河海大学研究生英语-unit25-A-Science-of-Society-中文翻译.docx

A Science of Society1. Sociology shouldnt be confused with social philosophy. It is not a point of view about the way things ought to be. Rather, sociology deals with the way things are. Moreover, sociology is more than just an opinion about the way things are.社会学不应该与社会哲学混淆。 社会学不是对事情应该是怎样的一个观点。 相反，社会学是解决事情是什么。 此外，社会学不仅仅是对事情的看法。2. Sociology is a science of social life. Like other sciences, sociology has a logical / empirical basis. This means that, to be accepted, assertions must (1) make sense and (2) correspond to the facts. In this sense, sociology can be characterized by a current buzzword： critical thinking. The simple fact is that most of us, most of the time, are uncritical in our thinking. Much of the time we simply believe what we read or hear. Or, when we disagree, we do so on the basis of ideological points of view and prejudices that are not very well thought out.社会学是社会生活的一门科学。 像其他科学一样，社会学有逻辑/经验基础。 这意味着要被人们所接受，其论述必须（1）有意义，（2）符合事实。 在这个意义上，社会学的特征可以用当前流行语表示：批判性思维。 简单的事实是，我们中的大部分人，大多数时候，并没有进行评判性思考。 很多时候我们只是相信我们看到的或听到的。 或者，我们不同意某一事实，往往是因为我们未经深思熟虑或存有偏见。3. I Suppose you were talking with a friend about the value of going to college. Your friend disagrees: “College is a waste of time. You should get a head start in the job market instead. Most of todays millionaires never went to college, and there are plenty of college graduates pumping gas or out of work altogether.” Thats the kind of thing people sometimes say and it can be convincingespecially if its said with conviction. But does it stand up to logical and empirical testing?设想你正在和一个朋友谈论上大学的价值。 你的朋友不同意：“上大学浪费时间。 相反，你应该在就业市场上领先一步。 今天的大多数百万富翁从来没有上过大学，有大量毕业生在加油站工作或失业。”人们有时会说这种话，可能会令人信服尤其是有人自信满满地说。但是它是否符合逻辑和经验测试？4. Logically, it doesnt seem to make much sense. A college education would seem to give a person access to high-paying occupations not open to people with less education.逻辑上，这似乎没有什么意义。接受过大学教育的人似乎能找到高薪职业，而这些职业并不向受教育程度较低的人开放。5. How does the assertion stack up empirically? Table 1 lists the median incomes of families headed by individuals of different educational levels as reported by the Census Bureau.就经验而言，这一论述怎样说得通吗？ 表1是人口调查局发布的报告，该报告列出了不同教育程度的个人所得家庭平均收入。6. There isnt any scientific support for the assertion that education is a worthless financial investmenteven though there are some individual exceptions to the rule.教育是无价值的金融投资的说法并没有任何科学支撑，尽管这一规则有一些例外。7. Its important to recognize that human beings generally have opinions about everything. People you deal with every day have a tendency to express opinions about the way things are and what they say isnt always so. Consequently, you need to protect yourself from false information. Thats what critical thinking is all about, and sociology provides some powerful critical-thinking tools.重要的是要认识到，人类对一切都有一些意见。 你每天都会遇到一些人，他们倾向于表达对事物的看法虽然所说的并不总是事实。因此，您需要保护自己免受虚假信息的影响。 这就是批判性思维，社会学提供了一些强大的批判性思维工具。8. Lets look at the twin foundations of critical thinking and of science in more detail seeing how they apply to sociology in particular. Lets start with the determination of facts.9. At his August 5, 1985, news conference, President Reagan noted the fortieth anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. An unabated nuclear arms race led to increasing popular demands for a freeze on the manufacture and deployment of nuclear weapons. In defense of his administrations military policies, the president suggested that our store of nuclear weapons, coupled with the horrible example of Hiroshima, “ is a deterrent that kept us at peace for the longest stretch weve ever known，40 years of peace.”在1985年8月5日的新闻发布会上，里根总统强调今天是广岛轰炸的四十周年。 核军备竞赛势头有增无减，越来越多的人要求冻结核武器的制造和部署。 为了捍卫政府的军事政策，总统建议我们存储的核武器，再加上广岛这个可怕的例子，“威慑到我们在和平时期保持长达四十年的和平。”10. Regardless of how you feel about the nuclear arms racewhether we should be in it and whos winningthe argument that our nuclear arsenal has at least kept us at peace is a convincing one. In my review of the media and public comments following the news conference, people disagreed on whether the nuclear deterrent was the reason for the forty years of peace. Yet to my amazement, no one questioned the empirical accuracy of the assertion. A simple historical review of the period from 1945 to 1985 turned up the Korean War from 1950 to 1953 and the extensive and expensive war in Vietnam, which claimed 47,318 American lives between 1959 and 1973. This has to been the bloodiest forty years of peace in our national history.无论你对核军备竞赛有什么看法无论我们是否参与该竞赛，哪一方获得胜利 我们的核军火库至少让我们处于和平状态，这一观点令人信服。 在新闻发布会后，我回顾了媒体和公众意见，人们产生分歧的地方是核威慑是否促成了四十年来的和平局面。但令我惊呀的是，没有人质疑这种论述的准确性。对1945年到1985年做一个简单的历史回顾，1950年至1953年的朝鲜战争爆发，越南战争波及范围广泛，花销巨大，在1959年至1973年夺取了47,318名美国人的生命，这一直是我们的民族历史中最血腥的四十年和平 。11. Much of what you read and hear simply doesnt correspond to the empirical facts. Inaccuracy gets overlooked in the heat of rhetoric. For example, when the newspaper USA Today focused its attention on the national budget deficit, they interviewed seven men and women “in the street” to get their opinions. One of those interviewed, Glen Cemer, a retired photographer from Battle Creek, Michigan, responded as follows ：大部分你所看到的和听到的事情根本不符合实证事实。过度的修辞会导致失真。 例如，当“今日美国”报将注意力集中在国家财政赤字的时候，他们采访了“街头”七名男女的意见。接受采访的人之一，来自密歇根州巴特尔克里克的退休摄影师Glen Cemer回应如下：12. One way to lower the deficit would be to reduce the amount of foreign aid we provide to other countries. Its not winning any friends for us. Lets use that money to lower the deficit.降低赤字的一个办法就是减少我们向其他国家提供的外援。 我们没有赢得任何朋友。让我们用这笔钱来减少赤字。13. This comment is often heard when people discuss ways to reduce the federal deficit. On the one side, some people, like Mr. Cemer, can point to instances of foreign aid being wasted in various ways and cases where countries we have aided latter turned against us. On the other side, people who support foreign aid point to positive accomplishments. We also feel a moral urge to help others less fortunate than ourselves.当人们讨论如何减少联邦赤字时，经常会听到这种说法。 一方面，像Cemer先生一样，有些人可以指出例证，外援以各种各样的方式和情况挥霍，我们所援助的国家却和我们作对。另一方面，支持外援的人则指向积极的成就。我们也感到我们有道义去帮助那些比我们不幸的人。14. Regardless of how you happen to feel about foreign aid in general，it is possible to determine, empirically, whether reducing foreign aid would be an effective way of reducing the federal budget deficit. In 1983, the United States gave a total of $8.6 billion in economic (nonmilitary) aid to other countries. Our budget deficit that year was $195.4 billion. Cancelling our foreign aid program altogether, therefore, would have reduced the deficit by only 4 percent. Whereas the budget deficit is sometime, expressed on a per capita basis, cancelling foreign aid in 1983 would have reduced the 1983 debt of each American from $836. 81 to $799.98. This is not much of a reduction.不管你通常是怎样看待外援的，你都有可能从经验上判断减少外援是否是减少联邦预算赤字的有效方法。 1983年，美国向其他国家提供了总共86亿美元的经济（非军事）援助。我们当年的预算赤字为一千九百五十四亿元。因此，我们完全取消对外援助的方案，只能将赤字减少4。 鉴于预算赤字有时是按人均数量表示的，1983年取消外援可能会使1983年每个美国的债务从836美元减少到 799.98美元。这不是很大的削减。15. One of the things I hope youll gain from this introduction to critical thinking is an ability to balance what you read and hear in your day-to-day life against empirical evidence. Thats one of the keystones of sociology.我希望你从批判性思维的介绍中获益的一件事就是，批判地看待日常生活中看到的和听到的事与经验证据。这是社会学的重点之一。16. Over the past 150 years, sociologists have developed a number of research methods to assist in determining the facts of social life. Survey research, for example, involves the use of questionnaires to collect information. Sometimes people fill out the questionnaires themselves. Other times interviewers read the questions and take down the answers. In recent years, telephone interviewing has become increasingly popular and effective. In particular, computers have been adapted to support the interviewing process: selecting telephone numbers at random, showing interviewers what questions to ask, and recording the answers given for immediate analysis.在过去150年中，社会学家已经开发了一些研究方法来协助确定社会生活的事实。例如，调查研究涉及使用问卷调查来收集信息。有时人们自己填写问卷。其他时间访问者阅读问题并取消答案。近年来，电话采访日益普及和有效。特别是，电脑已经适应了支持采访过程：随机选择电话号码，向采访者询问要提出的问题，并记录为即时分析提供的答案。17. Usually, surveys are conducted among samples of people. The samples are selected in such a way that a few hundred or thousand respondents can provide an accurate assessment of much larger populations. For example, a political poll among a properly selected sample of 1600 voters can provide an accurate estimate of how all 90 million American voters feel : accurate within 2.5 percentage points. I know that may be hard to believe but sociologists are putting the logic and techniques of survey sampling to effective use every day.通常情况下，抽样人员进行调查。样本被选择为使得几百个或者几千个受访者可以对更大的群体提供准确的评估。例如，对1600名选民进行适当挑选的样本进行的政治民意调查可以准确估计9000万美国选民的感觉：准确度在2.5个百分点以内。我知道可能很难相信，但社会学家正在把调查抽样的逻辑和技巧每天有效地使用。18. Sometimes, laboratory experiments are a more effective method of getting at the facts of social life. This technique is commonly used in the study of small group dynamics, for example. As a practical example, some sociologists have used this technique to study the dynamics of jury deliberations. Hiring subjects to serve as pseudo-jurors, the researchers can then observe their subjects argue their way to a verdict.有时，实验室实验是更有效的处理社会生活事实的方法。例如，这种技术通常用于小组动力学的研究。作为一个实际的例子，一些社会学家已经用这个技术来研究陪审团审议的动态。招聘科目担任伪陪审员，研究人员随后可以观察他们的主体辩论他们的判决方式。19. A ready resource for sociological analysis exists in the great masses of data regularly laxly compiled by governmental agencies and various groups in the private sector. As in the example of education and income that we examined earlier, its often possible to find appropriate answers without the time and expense of conducting a survey, experiment, or comparable research project. Even in this situation, however, you need to exercise critical thinking, since the facts never really “speak for themselves. Heres an example.在政府机构和私营部门各小组定期放宽的大量数据中，存在着社会学分析准备资源。就像我们以前研究的教育和收入的例子一样，经常可以找到适当的答案，而不用花费时间和费用进行调查，实验或类似的研究项目。然而，即使在这种情况下，您也需要运用批判性思维，因为事实从未真正“为自己说话”，这就是一个例子。20. When Ralph Nader published Unsafe at Any Speed in 1965, he launched a consumer rights movement that has touched most aspects of American life. In the realm of auto safety, numerous changes have occurred in the past twenty years. These in- j elude safer auto designs, mandatory seat belts, and reduced highway speed limits. Although everyone is in favor of highway safety, the kinds of changes Ive mentioned have been very controversial. Some people argue that the various changes have made driving safer; others disagree. This is a good place for empirical examination.当拉尔夫纳德（Ralph Nader）于1965年发布“不安全”时，他发起了一项涉及美国生活大部分方面的消费者权利运动。在汽车安全领域，二十年来发生了很多变化。这些包括更安全的汽车设计，强制性安全带和降低的公路速度限制。虽然每个人都喜欢公路安全，但我提到的那些变化是非常有争议的。有人认为，这些变化使得驾驶更安全;其他人不同意。这是经验检查的好地方。21. Lets see what has happened to the number of people killed on the nations highways during this period of activity. Before we simply check on the number of people kilted each year, we should recognize that our population-including the number of drivershas grown each year. More people have been driving more cars more miles each year. To make a fair comparison, therefore，we need to take account of those increases.让我们看看在这个活动期间，在全国高层遇害的人数如何。在我们简单地检查每年罹难人数之前，我们应该认识到，我们的人口 - 包括司机人数 - 每年都在增长。更多的人每年都会驾驶更多的汽车更多的里程。因此，为了公平比较，我们需要考虑到这些增长。22. Figure 1 indicates the number of traffic deaths per 100 million miles driven each year from 1965 to 1984. This rate takes account of the increasing numbers of drivers, cars, and miles. It also gives us good grounds for observing trends in highway deaths over the period in question.图1显示了从1965年到1984年每年驱动的每1亿里程的交通死亡人数。这个比率考虑到司机，汽车和里程越来越多。这也为我们提供了观察有关时期高速公路死亡事件趋势的良好理由。23. As a general rule of thumb, it is usually a bad idea to evaluate any time-series data without seeing them within the context of a longer period of time. Although it certainly looks as though highway death rates have been dropping since 1965, what was the trend like earlier? Figure 2 answers that question.作为一般的经验法则，评估任何时间序列数据通常是一个坏主意，而不会在较长时间内看到它们。虽然自1965年以来，高速公路死亡率一直在下降，但是呢？图2回答这个问题。24. What does this new graph show us? The most striking observation is that the highway death rate has been decreasing pretty steadily since 1925, the first year statistics are available. In fact, the decrease from 1965 to 1984 is dwarfed by the reductions prior to that.这个新图表向我们展示了什么？最引人注目的观察结果是公路死亡率自1925年以来一直在稳步下降，这是第一年的可持续发展。事实上，从1965年到1984年的减少与之前的减少相比是相似的。25. The observed decline in highway deaths between 1965 and 1984, then does not prove that the consumer activism of that period was the cause. Do the data prove that the consumer activism had no effect? Not at all. We cannot assume from the data of 1925 - 1965 that the long-term decline in highway deaths would have continued without the speed laws, seat belts, etc.观察到1965年至1984年间公路死亡人数的下降，并没有证明这一时期的消费者行为主义是事实。数据证明消费者行为主义没有效果吗？一点也不。我们不能从1925 - 1965年的数据来看，高速公路死亡的长期下降会持续下去 - 没有速度法，安全带等。26. There are legitimate reasons for suggesting that the long-term decline would not have continued. First, as the death rate approaches zero, it begins to evidence a floor-effect. It can never go below zero, and its unlikely that it will ever