THE APPROACH IN THIS BOOK
本书中的方法
I make my living as a combination neurobiologist（综合神经生物学家）—someone who studies the brain—and primatologist（灵长类动物学家）—someone who studies monkeys and apes.
我的职业是综合神经生物学家(研究大脑）和灵长类动物学家(研究猴子和猿)。
Therefore, this is a book that is rooted in science, specifically biology.
因此，这是一本植根于科学的书，具体点是生物学。
And out of that come three key points.
由此引出三个关键点。
First, you can’t begin to understand things like aggression, competition, cooperation, and empathy without biology;
首先，如果没有生物学，你无法开始理解攻击性、竞争、合作和同理心等;
I say this for the benefit of a certain breed（特定类型） of social scientist who finds biology to be irrelevant and a bit ideologically（意识形态） suspect when thinking about human social behavior.
我这么说是为了某些类型的社会科学家的利益，他们认为生物学在思考人类社会行为时是无关紧要的，并在意识形态上有点可疑。
But just as important, second, you’re just as much up the creek（如在支流） if you rely only on biology;
但同样重要的是，第二，如果你只依赖生物学，你同样会陷入困境;
this is said for the benefit of（有好处） a style of molecular fundamentalist（分子原教旨主义） who believes that the social sciences are destined to be consumed by “real” science. （加引号的“真实科学”）
这是为了某种分子原教旨主义者的利益，他们认为社会科学注定要被“真正的”科学所填充。
And as a third point, by the time you finish this book, you’ll see that it actually makes no sense to distinguish between aspects of a behavior that are “biological” and those that would be described as, say, “psychological” or “cultural.” Utterly intertwined.
以及第三点，当你读完这本书的时候，你会发现“行为”的“生物学”方面和那些被描述为“心理学”或“文化”方面没有区分的意义，完全交织在一起。
Understanding the biology of these human behaviors is obviously important.
了解这些人类行为背后的生物学当然很重要。
But unfortunately it is hellishly complicated.
但不幸的是，它复杂的可怕 。
Now, if you were interested in the biology of, say, how migrating birds navigate, or in the mating reflex that occurs in female hamsters when they’re ovulating, this would be an easier task.
现在，如果你对生物学感兴趣，比如，候鸟如何导航，或者雌性仓鼠在排卵期发生的交配反射，这将是一个更容易的任务。
But that’s not what we’re interested in.
但这不是我们感兴趣的。
Instead, it’s human behavior, human social behavior, and in many cases abnormal human social behavior.
相反，它是人类的行为，人类的社会行为，在很多情况下是反常的人类社会行为。
它确实是一团乱麻，涉及到大脑化学、激素、感官暗示、产前环境、早期经历、基因、生物和文化进化以及生态压力等。
And it is indeed a mess, a subject involving brain chemistry, hormones, sensory cues, prenatal environment, early experience, genes, both biological and cultural evolution, and ecological pressures, among other things.（此段就是全书将要介绍的东西）
它确实是一团乱麻，涉及到一个涵盖大脑化学、激素、感官暗示、产前环境、早期经历、基因、生物和文化进化以及生态压力等。（此段就是全书将要介绍的东西）
How are we supposed to make sense（应该理解） of all these factors in thinking about behavior?
在思考行为时，我们应该如何理解所有这些因素?
We tend to use a certain cognitive strategy（认知策略） when dealing with complex, multifaceted phenomena（多面现象）, in that we break down those separate facets into categories, into buckets of explanation.
当处理复杂问题，多面的现象时，我们倾向于使用某种认知策略。我们把这些方面分开放入不同类别的“桶”里单独解释。
Suppose there’s a rooster standing next to you, and there’s a chicken across the street.
假设你旁边站着一只公鸡，街对面有一只母鸡。
The rooster gives a sexually solicitive（请求、诱惑） gesture that is hot by chicken standards, and she promptly runs over to mate with him (I haven’t a clue if this is how it works, but let’s just suppose).
这只公鸡给出了一个性感诱惑的姿态，以鸡的标准来说，她马上跑过去和它交配(我不知道它是怎么运行的，但让我们假设)。
And thus we have a key behavioral biological question—why did the chicken cross the road?
以及，我们有了一个关键的行为生物学问题——为什么鸡要过马路?
And if you’re a psychoneuroendocrinologist（组合词：精神免疫内分泌逻辑学家 psychoneuro+endocrino+logist）, your answer would be “Because circulating estrogen levels in that chicken worked in a certain part of her brain to make her responsive to this male signaling,” and if you’re a bioengineer, the answer would be “Because the long bone in the leg of the chicken forms a fulcrum for her pelvis (or some such thing), allowing her to move forward rapidly,”
如果你是一名精神内分泌学家，你的答案会是“因为鸡体内循环的雌激素水平在它大脑的某个部分起作用，让它对雄性信号做出反应”，如果你是一名生物工程师，你的答案会是“因为鸡腿上的长骨形成了一个支点，让它的骨盆(或类似的东西)形成了一个支点，让它快速前进，”
and if you’re an evolutionary biologist, you’d say, “Because over the course of millions of years, chickens that responded to such gestures at a time that they were fertile left more copies of their genes, and thus this is now an innate behavior in chickens,” and so on, thinking in categories, in differing scientific disciplines of explanation.
The goal of this book is to avoid such categorical thinking.
如果你是一名进化生物学家，你会说，“因为在数百万年的过程里，鸡在一个多产的时期对这样的手势做出反应，留下了更多的基因拷贝，因此这现在是鸡的一种先天行为，”等等，以不同的科学解释来进行分类思考。
这本书的目的是避免这种绝对思维。
Putting facts into nice cleanly demarcated buckets of explanation has its advantages—for example, it can help you remember facts better.
将事实放入美好地，清晰地分类桶来解释有它的好处——例如，它可以帮助你更好地记住事实。
But it can wreak havoc on your ability to think about those facts.
但它会严重破坏你思考这些事实的能力。
This is because the boundaries between different categories are often arbitrary, but once some arbitrary boundary exists, we forget that it is arbitrary and get way too impressed with its importance.
这是因为不同类别之间的界限通常是任意的，但一旦存在一些任意的界限，我们就会忘记它是任意的，并对其重要性印象深刻。
For example, the visual spectrum is a continuum of wavelengths from violet to red, and it is arbitrary where boundaries are put for different color names (for example, where we see a transition from “blue” to “green”)，as proof of this, different languages arbitrarily split up the visual spectrum at different points in coming up with the words for different colors.
例如，可视光谱是从紫色到红色的波长连续体，不同颜色名称的边界是任意的(例如，我们看到从“蓝色”到“绿色”的过渡);为了证明这一点，不同的语言在产生不同颜色的单词时，在不同的点上任意地分割了视觉光谱。
Show someone two roughly similar colors.
给某人看两种大致相似的颜色。
If the colorname boundary in that person’s language happens to fall between the two colors, the person will overestimate the difference between the two.
如果那个人语言中的颜色名称边界恰好落在这两种颜色之间，这个人就会高估这两种颜色之间的差异。
If the colors fall in the same category, the opposite happens.
如果颜色属于同一类别，则会发生相反的情况。
In other words, when you think categorically, you have trouble seeing how similar or different two things are.
换句话说，当你想事情很绝对时，你很难看到两件事有多么相似或不同。（在看网络新闻时更是如此）
If you pay lots of attention to where boundaries are, you pay less attention to complete pictures.
如果你非常注意边界在哪里，你就会较少注意完整的画面。
Thus, the official intellectual（公知？） goal of this book is to avoid using categorical buckets when thinking about the biology of some of our most complicated behaviors, even more complicated than chickens crossing roads.
因此，这本书的官方知识目标是，在思考一些最复杂的行为(甚至比鸡过马路更复杂)的生物学时，避免使用分类桶。
What’s the replacement? 用什么替代?
A behavior has just occurred. 一个行为刚刚发生。
Why did it happen? 为什么会发生?
Your first category of explanation is going to be a neurobiological one. 你的第一类解释是神经生物学的。
What went on in that person’s brain a second before the behavior happened?
在行为发生前一秒钟，那个人的大脑里发生了什么?
Now pull out to a slightly larger field of vision, your next category of explanation, a little earlier in time.
现在把视野转大一点，你的下一个解释，时间稍早一点。
What sight, sound, or smell in the previous seconds to minutes triggered the nervous system to produce that behavior?
什么视觉，声音，或气味在前几秒到几分钟就能触发神经系统产生这种行为?
读后感：
在这一段里，作者首先否定了一种思维方式，就是 Putting facts into nice cleanly demarcated buckets of explanation,用中文典故来理解就是对一个现实问题，不同学科专家的解读也各不相同，就像“盲人摸象”。事实上这些不同的分类是人类通过语言强行区隔的。假如一个语言中将两个接近的颜色用一个词描述，使用这种语言的人就会觉得没有什么区别，而假如一种语言里用两个词来描述接近的色彩，使用该语言的人会高估其分类在光谱上的差异。
在其他领域，我们所面对的往往是更粗暴的分类，我们很容易就会进行武断的思考，作者多次使用了category ,以及categorical。category是范畴的意思，而 categorical 意思是绝对的，以及when you think categorically, you have trouble seeing how similar or different two things are.当你想事情很绝对时，你很难看到两件事有多么相似或不同。
分类是一种人类主观使用的工具，将人们分成种族，国家，省份，便于记忆。但是这终究是人类主观划分的，事实上人与人之间的区别是一种连续的微小变化，从来不存在哪里人就是坏，哪里人酒量就是大这回事。
