As an infant you learned how to walk by trial and error. The first time you made the effort you fell down and returned to crawling. You ignored your fears about falling and the results you had produced. You stood up again and again and fell again and again. Eventually you stood with a wobble and then another fall. Finally you walked upright. Suppose as infants we had learned to fear failure. Many of us would still be crawling around on all fours.

　　在你的婴幼儿时期，你是通过不断尝试与犯错来学会走路的。当你第一次努力尝试时你摔倒了并重新回到爬行。你没有在意你对摔跤的恐惧也忽视了你造成的结果。你不断地再次起身又再次摔倒。终于你可以像一个摇摇晃晃的人那样站直了，但接下来又是不可避免的摔跤。最后，你终于可以直立地行走。试想一下如果在婴幼儿时期我们就学会了惧怕失败，那么我们当中的很多人也许至今还在用四肢爬行。

　　It is the same with everything in life. Our nature is to act and produce results without fear. Yet because we have been educated to think critically and judgmentally we imagine strong reasons for inaction and then allow it to become our reality even before we make an attempt. Our fear is supported by an illusion that it is possible to fail and that failure means we are worthless.

　　生活中的一切事情也如此。我们的本性是在没有恐惧的前提下去行动。可是，由于我们在受教育中学会了谨慎思考，在还没有尝试去行动之前，我们就认为无所作为才是合理的并让这一想象成为了事实。我们会恐惧因为我们深陷错觉之中，它告诉我们失败是有可能的，失败意味着我们毫无价值。

　　The reality is that there is no such thing as failure. Whenever we attempt to do something and fail we end up doing something else. You cannot fail you can only produce results. Rather than judging some result as a failure ask "What have I learned about what doesn't work?" "Can this explain something that I didn't set out to explain?" "What can I do with these results?" and "What have I discovered that I didn't set out to discover?".

　　失败其实是不存在的。每当我们尝试行动并失败时，我们总会去选择另外一条路。你不会失败，你只能产生结果。与其判断某些结果是否失败，不如问问：“我从行不通的那条路上学到了什么?”，“这件事能解释我之前无法解释的事情吗?”，“我能如何处理目前这些状况?”，还有“我从中发现了什么意料之外的东西?”

　　Take the first airplane. On Dec. 8 1903 Samuel Pierpont Langley a leading government- funded scientist launched with much fanfare his flying machine on the Potomac. It plummeted into the river. Nine days later Orville and Wilbur Wright got the first plane off the ground. Why did these bicycle mechanics succeed when a famous scientist failed? It was because Langley hired experts to execute his theoretical concepts without going a series of trial and errors.

　　拿第一架飞机来举例。在1903年的12月8日，一位由政府资助的首席科学家，塞缪尔·皮尔庞特·兰利的飞行器在众目睽睽之下降落到波托马克河。它垂直落到了河里。九天后，怀特兄弟已开始制作第一架飞机。为什么一位有名的科学家会失败而这些自行车机修工会成功呢?因为兰利在没有反复试验不断摸索的情况下雇佣了专家来执行他的理论概念。

　　Studying the Wrights' diaries you see that insight and execution are inextricably woven together. Over years as they solved problems like wing shape and wing warping they made several mistakes which inspired several adjustments all of which involved a small spark of insight that led to other insights. Their numerous mistakes led to unexpected alternative ways which in turn led to the numerous discoveries that made flight possible.

　　研究怀特兄弟的日记，从中可以看到理论与实践是紧密相连的。多年来，当他们解决犹如翼型和翘曲机翼的问题时，他们犯的错误让他们做了某些调整，而从中获得的见识也越来越广泛。他们的许多错误都导致了不可预期的结果，但反过来，却也让他们发现了许多，由此飞机才能产生。

　　Learn to Fail

　　向失败学习

　　It is a paradox of life that you have to learn to fail in order to succeed. Henry Ford's first two automobile companies failed. What he learned from his failures led him to be the first to apply assembly line manufacturing to the production of affordable automobiles in the world. He became one of the three most famous and richest men in the world during his time.

　　生活就是自相矛盾的，你必须从失败中学习才能成功。亨利福特创办的前两个汽车公司就以失败告终。他从失败中学会的一切使他成为了世界上第一个在汽车生产上运用装配流水线的人。在任期间他也成为了世界上的三大首富之一。

　　When Thomas Edison was seeking to invent the electric light bulb he had thousands of failures. He would record the results make adjustments and try again. It took him approximately 10 000 experiments to invent the perfect set-up for the electric light bulb. Once an assistant asked him why he persisted after so many failures. Edison responded by saying he had not failed once. He had learned 10 000 things that didn't work. There was no such thing as a failure in Edison's mind.

　　当托马斯爱迪生发明电灯泡时，他有过成千上万的失败经验。他将结果记录下来，做适当的调整再不断尝试。他在有过将近一万次的试验之后才制作出了完美的电灯泡。有一次一位助手问他为什么在这么多次失败后还不放弃。爱迪生告诉他他从未失败过，他只是知道了一万种行不通的方法。在爱迪生的心里不存在失败这种东西。

　　When you try something and produce a result that is not what you intended but that you find interesting drop everything else and study it. B. F. Skinner emphasized this as a first principle of scientific methodology. This is what William Shockley and a multi-discipline Bell labs team did. They were formed to invent the MOS transistor and ended up instead with the junction transistor and the new science of semiconductor physics. These developments eventually led to the MOS transistor and then to the integrated circuit and to new breakthroughs in electronics and computers. William Shockley described it as a process of "creative failure methodology."

　　当你尝试做某些事时，发现结果不如你预期的，但是你却从中发现了乐趣，这时候你该放下手里的一切好好研究一番。B.F.斯金纳强调了这是科学方法论的第一原理。这也是威廉肖克利和多学科的贝尔实验室做到的。他们本要发明MOS晶体管，结果却出现了结式晶体管和全新的半导体物理学。这些发展最终导致了MOS晶体管的形成和集成电路的出现，还有在电子学和计算机领域的崭新的突破。威廉肖克利形容这是一个“具有创造性失效的”过程。

　　Answering the questions about discoveries from failures in a novel unexpected way is the essential creative act. It is not luck but creative insight of the highest order. A DuPont chemist Roy Plunkett set out to invent a new refrigerant. Instead he created a glob of white waxy material that conducted heat and did not stick to surfaces. Fascinated by this "unexpected" material he abandoned his original line of research and experimented with this interesting material which eventually became known by its household name "Teflon."

　　在小说中回答有关从失败中发现的问题，出乎意料的方式才是最基本的最具有创造力的行为。这不是靠运气，而是创造性思维的最高形式。一位来自杜邦公司的化学家罗伊普伦基特打算发明一种新的冷却剂。但结果他制作了一团白色光滑的材料，可以用来传热且不会粘结到物体表面。因为这种“意外的”材质，他放弃了原有的研究领域并拿这个有趣的材料做实验，最终制造出了家喻户晓的“特氟隆”。

　　The discovery of the electromagnetic laws was also a "failed" experiment. The relationship between electricity and magnetism was first observed in 1820 by Oersted in a public lecture at which he was demonstrating the "well known fact" that electricity and magnetism were completely independent phenomena. This time the experiment failed! - an electric current produced a magnetic effect. Oersted was observant enough to notice this effect honest enough to admit it and diligent enough to follow up and publish. Maxwell used these experiments to extend Isaac Newton's methods of modeling and mathematical analysis in the mechanical and visible world to the invisible world of electricity and magnetism and derived Maxwell's Laws which opened the doors to our modern age of electricity and electronics.

　　对电磁规律的发现也能被称为一次“失败的”实验。1820年，电学与磁学的关系第一次被奥斯特在一个公开演讲中注意到。在那次演讲中他要证明一个“众所周知的事实”，那就是电与磁是完全独立的现象。但这次的试验失败了——电流具有磁效应。奥斯特敏锐地观察到这个结果，诚实地承认它的出现，勤奋地做完后续研究并公开发表。麦克斯维尔利用这些实验结果扩展了牛顿的建模方法和在机械世界与可视世界中的数学分析的方法，去到一个由电与磁组成的看不见的世界。他为我们现代的电学与电子学开启了一扇门。

　　If you just look at a zero you see nothing; but if you pick it up and look through it you will see the world. It is the same with failure. If you look at something as failure you learn nothing; but look at it as your teacher and you will learn the value of knowing what doesn't work learning something new and the joy of discovering the unexpected.

　　如果你只是看着0这个数字，你什么也看不到;但如果你把它捡起来彻底地浏览一遍，你可以看到整个世界。失败也遵循这个规律。如果你把事情归结为失败，你什么也学不到;但如果你把它作为你的老师来看待，你将能学到事情失效的价值，学到新的知识，以及发现意外的快乐。