An Obsession for the Future : Reading Goege's Translation of The Niels Bohr Collection

□ Jiang Xiaoyuan ■ Liu Bing

□ The annual "Top Ten Good Books of the Year" selection has just come to an end in Shenzhen, and as a judge, I have once again struggled with the "Niels Bohr Collection". This magnificent tome will almost certainly not be on the preliminary list, but the judges can recommend additions to advance it to the next round. I hesitated for a long time, but finally decided to waive my right to recommend additions to the Niels Bohr Collection. I think of it this way: as a kind of selection activity that leads the public to read good books as the main appeal, the Niels Bohr Collection is voluminous and cannot be finalized by ordinary readers, and the content of the two is too specialized and difficult to be consumed by ordinary readers, and it is not appropriate to put it on the shortlist. But there's no doubt that I'd highly recommend this book at another suitable selection.

This leads to the question: What kind of readers was this Niels Bohr collection for? Media reporters have asked me this question more than once. To be honest, I couldn't find a single answer that completely satisfactorily to myself.

■ I think you're right. If there is no restriction on the selection of the "Top Ten Good Books of the Year", the book "Niels Bohr" published in China is certainly eligible to enter the ranks of candidates, but if the "good book" is limited to the scope of reading to the public, it is also normal not to be included in it. So who will the readers be? On the one hand, we can imagine those who should read the book; on the other hand, it is the reader who is likely to read the book in reality. These two types of readers are not exactly the same.

When it comes to readers who should read this book, we should start with Bohr's identity and contributions. Bohr was one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century, and he made a crucial and decisive contribution to the development of one of the two fundamental pillars of 20th-century physics, namely quantum mechanics. Moreover, its philosophical thinking related to physics is almost unique. From this point of view, it seems obvious to the reader who "should" read his work.

□ In fact, those in the scientific community who are "struggling" at the so-called "forefront of the world" are probably not going to read books like "Niels Bohr's Collection" because they will feel that such books are too impractical. Only those who are willing to think about the most basic questions are likely to read. Is it useful to read it? No one can promise them that it will be useful — especially if "useful" is defined as something like "publishing a SCI paper," it's almost certainly useless.

Among those who read the Niels Bohr collection and are really useful should be a small group of researchers on the history of science. This magnificent work is a great merit dedicated to the researchers of the history of science. At the same time, it is also a great achievement in the history of science, at least a great achievement in the collation of historical materials in the history of science. Great scholars usually think about the most basic questions, think about problems of ultimate nature. Bohr is like this, so his writings will certainly be of great help to those who are willing to think about the basic questions and the ultimate questions in the future. So if we describe the Niels Bohr Collection as a "book for future readers," it sounds a bit pedantic and a bit literary, but it can actually be true.

If you look back at the history of science, you can find that the real top scientists are not just so utilitarian and only want to publish SCI papers, but will do more relevant philosophical thinking and read philosophical and historical documents. Einstein read Maher, for example, as an example. You say that researchers of the history of science read this book as "really useful," or you can add researchers of the philosophy of science. But even so, the number of potential readers seems to be too small. After all, to really study bohr, or the history of quantum physics, you still have to look at the original text — although the Chinese translation instinct brings some convenience.

It occurred to me that I had written an article before pointing out that "folk science" was one of the important audience groups for scientific and cultural books, so would there be a considerable number of readers of this set of books who would also have "folk science"?

Or, simply do not do so utilitarian analysis, anyway, the publication of such a book, want to make money now seems unlikely, even as a basic cultural construction, more than a thousand sets of printed out, put in the library or somewhere else, more than a billion people, there will always be some readers we want to get or can not think of to read it. After reading it, it may be "useful" or "useless", even if it is just to experience the process of "understanding or not understanding" reading such non-popular books, isn't it also good?

□ There is always a trace of sadness in your positive words. Let me try to make our minds a little more optimistic. I think that this set of "Niels Bohr' works" in the years to come may be inferred from Einstein's reading situation before he made the theory of relativity famous.

Einstein's reading before he became famous included philosophical and scientific works, such as the works of Spinoza and Hume, the works of Mach, Affinarius, and Bilson, ampère's Philosophical Experience of Science; there were also the articles of the physicist Helmholtz, the famous lecture of the mathematician Riemann", "On the Hypothesis as the Basis of Geometry", the mathematical papers of Deidkin and Clifford, the "Science and Hypotheses" of Pengaler, and so on. Einstein and his associates were not "heavy on the text" either—they also read together the ancient Greek tragic writer Sophocles's Antigone, Racine's, Dickens's The Christmas Story, Cervantes's Don Quixote, and many other representative works of world literature.

In the course of a great scholar's life, there must be a life of reading that does not care about utilitarianism. Moreover, this can be linked to the interest you expected above in the "folk science" in the Niels Bohr collection - in the so-called "Olympia Academy" (the reading group of the small staff Einstein and a few young friends), Einstein was actually a literal "civil science".

■ Nowadays, I am afraid that few people will associate Einstein with "civil science". Of course, as I have said before, "folk science is a way of life".

We've been talking about scientists, about Einstein, about readers. In fact, the translator of this huge work is also quite promising. Mr. Goge, who was also a common friend of you and me before his death, single-handedly completed the translation of such a brilliant masterpiece, and with his difficulty, his perseverance, his love for the history of science, especially Bohr, it is difficult to find a second person in the current academic community. When you set the title of this dialogue as "a piece of infatuation left for the future", I guess you mainly refer to Mr. Goge's piece of "obsession", right? In this way, in your "positive" vision and vision, the future readers of this tome, and the significance of its reading, can be regarded as the best reward for this obsession.

The Collected Works of Niels Bohr, by Niels Bohr (Denmark), translated by Gege, East China Normal University Press, June 2012, 1st edition, price: 1380 yuan (12 volumes).