FUTURE | 遠見 暮成雪 選編
《Four golden lessons》是美國物理學家、諾貝爾獎(1979)獲得者Steven Weinberg發表在Nature-scientist 上的一篇文章，文章中，溫伯格為即將進入科研領域的研究生總結了四條箴言。
史蒂文·溫伯格（Steven Weinberg，1933年5月3日－），生於紐約，美國物理學家，1979年獲諾貝爾物理學獎。
Advice to students at the start of their scientific careers。
文章英文原文深入淺出，行文優美。是大師溫伯格近50年科研生涯的感悟和總結。堪稱經典，讀後獲益匪淺，得到很多科研大牛及導師力薦。
國際著名生物學家，美國國家科學院外籍院士顏寧看到後，在其科學網博客上感嘆道：
「竟然是第一次看到這篇11年前的短文，寫的真好。轉帖在這裡。」
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v426/n6965/full/426389a.html
以下為《Four golden lessons》的中文譯文/英文原文：
golden lessons1:
沒人知道所有的事情，你也無需如此
No one knows everything, and you don&39;t have to.
golden lessons2:
向混亂進軍，因為那裡才大有可為
Go for the messes - that&39;s where the action is.
golden lessons3:
原諒自己浪費時間
Forgive yourself for wasting time .
我的第三條建議或許最難被接受：那就是原諒自己浪費時間。學生們只被要求回答教授們（當然，不包括殘忍的教授）認為存在答案的問題。但是，這些問題是否具有重要的科學意義也無關緊要——因為解答這些問題的意義只為了讓學生通過考試。但在現實世界中，你很難知道這些問題是否重要，而且在歷史的某一時刻你甚至無法知道這個問題是否有解。二十世紀初，包括洛倫茲（Lorentz）和亞伯拉罕（Abraham）在內的幾位重要物理學家試圖建立一個電子理論，部分原因是為了解釋為何地球在以太中運動所產生的效應為何無法被探測到。我們現在知道了，他們在試圖解決一個錯誤的問題。當時，沒人能提出一個成功的電子理論，是因為那時還沒發現量子力學。直到1905年，天才的科學家阿爾伯特·愛因斯坦才發現，需要研究的問題應該是運動對時空測量的效應。從這一思路出發，他才創建了狹義相對論。你永遠也無法確定研究什麼樣的問題是正確的，所以你花在實驗室或書桌前的大部分時間都會被浪費掉。如果你想變得富於創造性，那你就應該習慣自己的大部分時間都沒有創造性，同樣應該習慣在迷路在科學知識的海洋裡。
My third piece of advice is probably the hardest to take. It is to forgive yourself for wasting time. Students are only asked to solve problems that their professors (unless unusually cruel) know to be solvable. In addition, it doesn&39;s very hard to know which problems are important, and you never know whether at a given moment in history a problem is solvable. At the beginning of the twentieth century, several leading physicists, including Lorentz and Abraham, were trying to work out a theory of the electron. This was partly in order to understand why all attempts to detect effects of Earth&39;re probably not going to get rich. Your friends and relatives probably won&39;re doing. And if you work in a field like elementary particle physics, you won&39;s cores could still be hot after millions of years. In this way, it removed the last scientific objection to what many geologists and paleontologists thought was the great age of the Earth and the Sun. After this, Christians and Jews either had to give up belief in the literal truth of the Bible or resign themselves to intellectual irrelevance. This was just one step in a sequence of steps from Galileo through Newton and Darwin to the present that, time after time, has weakened the hold of religious dogmatism. Reading any newspaper nowadays is enough to show you that this work is not yet complete. But it is civilizing work, of which scientists are able to feel proud.
Article Source: Nature 426, 389 (27 November 2003)
doi:10.1038/426389a
Scientist: Four golden lessons by Steven Weinberg