说到这个,忍不住再说几句。对科学的追求,也和对艺术的追求相似。转一篇爱因斯坦在普朗克60岁生日宴会上的讲话。这里爱因斯坦把科学家分成三类。当今大多数学者都不在这三类之中(即,不入流)。杨振宁是功利心驱使做SCIENCE的那类里的。有幸认识一些因为智力上的挑战和身心愉悦做SCIENCE的。遗憾的是,普朗克那类的,只听说过,无缘结识。
The longing to behold this pre-established harmony is the source of the inexhaustible patience and perseverance with which Planck has devoted himself, as we see, to the most general problems of our science, refusing to let himself be diverted to more grateful and more easily attained ends. I have often heard colleagues try to attribute this attitude of his to extraordinary will-power and discipline -- wrongly, in my opinion. The state of mind which enables a man to do work of this kind is akin to that of the religious worshiper or the lover; the daily effort comes from no deliberate intention or program, but straight from the heart. There he sits, our beloved Planck, and smiles inside himself at my childish playing-about with the lantern of Diogenes. Our affection for him needs no threadbare explanation. May the love of science continue to illumine his path in the future and lead him to the solution of the most important problem in present-day physics, which he has himself posed and done so much to solve. May he succeed in uniting quantum theory with electrodynamics and mechanics in a single logical system.