Very little is understood about this kind of collective behavior. It is out of fashion these days to talk of "superorganisms", but there simply aren't enough reductionist details in hand to explain away the phenomenon of termites and other social insects: some very good guesses can be made about their chemical signaling systems, but the plain fact that they exhibit something like a collective intelligence is a mystery, or anyway an unsolved problem, that might contain important implications for social life in general. This mystery is the best introduction I can think of to biological science in college. It should be taught for its strangeness, and for the ambiguity of its meaning. It should be taught to premedical students, who need lessons early in their careers about the uncertainties in science.
人们对这种群体行为知之甚少。如今谈“超个体”已不合时尚了，但手头根本没有足够的从研究单个昆虫着手的资料，可把白蚁和其他群体昆虫表现出来的这种现象解释清楚。对它们的化学信号系统可以作出一些非常合理的猜测，但它们表现出的像有集体智慧这一明摆着的事实，却叫人捉摸不透，不论怎么说，总是个尚未解决的问题。这一问题也许对一般社会生活具有重要含义。这个谜一般的问题是我能想到的大学生物学课的最好的导言。这个问题的奇特之处和模棱两可的含义都应该在课堂上讲一讲。这个问题应该讲给医科大学预科学生听，他们在事业开始之初，就需要通过教学了解科学领域中存在的种种未获定论的问题。
College students, and for that matter high school students, should be exposed very early, perhaps at the outset, to the big arguments currently going on among scientists. Big arguments stimulate their interest, and with luck engage their absorbed attention. Few things in life are as engrossing as a good fight between highly trained and skilled adversaries. But the young students are told very little about the major disagreements of the day; they may be taught something about the arguments between Darwinians and their opponents a century ago, but they do not realize that similar disputes about other matters, many of them touching profound issues for our understanding of nature, are still going on and, indeed, are an essentia feature of the scientific process. There is, I fear, a reluctance on the part of science teachers to talk about such things, based on the belief that before students can appreciate what the arguments are about they must learn and master the "fundamentals". I would be willing to see some experiments along this line, and I have in mind several examples of contemporary doctrinal dispute in which the drift of the argument can be readily perceived without deep or elaborate knowledge of the subject.
应该及早，也许应该一开始便让大学生甚至中学生接触科学家当前争论的重大问题。重大的论争会引起他们的兴趣，弄得好还能极大地吸引他们的注意力。训练有素、善于辩论的论敌间展开的激烈争鸣是那样引人入胜，生活中很少有什么事能与之相媲美。然而，青年学生对当代学术上的主要分歧却知之甚少。老师也许对他们讲授一百年前达尔文主义者及其论敌之间的争论，但他们并不知道，其他问题上类似的争论——其中许多争论涉及我们如何认识自然的重大问题——仍在继续进行，而且确是科学发展过程中的主要特点。我担心讲授科学的老师不愿谈及这些事，他们认为，学生必须先学习并掌握“基本知识”，然后才能理解这些争论是怎么回事。我很想看到有关这方面的实验。我想到好几个当代学术争鸣的例子。人们即使对这些课题缺乏深刻、详尽的了解，仍能很便当地领会到辩论的大概意思。
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