowan said that after a few years of this tossing, the mandatory narrow vision became an instinct that people were no longer aware of.He knew from experience that the more Los Alamos researchers were immersed in the academic world, the harder it was to engage them in team work. "I've struggled with this for thirty years," he sighs. However, when he began to think seriously about this problem, he felt that what was most frustrating was the encroachment of this process of fragmentation on the whole of science.Traditional disciplines have become so stubborn and isolated from each other that they seem to suffocate themselves.There are so many scientific opportunities everywhere you look, yet too many scientists seem to be oblivious to them. Cowan thought, if you need examples, just look at the opportunities that are opening up now—well, he can't really think of a good name for this right now.But if what he saw in Los Alamos was any indication, something big was afoot.Over the past decade, he has increasingly felt that traditional reductionist thinking has reached a dead end, and that even some hard-core physicists have grown weary of mathematical abstractions that ignore the complexities of the real world.They seem to be exploring some new method consciously or unconsciously.In the process, they're crossing traditional boundaries in ways they haven't done in years, if not centuries. Ironically, however, their inspiration appears to have been molecular biology.This is an area that most people wouldn't think a weapons lab would be interested in.But Cowan says physicists have been deeply involved in molecular biology from the beginning.Many of the pioneers in the field of molecular biology actually started out as physicists.A big impetus for their move into molecular biology came from a slim book called What Is Life? (What Is Life).Published in 1944, in this collection, Austrian physicist and co-inventor of quantum mechanics Erwin Schrodinger (Erwin Schrodinger) put forward a series of challenging thoughts on the physical and chemical basis of life. (After escaping Hitler, Schrödinger remained safely hidden in Dublin during World War II.) One of the people who was deeply influenced by this book was Francis Crick.Together with James Watson in 1953, he used data extracted from X-ray crystallography to deduce the molecular structure of DNA. X-ray crystallization is a submicroscopic imaging technique developed by physicists decades ago.In fact, Clark originally studied experimental physics.In the early 1950s, George Gamow, a Hungarian theoretical physicist and one of the original proponents of the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe, also became fascinated by the structure of the genetic code, and he encouraged more physics have invested in research in this field."The first really insightful class I got on biochemistry was Gamow's," Cowan said. Molecular biology has fascinated him ever since, he said.Especially in the early 1970s, the discovery of recombinant DNA technology enabled biology to analyze and manipulate forms of life almost molecule by molecule.So when Cowan became director of the laboratory's research center in 1978, he immediately began to support an important research program in the field of biochemistry.Formally a study of radiation damage to cells, the program involved the Los Alamos physicists in a broader context of molecular biology.It was a fantastic opportunity, he recalls.During the 1970s, Los Alamos doubled in size and opened up to more non-traditional and applied fields under the auspices of Harold Agnew.Cowan's emphasis on molecular biology was well suited to the situation.As a result, the project he was supporting had an enormous impact on the thinking of the people there, especially on his own. “By definition we can almost say that physical science is a discipline characterized by conceptual elegance and analytical simplicity. So you take advantage of that and lose sight of the rest,” Cowan said. Indeed, Physicists are notorious for their disdain for the "soft sciences" of sociology and psychology, which seek to explore the complexities of the real world.But then came molecular biology, the description of living systems of incredible complexity.These living systems are governed by deep laws.“Once you get your hands on biology, you give up elegance, you give up simplicity, and you get messed up,” Cowan said. “But from there, it becomes much easier to seep into economics and social issues. Once you're halfway down, you probably start swimming." At the same time, scientists began to think more and more about complex systems because they were now able to do so.When you solve math equations with pen and paper, how many variables can you juggle without getting bogged down?three?or four?But when you have enough computing power, you can deal with as many variables as you like.By the early 1980s, computers had become ubiquitous.Personal computers appeared in large numbers, scientists installed desktop efficient graphics workstations one after another, and laboratories of large enterprises and national laboratories sprung up like mushrooms after rain.Suddenly, countless equations with countless variables don't look so complicated.For example, extracting information from data as long as firefighting belts does not seem so impossible. Rows of numbers and miles of data strips can be transformed into color-coded maps of crop yields, or maps buried in miles. An oil-bearing substratum beneath deep rocks. "Computers are very good accounting machines." Cowan said in a very understated tone. But computers can do far more than bookkeeping.Maybe after programming, the computer can become a completely independent world.Scientists can do all kinds of exploration on computers, which greatly expands their understanding of the real world.In fact, by the 1980s, the simulation capabilities of computers had become so powerful that some people even began to talk about computers as a "third form of science" between theory and experiment.For example, a computer simulation of a thunderstorm can be like a theory because there is nothing in the computer other than the equations that describe the sound of lightning, wind, and water vapor.But the simulation is also like an experiment, because the equations are too complex to be solved by humans, so when scientists look at simulated thunderstorms on their computers, they can see that their equations work in ways they might not have unfold in ways that cannot be predicted.Sometimes even the simplest equations can produce surprising behavioral effects.The mathematics of thunderstorms actually describes how puffs of air push against each other, how each drop of water vapor condenses and then evaporates, and other such small-scale happenings.There are no clear and definite statements here, such as "a column of updraft and rain freezes into hail," or "a cold and wet downdraft suddenly penetrates the bottom of the cloud and falls to the ground." But when the computer uses a few miles long Space and hours of time combine these equations to produce the effect the computer wants.What's more, it is this fact that allows scientists to use their computer models to perform experiments that would not be possible in the real world.What exactly causes airflow to rise or fall?What happens to them when the temperature and humidity change?What are the factors that really affect the dynamics of thunderstorms?what's not?Will the same factors be equally important in another thunderstorm? By the early 1980s, such data-based experiments had become commonplace, Cowan says.From testing the flight effects of new airplanes, to the surging interstellar gas flow into a black hole, to the formation of the Milky Way after the big bang - at least among physical scientists, the whole concept of computer simulation has been fully accepted. "So you can start thinking about dealing with very complex systems." But the allure of complexity goes deeper than that.Partly because complex systems can be simulated by computers, and partly because of new mathematical understandings.By the early 1980s, scientists began to realize that many chaotic and complex systems could be described by a powerful theory called "nonlinear dynamics."In the process, scientists were forced to confront an embarrassing truth: the whole can indeed be greater than the sum of its parts. This fact is obvious to most people today, but it was very embarrassing to physicists at the time, because physicists spent three hundred years loving linearity. system.In this system, the whole is exactly equal to the sum of all the parts.To be fair, they have plenty of reasons to think so.If in a system the whole is exactly the sum of all the parts, then each part is free to do its own thing, regardless of what happens elsewhere.This is relatively easy to do mathematical analysis. (The word "linear" refers to the fact that if you plotted an equation on graph paper, it would draw a straight line.) Also, many things in nature operate linearly.The sound is a linear system, which is why you can distinguish oboes and strings in ensemble.Because the sound waves mix with each other, but still maintain their own characteristics.Light is also a linear system, which is why you can also see the pass/no-go lights on the opposite side of the road on a sunny day, because the light from the lights enters your eyelids and will not be illuminated by sunlight from a high place smashed to the ground.All kinds of light work independently and pass through each other, as if nothing exists.In some ways, even the economy is a linear system, such that small economic units can function independently.As another example, someone buying a newspaper at the street grocer has little bearing on your decision to go to the supermarket and buy a tube of toothpaste. However, it is true that many things in nature are not linear, and this includes most of the things that make this world interesting.Our brains are certainly not linear systems: although the sounds of the oboe and the strings enter your ears independently, the harmony of the two instruments has a far greater emotional impact on you than either instrument alone . (That's why we have symphony orchestras.) The economy isn't really a linear system either.The decisions to buy or not to buy made by millions of individuals can interact to cause an economy to boom or bust.And the economic climate, in turn, affects the purchasing power that causes that climate.Indeed, except for very simple physical systems, almost everything and everyone in the world is wrapped in a huge nonlinear network full of stimuli, constraints and interrelationships.Small changes in one place can cause shocks in all other places, just like T. As S. Eliot said, we cannot avoid disturbing the universe.The whole is almost always far greater than the sum of its parts.Representing this feature mathematically—if such a system can be represented mathematically—is a non-linear equation: the plotted line is curved. Nonlinear equations are notoriously difficult for humans to solve.That's why scientists have evaded this question for so long.But this is precisely where computers can step in.In the 1950s and 1960s, as soon as scientists started playing with computers, they realized that computers didn't mind linear versus nonlinear problems very much.计算机只管努力运算，给出答案。当科学家利用计算机的这一优势，用计算机功能来解越来越多的非线性方程式时，他们发现了他们在对付线性系统时从未想象到的奇怪而绝妙的情形。比如，在量子场理论中，通过一条浅狭沟渠的水波会对某种微妙的动力产生深刻的关联：它们都是一种叫做“孤粒子”的孤立而独立动作的能量脉冲。木星上的大红斑（The Great Red Spoton Jupiter）也许是另一个这样的孤粒子。它是一个比地球还要大的旋转飓风，已经独立存在了至少四百年。 物理学家伊尔亚·普里戈金声大张旗鼓地宣扬的自组系统也是被非线性动力支配的系统。确实，致使一锅汤沸腾的自组运动的动力被证实与其它非线性形态非常相似，比如像斑马身上的斑条，或蝴蝶翅膀上的斑点。但最令人吃惊的是被称为混沌的非线性现象。在人类的日常活动中，没有人会因为听说这儿发生的一件小事会对那儿发生巨大影响而吃惊。但是，当物理学家开始在他们的学科领域对非线性系统给予高度重视时，他们才开始认识到，支配非线性系统的规律有多么深奥。产生风流和潮气的方程式看上去极其简单。比如，研究人员现在才认识到，德克萨斯州一只蝴蝶翅膀的扇动，一个星期以后会影响到海地的一场雷暴雨的走向。或者，蝴蝶翅膀扇动朝左一毫米也许会整个改变雷暴雨的方向。这一个又一个的例子都表明了一个相同的意思：即一切都是相互关联的，这样的关联敏感到令人不可思议的地步。微小的不可测性不会总是很微小。在适当的条件下，最小的不确定性可以发展到令整个系统的前景完全不可预测——或用另一个词来形容：混沌。 反而言之，研究人员也开始认识到，即使是一些很简单的系统也会产生丰富到令人震惊的行为模式。所有这些只需要有一点点非线性因素。比如说，从一个漏水的水龙头滴下来的滴答滴答的滴水声，可能会像节奏器发出的节拍一样规律得让人发疯。但如果你不去理会它，让水滴的流速稍稍加快一点儿，水滴立刻就会变得大一滴、小一滴、大一滴、小一滴地往下滴。如果你还是不去理会，让水滴流速再加快一点儿，水流速度很快就会成倍增加，先是四滴一个序列，然后是八滴、十六滴一个序列，一直这样下去。最终，水滴的序列变得极为复杂，以致于水滴似乎是随机地滴下来——混沌再次出现了。这种不断增加的复杂性，在果蝇繁殖的数目变化中、在汹涌澎湃的水流中、或在任何领域中都可以看到。 物理学家感到难堪是毫不奇怪的。他们当然知道在量子力学、黑洞这类理论里有些古怪的现象。自牛顿时代以来的三百年间，他们和他们的先辈们已经习惯了把日常世界看作是一个受着他们非常能够理解的规律的支配。这个世界是一个本质上很紧凑的、可以预测的地方。而现在看来，仿佛这三百年来他们一直是住在一个被废弃的小孤岛上，对周围的世界漠然无视。考温说：“当你一旦离开线性近似法，你就开始航行在一个非常广阔的海洋上了。” 罗沙拉莫斯正巧是这样一个近乎理想的从事非线性研究的环境。这不仅是因为自五十年代以来，罗沙拉莫斯实验室一直在计算机技术上处于领先地位，同时也因为那儿的研究人员从实验室一创立就开始探索非线性问题了。比如对高能物理学、流体力学、核聚变、热核冲击波等问题的研究。事实上，到了七十年代初，事情已经很清楚了：许多非线性问题从深层次上来说都是同样的问题，它们都有同样的数学结构。所以，只要人们对这些问题一并进行研究，明显就会节省很多力气。结果在罗沙拉莫斯理论小组的热情支持下，小组内部出台了一个非线性科学方案。这个方案最终变成了一个完全独立运作的非线性系统研究中心。 然而，虽然分子生物学、计算机模拟和非线性科学作为单个领域都非常引人入胜，但考温总怀疑这仅仅只是个开始。他觉得在这些领域之下有一个统一的规律，这一统一性规律最终不仅囊括物理化学，也囊括生物学、信息处理、经济学、政治科学，以及人类生活的每一个方面。在他的脑海里，这一统一性规律的概念是一个近乎中世纪式的学术。他想，如果这种统一性真的存在，则我们将能够认识到，这是一个在生物科学和物理科学之间只有微小区别的世界，或像考温曾经说的那样，在科学和历史或哲学之间“整个知识的结构天衣无缝”。也许知识会重新变成这样。 对考温来说，现在似乎是一个绝妙的机会。所以为什么大学里的科学家不扑向这个方向呢？当然，在有些大学里，在某种程度上科学家们已经这样做了。但他所寻找的真正宽广的思维却似乎掉入了裂缝。就这种宏观思维的本质而言，任何一个大学科系都力所不及。确实，大学不乏“交叉学科研究所”，但就考温所见而言，这些研究所无非是一群偶尔过来共用一个办公室的人们。教授和学生仍然要效忠于他们自己的科系，因为他们自己的科系有权授予学位、终身教职和决定升迁。考温认为，如果由大学自由发展，那至少再过三十年大学也不会开始对复杂系统的研究。 不幸的是，罗沙拉莫斯似乎也不是个理想的研究复杂系统的地方。这很糟糕。通常，武器研究所是一个比大学要理想得多的从事多学科研究的地方。这是一个使访问学者们常常感到非常吃惊的事实。但罗沙拉莫斯实验室缺乏经费。曼哈顿计划始于一个特殊的挑战——制造原子弹——这个计划把科学家从每一个相关领域召集到一起，形成一个团队，共同来应付这个挑战。这里有一支被公认的出类拔萃的队伍：罗伯特·奥本海默、尹利柯·弗米、尼尔斯·波尔（Niels Bohr）、约翰·冯·诺意曼（John von Neumann）、汉斯·贝瑟、理查德·费曼（Richard Feynman）、尤金·维格纳（Eugene Wigner）。曾有一位观察家把这支队伍称为自古希腊以来最伟大的智者的集结。自从把这些优秀人才集结在一起后，实验室就以发展核武器为研究领域。实验室管理的重要工作就是要确保让恰当的专家们能够相互交流。“我有时觉得自己就像是一个媒人。”考温说。 唯一的问题是，考温宏大的学科整合方案正好不是实验室的基本任务。确实，考温的想法与核武器的发展根本就挨不上边。而如果研究不属于实验室的使命之内的课题，几乎没有可能获得项目资金。当然，实验室还是会做一点复杂理论的研究，就像他们一直在做的那样。但这样做进展不会太大。 不，这样不行。他想，只有一个办法。考温开始想象创建一个新型的独立机构。最理想的方案是，这个机构能够同时具备两个世界的长处：既有大学的广博，又能保持罗沙拉莫斯融合不同学科的能力。但如果可能的话，这个机构最好靠近罗沙拉莫斯，这样就可以共享实验室的人力和计算机设备。假设这个地方是距罗沙拉莫斯三十五英里的桑塔费这个离得最近的城市。但不管这个机构设置在哪儿，它都必须是一个能够吸引最优秀的科学家的地方——那些在自己的研究领域中真正知道自己在说些什么的人。这个机构要能够为他们提供远比通常更广阔的学科内容。这个机构应该是这样一个地方：在这里，资深学者们可以探究自己还不成熟的想法而不被同事们所讥笑，而最优秀的年轻科学家们可以和世界级的大师们一块儿工作，使他们满载而归。 总之，这个机构应该是一个培养自二次世界大战后已经非常少见的一种科学家的地方：“培养二十一世纪的文艺复兴式人物。他们从科学出发，但却能够面对混沌无序的现实世界，面对一个并不优雅，科学尚未真正研究到的世界。” 天真吗？当然，但考温觉得，如果他能把这个惊人的科学挑战的前景描述出来，说服其他人，这个想法也许能够实现。他自忖自问：“应该向八十年代和九十年代优秀的科学家灌输什么样的一种科学呢？” 而且，谁会愿意听他说呢？谁有这样的神通能将这个想法付诸实现呢？有一天在华盛顿，他尝试着对科学顾问杰伊·凯华兹和他的同僚，科学顾问委员会委员，惠普公司创办人之一，戴维·派卡德（David Packard）讲了他的想法。令他吃惊的是，他们没有笑话他。事实上，他们两个人都很支持他。所以在1983年春天，考温决定把这个议题带上罗沙拉莫斯的每周中餐讨论会上交由资深研究员们讨论。 结果他们都喜欢他的这个主意。