雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第3章:思考什麼是思考(91)
Alan had been stimulated by Hilbert's decision problem, or the Entscheidungs problem as it was in German.
He had not only answered it, but had done much more.
然後不僅解答了它，還走得更遠。Indeed, he would entitle his paper 'On Computable Numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungs problem.'
他給這篇論文起了題目，叫作《論可計算數及其在判定問題上的應用》。
It was as though Newman's lectures had tapped some stream of enquiry which had been flowing all the time and which found in this question an opportunity to emerge.
一直都在潛伏、積蓄着的探索之火山，被紐曼的講座助了把力，終於找到機會噴發了。He had done something, for he had resolved a central question about mathematics, and had done so by crashing in as an unknown and unsophisticated outsider.
這個無名的、幼稚的圈外人，突然闖進了數學界，解決了一箇中心問題。But it was not only a matter of abstract mathematics, not only a play of symbols, for it involved thinking about what people did in the physical world.
而且，因爲它涉及了在現實世界中，人類是如何進行思考的，It was not exactly science, in the sense of making observations and predictions.
所以它不僅是抽象數學的問題，也不僅是一個符號的遊戲。All he had done was to set up a new model, a new framework.
從可觀察和可預測的角度來說，這不能完全算是科學。It was a play of imagination like that of Einstein or von Neumann, doubting the axioms rather than measuring effects.
他創立了一套新的模型和框架，就像愛因斯坦或馮·諾伊曼一樣，這是一場想象力的風暴，他在挑戰公理，而不是現象。Even his model was not really new, for there were plenty of ideas, even in Natural Wonders, about the brain as a machine, a telephone exchange or an office system.
也許這個模型並不是全新的，之前也有很多想法，《自然奇蹟》也說過，大腦就像機器。What he had done was to combine such a naive mechanistic picture of the mind with the precise logic of pure mathematics.
但艾倫所做的是，用精確的純數學邏輯，將那種樸素的大腦的機器模樣給描繪出來了。His machines—soon to be called Turing machines —offered a bridge, a connection between abstract symbols, and the physical world.
他的機器——不久後被稱爲"圖靈機"——爲抽象符號和實體世界之間建起了橋樑。Indeed, his imagery was, for Cambridge, almost shockingly industrial.
驚人的是，他想象的這種機器，彷彿真的像是可以造出來的。Obviously there was a connection between the Turing machine and his earlier concern with the problem of Laplacian determinism.
顯然，圖靈機，與他早期對拉普拉斯決定論的一些思考，是有關係的。The relationship was indirect.
但這是一種間接的關係。For one thing, it might be argued that the 'spirit' he had thought about was not the 'mind' that performed intellectual tasks.
一方面，他曾經考慮過的"靈魂"，並不是指執行智力活動的"思維"。For another, the description of the Turing machines had nothing to do with physics.
另一方面，圖靈機的描述與物理無關。Nevertheless, he had gone out of his way to set down a thesis of 'finitely many mental states', a thesis implying a material basis to the mind, rather than stick to the safer 'instruction note' argument.
儘管如此，他跳出了自己先前的圈套，就是"有限的思維狀態"，這種設定涉及了思維的物質基礎。他轉而採取了更安全的"便條"這種論證。
