我感到确信的惟一坚实的科学真理是，我们对自然界知之甚少。的确，我将此看作是过去100年里生物学的主要发现。如果我们中有人告诉18世纪启蒙运动的先哲们，我们知道的如此之少，前面的路是多么的迷茫，那一定令他们甚感诧异。20世纪科学对人类智慧最重要的贡献就是使我们突然面对我们的无知，且如此之深广。早此时候，我们要么假装明白事物的运作方式，要么忽略这一问题，要么干脆就杜撰一些所谓的事实来添补空白。既然我们已开始认真的探索，我们隐约看到了问题如此之大，答案又是多么得遥不可及。如果你完全无知，那么无知本身倒不是件很坏的事情。难的是详细地了解无知这一事实，发现那些无知的地方和不那么无知的地方。

　　参考译文：

　　The only solid pieces of scientific truth about which Ⅰ feel totally confident is that we are profoundly ignorant about nature. Indeed, I regard this as the major discovery of the past hundred years of biology. It would have amazed the brightest minds of the 18th century Enlightenment to be told by any of us how little we know and how bewildering seems the way ahead. It is this sudden confrontation with the depth and scope of ignorance that represents the most significant contribution of the 20th century science to the human intellect. In earlier times, we either pretended to understand how things worked or ignored the problem, or simply made up stories to fill the gaps. Now that we have begun exploring in earnest, we are getting glimpses of how huge the questions are, and how far from being answered. It is not so bad being ignorant if you are totally ignorant; the hard thing is knowing in some detail the reality of ignorance, the worst spots and here and there the not-so-had spots.