网帖翻译

Zielixo Kiren
I can't really give a massive, impressive answer like some of these posts, but I can tell you why technological process has occurred as it did.
1. The more technology we have, the less time we have to devote to survival.
10,000 years ago, let alone 100,000 years ago, we had only VERY fundamental tools. They were very inefficient at accomplishing things. It took a very long time to hunt animals, skin them, divide them up, and cook them. Infant and child mortality rates were massive due to lack of medicine. There were no vaccines, no antibiotics, nothing. So people died a lot more, and a lot earlier.
We had no real methods of transportation. Hunting and gathering meant you had to constantly look for food. There was no time for science.

我不能像这些帖子那样给出一个庞大而令人印象深刻的答案，但我可以告诉你为什么技术过程会这样发生。
1. 我们拥有的技术越多，我们用于生存的时间就越少
1万年前，更别说10万年前了，我们只有非常基本的工具。他们做事效率很低。打猎、剥皮、分割、烹饪要花很长时间。由于缺乏药品，婴儿和儿童死亡率很高。当时没有疫苗，没有抗生素，什么都没有。所以人们死得更多，也更早。
我们没有真正的交通工具。狩猎和采集意味着你必须不断地寻找食物。没有时间研究科学。

2. Language was very limited.
Progress from science, more or less, requires communication between individuals. When you say "what were we doing before that?" you forget that there wasn't really a "we" back then. Even if some people did some kind of rudamentary experiments, the odds that they could effectively communicate what happened and why it happened were abysmal. Let's say you were trying to explain the concept of genetics back then. You can forget about the words "genetics", "genome", "mutation", "chromosomes", and "dna" because they didn't exist. These words had to be invented, they had to be made known to the public, they had to be explained. Every day we learn new words to describe science.
Writing wasn't even invented until 3,200 B.C.

2. 语言非常有限
科学的进步或多或少需要人与人之间的交流。当你说“在那之前我们在做什么?”你忘记了那时候并没有真正的“我们”。即使有些人做了一些基本的实验，他们能够有效地交流发生了什么以及为什么会发生的几率也是极低的。
假设你当时试图解释遗传学的概念。别奢望能提及“遗传学”、“基因组”、“突变”、“染色体”和“DNA”这些词，因为它们根本不存在。这些词必须被发明出来，必须被公众所知，必须被解释清楚。每天我们都学习描述科学的新词。
而书写直到公元前3200年才被发明出来

3. The population of the world was tiny compared to what it is today.
There were an estimated 107 billion people that have died on the Earth. The population of the Earth today is 7 billion. Back when the population of the Earth was 10 mil, you have to figure that the amount of people capable of scientific thought was MUCH smaller. The obvious reason being that it's a percentage of the population. The other reason being that you needed to be more intelligent than you would be today to be involved in science. Why is that? Because it was a lot more challenging. They didn't have calculators, they didn't have people teaching them the fundamentals of math, or cells, or physics. They had nothing to build off of. They had to think of these concepts themselves, and figure out how to prove and explain them to other people.
Furthermore, today pretty much everyone specializes. Scientists don't have to devote 80% of their time to growing their own food, they can devote all of it to science, and get paid for it (hopefully).

3. 与今天的人口相比，当时的世界人口非常少
据估计，地球上有1070亿人死亡。今天地球上的人口是70亿。当地球上的人口是1000万的时候，你必须知道，有科学思维能力的人要少得多。显而易见的原因是，这涉及人口的一个百分比。另一个原因是你需要比现在更聪明才能参与科学研究。为什么呢?因为它更具挑战性。他们没有计算器，没有人教他们基本的数学、细胞或物理知识。他们没有任何基础。他们必须自己思考这些概念，并设法向其他人证明和解释这些概念。
此外，今天几乎每个人都术业有专攻。科学家不需要把80%的时间用于种植自己的食物，他们可以把所有的时间都投入到科学中，并从中获得报酬(希望如此)。

Pete Mercauto
It's probably closer to the truth to say that 99%, or at least 90%, of technological and scientific progress has occurred in just the last 300 years. I would attribute that to several things, not least of which was the widespread adoption of the scientific method as we know it today, including the exclusion of supernatural agency and the rejection of the church as both the patrons of natural philosophers and the arbiter of what is or isn't scientifically valid.

更接近事实的说法是，99%或至少90%的技术和科学进步都发生在过去300年里。我会把这归结于几件事，其中最重要的是我们今天所知道的科学方法的广泛采用，包括排除超自然力量，拒绝教会，后者既是天生的哲学家的庇护所，也是什么是或不是科学的仲裁者。

Remember, scientists, as we know them today, didn't even exist back in the day of Galileo and Newton. These men were natural philosophers. They engaged in their passion at the pleasure of the ecclesiastical authorities, not their scientific peers, and in return for resources and recognition, they delivered their knowledge to their church for the glory of God. It was not uncommon at the time for a natural philosopher to throw up his hands and exclaim something equivalent to "God did it", when faced with a particularly sticky question. Of course the Church was more than willing to accept the whim of God as a reasonable scientific explanation and natural philosophers were expected to find from time to time that certain things were the result of God's machinations and beyond human understanding. Newton himself was guilty of doing just that in regards to an aspect of his Gravitational theory dealing with a 3rd body. The problem was eventually solved a century later by an agnostic atheist who didn't give up so easily.

请记住，我们今天所知道的科学家，在伽利略和牛顿的时代甚至还不存在。这些人是天生的哲学家。他们在教会权威的喜悦下投入了他们的激情，而不是他们的科学同行，作为资源和认可的回报，他们为了上帝的荣耀将他们的知识奉献给教会。
在当时，当面对一个特别棘手的问题时，这群人举手投降并惊呼比如“上帝做的”之类的话并不罕见。当然，教会更愿意接受上帝的心血来潮，作为合理的科学解释，这群人被期望不时地发现某些事情是上帝阴谋的结果，超出了人类的理解。牛顿自己也犯了这样的错误，在他的引力理论中有一个方面是关于第三个物体的。这个问题最终在一个世纪后被一位不轻易放弃的不可知论无神论者解决了。

Technological progress is a slippery term. Is the discovery of fire technological progress? I guess so, as was the invention of iron, fishooks or bronze smelting. Basic things like fire, hand tools, boats, agriculture, clothing and the wheel were essential for survival and the foundation of the species. But they were just about all the technological progress man made between 200,000 and roughly 300 years ago when things really took off exponentially.
While it's true that the availability of time to devote to things other than survival is conducive to scientific activity, what acts to prevent all that free time from being spent on woo woo as so many did then, and various genres of modern pseudoscientists continue to do now? Again, Newton provides a perfect example.

技术进步是一个难以捉摸的词。火的发现是技术进步吗?我想是的，就像铁、鱼钩和青铜冶炼的发明一样。火、手工工具、船、农业、衣服和轮子等基本的东西是生存和物种的基础。但它们只是人类在20万年前到大约300年前之间取得的所有技术进步，当时的情况确实呈指数级增长。
虽然有足够的时间来从事生存之外的事情确实有利于科学活动，但是没有什么能阻止所有的空闲时间都花在“求爱”上，就像当时很多人做的那样，以及各种类型的现代伪科学家现在还在做的那样。牛顿再次提供了一个完美的例子。

As a genius with plenty of free time, he spent well over half of it practicing alchemy and writing theological treatises no one cares about. Imagine what he could have achieved if the scientific method and peer review, instead of the opinions of his fellow ministers on the Royal Society, were the standards by which his work was uated.
The invention and adoption of methodological naturalism as the standard for scientific veracity was the crucial step in touching off the amazing progress over the ensuing 300 years. The fact that the tremendous rate of scientific advancement coincides perfectly with this revolution and redefinition of what science is cannot be an accident.

作为一个拥有大量空闲时间的天才，他把一半以上的时间用来练习炼金术和写一些无人关心的神学论文。想象一下，如果评价他的工作的标准是科学方法和同行评议，而不是他的大臣们对皇家学会的意见，他会取得什么样的成就。
发明并采用自然主义方法论作为科学准确性的标准，是引发随后300年惊人进步的关键一步。科学进步的惊人速度与这场革命和对科学的重新定义完美地吻合，这绝不是偶然的。
原创翻译：龙腾网 https://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处

Allison Schempf
Excellent comment explaining why scientific progress was artificially constrained until the Enlightenment. I just wanted to note that alchemy and other pseudoscience continued to overlap with scientific inquiry during the Enlightenment era. Wealthy patrons hoping for alchemical miracles inadvertently provided funding for real scientific research. In regards to Newton, I would argue that his deeply fraught relationship with Christianity drove his need for certainty.

精彩的评论，解释了为什么科学进步在启蒙运动之前被人为地限制。我只是想指出，炼金术和其他伪科学在启蒙时代一直与科学探究重叠。希望看到炼金术奇迹的富有赞助人无意中为真正的科学研究提供了资金。
至于牛顿，我想说的是，他与基督教之间令人担忧的关系推动了他对准确性的需求。

Even as a child, he made detailed lists of his transgressions and seemed to be obsessed with rules. Later on, he applied that intense obsession with working out the Laws governing the universe. His failure to solve certain issues likely resulted from a truly profound internal struggle along with his outlier status. Unlike other scientists who weren't able to reconcile religious belief with scientific evidence, Newton was far from intellectually lazy about his decision to give up on the problem.

甚至在孩提时代，他就把自己的过错详细地列出来，似乎对规则很着迷。后来，他把这种强烈的痴迷应用于研究支配宇宙的定律。他解决某些问题的失败可能是由于他内心深处的斗争以及他的局外人身份。与其他无法调和宗教信仰与科学证据的科学家不同，牛顿在放弃这个问题的决定上绝不是智力上的懒惰。

Pete Mercauto
Yes, people didn't suddenly wake up all scientific one morning. They were gradually introduced to a new tool and many of the old pseudoscientists didn't abandon their methods right away just because their disciplines didn't comport with the upstart scientific method. A few practiced some real science as a by-product of their woo-woo for sure. Too bad what little real science was going on had to be done in such a sloppy and inefficient manner, but that's how it was until science no longer depended on wealthy and ignorant patrons but instead was funded by governments and the educational sector where results matter and alchemists don't fare so well.

是的，人们不会在某天早上突然觉醒。
他们逐渐被引入一种新的工具，许多旧的伪科学家并没有因为他们的学科与新兴的科学方法不一致而立即放弃他们的方法。一些人在他们的“呜呜”声中实践了一些真正的科学。糟糕的是，这么少的、真正的科学研究必须以如此草率和低效的方式进行。但直到科学不再依赖于富有和无知的赞助人，而是由政府和教育部门资助，结果很重要，因为炼金术士的表现不太好。

Although the scientific method is about 300 years old, it only became mandatory for credibility over the last 150 years or so. This further explains why most of the scientific progress since mankind's beginning is concentrated in the last 150 years or so. By that time, the scientific method had become ingrained and pseudoscientists were beginning to be identified for what they were by most all educated people who mattered. If I sounded hard on Newton, I didn't intend to be. He was a creature of his time and the antithesis of intellectual laziness. However, the threat of scientific inhibition caused by a "God done it" explanation for seemingly insoluble problems, and the attitude of modern science, is far different.

尽管这种科学方法已有300年的历史，但在过去150年左右的时间里，它才成为可信度的强制要求。这进一步解释了为什么自人类诞生以来的大部分科学进步都集中在过去150年左右。到那个时候，科学方法已经根深蒂固，大多数受过教育的重要人士开始能够识别伪科学家的身份。
如果我听起来对牛顿很严厉，那是我无意的。他是那个时代的产物，是智力懒惰的对立面。然而，对看似无法解决的问题的“上帝做的”解释所造成的对科学的打压和威胁，与现代科学的态度截然不同。

The attitude of Newton, as well as some modern theists today, is that the answers to not only "why" questions, but even many "how" questions, are privy only to the mind of God. Once they've reached that conclusion, no matter how strenuously and sincerely considered, that's the end of the matter. It's not intellectual laziness, it's intellectual suicide. The belief that some things are unknowable, and the intellectual surrender it implies, is a far cry from the honest admission of modern scientists that there are some things we don't know and may never know to any degree of certainty, but that's no reason to ever quit trying.

牛顿以及今天一些现代有神论者的态度是，某些问题的答案不仅是“上帝做的”，还煞有介事地解释“为什么上帝要这样做和如何做的”。一旦他们得出了这样的结论，无论他们多么努力和真诚地考虑，事情就结束了。这不是智力懒惰，而是智力自杀。相信有些事情是不可知的，这意味着智力上的投降，与现代科学家诚实地承认有些事情我们不知道，可能永远不会知道到任何程度的确定性，相去甚远，但这不是停止尝试的理由。
原创翻译：龙腾网 https://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处

The anti-scientific virus of supernaturalism affected Newton no more or less than his peers. The effect it had on his achievements may or may not have been profound. We'll never know for sure what use Newton's time wasting would have been put to otherwise. But it's certain that, over the centuries, the cumulative effects of "God did it" on science have been profound and incalculable.

超自然主义的反科学“病毒”对牛顿的影响不亚于他的同行。这对他的成就的影响可能是深远的，也可能不是。我们永远不知道牛顿浪费的时间会被用来做什么。但可以肯定的是，几个世纪以来，“上帝做的”对科学的累积影响是深远而无法估量的。

Allison Schempf
Thanks for clarification of your initial comment regarding Newton and the gradual introduction of the scientific method. Fortunately, scientists are no longer beholden to the woo-woo beliefs of wealthy patrons. Unfortunately, most funding for scientific research in the U.S. depends on politics, and the far right has successfully stifled research. The consequences of having scientifically illiterate (and/or willfully ignorant) politicians are potentially disastrous.

感谢你澄清你最初对牛顿的评论以及科学方法的逐步引入。幸运的是，科学家们不再受制于富裕赞助人的“喔喔”信仰。
不幸的是，美国科学研究的大部分资金都依赖于政治，而极右翼已经成功地扼杀了研究。拥有不懂科学(和/或故意无知)的政客，其后果可能是灾难性的。

Pete Mercauto
You are correct, of course. In the U.S., many politicians are the intellectual equals of the clerics who stifled science in the 13-14th Century, and their reasons are no different. So even centuries after the Enlightenment, scientifically illiterate, primitive thinkers still exist and even exercise power in unfortunate places like the Middle East and the U.S.. Fortunately, they only affect governmental funding, not science itself, the forefront of which is increasingly being dominated by Europeans and Asians.

你是对的。在美国，许多政客在知识上与13-14世纪扼杀科学的牧师不相上下，他们的理由也没有什么不同。因此，即使在启蒙运动之后的几个世纪，对科学一无所知的原始思想家仍然存在，甚至在中东和美国等不幸的地方行使着权力。
幸运的是，它们只影响政府的资助，而不影响科学本身，科学的前沿正日益被欧洲人和亚洲人所主导。

As the U.S. population becomes increasingly science illiterate and our scientific achievements reach parity with those of Nigeria and Bangladesh, other countries will pick up the slack and science will march on without us. That's still a better situation for mankind than in the past when

随着美国人越来越不懂科学，我们的科学成就与尼日利亚和孟加拉国将不相上下，其他国家将填补空白，科学将在没有我们的情况下继续前进。当然对人类来说，这仍然是一个比过去更好的局面。

Mark Binfield
I recently finished listening to David Christian's lecture series on Big History from the Teaching Company. He laid out a good explanation of pre-agricultural technological development. Bottom line, there was a lot of technology being developed. The result just didn't look like our usual idea of progress.
For most of human history, technological innovation went hand-in-hand with migration. This is referred to as extensification - increasing available resources by increasing the amount of land being exploited. Each time humanity moved into a new environment, they had to learn and adapt. Hunter-gatherers need to understand their local environments extremely well in order to thrive.

我最近刚听完David Christian在教学公司的大历史系列讲座。他对农业时代以前的技术发展作了很好的解释。总之，当时有很多技术正在发展，只是结果看起来并不像我们通常认为的进步。
在人类历史的大部分时间里，技术创新与移民相伴而行。这被称为扩张——通过增加被开发的土地数量来增加可用资源。每当人类进入一个新的环境，他们就必须学习和适应。狩猎采集者需要非常了解他们的当地环境才能茁壮成长。

Humans who moved into coastal regions or regions with lots of fresh water learned to fish and harvest other aquatic life. Humans moving into desert regions learned to conserve water and protect themselves from heat and cold. Humans moving into frigid climates learned to make warm clothing and build well-insulated shelters, and hunt large game to supply their increased caloric needs. Humans in every region learned which local plants were edible and which had other useful properties, and what local materials were good for building shelters and making tools.This pattern didn't look like technological advancement as we usually think of it, because any given group of humans were only using a relatively narrow set of technologies. But the sum of all human technology advanced quite a bit. From an evolutionary standpoint this was an amazing development - a species had come along that, instead of adapting to new environments by the slow process of evolution, could adapt rapidly using learned behaviors passed on through language.

搬到沿海地区或淡水丰富地区的人类学会了捕鱼和收获其他水生生物。迁入沙漠地区的人类学会了节约用水，保护自己免受冷热之害。迁入寒冷气候的人类学会了制作保暖的衣服，建造隔热良好的住所，并狩猎大型猎物来满足他们增加的热量需求。每个地区的人类都了解了当地哪些植物是可食用的，哪些有其他有用的特性，以及当地哪些材料适合建造住所和制造工具。
这种模式看起来并不像我们通常认为的那样是技术进步，因为任何给定的人类群体只使用相对狭窄的一套技术。但是人类所有技术的总和就进步了很多。从进化的角度来看，这是一个惊人的发展——一个物种的出现，不是通过缓慢的进化过程来适应新环境，而是通过语言传递的习得行为来快速适应。

It was only once humanity had filled up most of the world's available land area that there was a significant incentive to develop technologies aimed at allowing more people to live on the same area of land. This is called intensification, and it's the beginning of technological development as we usually think of it, since successive technologies for intensifying production in a particular area built on each other. Why didn't agriculture develop earlier? The currently accepted explanation is simple: because life as a hunter-gatherer is pretty easy, and life as a subsistence farmer sucks. When modern-day hunter-gatherers have been asked by anthropologists for their thoughts on agriculture, their responses have been something like "Yeah, we know what that is. Why would we want to do it? Farming is for chumps."

只有当人类填满了世界上大部分可用的土地面积，才有了开发技术的巨大动力，目的是让更多人生活在同样的土地面积上。这被称为集约化，这是我们通常认为的技术发展的开端，因为在一个特定地区，强化生产的连续技术是相互建立的。
为什么农业没有更早发展起来?目前公认的解释很简单:因为作为一个狩猎采集者的生活很容易，而作为一个自给自足的农民的生活很糟糕。当人类学家向现代狩猎采集者询问他们对农业的看法时，他们的回答是“是的，我们知道那是什么。我们为什么要这么做?农业是白痴干的。”

Guy Verrijdt
Upvoted for "life as a hunter-gatherer is pretty easy, and life as a subsistence farmer sucks".
Not many people realize that...
Humans were probably way better off 200.000 years ago than 2000 years ago.

关于“因为作为一个狩猎采集者的生活很容易，而作为一个自给自足的农民的生活很糟糕”作进一步补充。
没有多少人意识到，20万年前的人类可能比2000年前的人类生活要好得多。