LECTURING once at Harvard, where he taught government for 26 years, James Q. Wilson slipped in a slide of himself in scuba-diving gear beside a 20-foot shark. His students, accustomed to his shyness, were somewhat surprised. They should not have been. Mr Wilson had co-written with his wife Roberta a book on coral reefs, and dived down to explore them whenever he had the chance. There, swimming among the calcified branches, he asked himself questions. Why were some fish camouflaged, and not others? Why did some socialise in the mornings, but not the afternoons? Why did they like to feed on non-nutritious bits of the reef? In short, why did they do what they did?
詹姆斯Q.威尔逊在哈佛执教政府学二十六载，一次在课上，他随手放了一张自己穿着潜水服的幻灯片，图中的他身旁是一条长达二十英尺的鲨鱼。见惯了平日里羞涩内敛的教授，学生们多少有些惊讶。这其实并不足为奇。威尔逊与妻子罗贝塔曾合著过一本研究珊瑚礁的书籍，其间，他只要得闲，便潜下水去观察。遨游在这些钙化丛林间，他问自己，为何有些鱼懂得伪装自己，有些则不会？为何有些鱼在早上开始社交行为，而不是下午？为何有些鱼喜欢以珊瑚上无营养的部分为食？简言之，它们的习性缘何如此？
Sitting eagerly in Fenway Park to watch the Red Sox game, or strolling through the streets of New York City, he asked much the same questions about the swarming mass of human beings. What motivated them, and were their motives changing? What made them afraid? What made them happy? Why were their marriages and families failing? Could they be governed better and, if so, how? Fans of his frequent articles in Commentary and the Public Interest sometimes joked that his “Q” was for query, as well as quirky.
无论是在芬威球场热切观看红袜队比赛，还是在纽约街头闲逛，看着熙来攘往的人们，威尔逊也提出相似疑问：人群背后的动机是什么，这些动机有无变化？他们的喜怒哀乐从何而来？婚姻失败、家庭破裂的原因又是什么？可否有更好的治理办法？如果有，该怎样做？他常在《评论》和《公共利益》杂志发表文章，崇拜者们戏称，他名字中的“Q”，代表“质疑（query）”以及“怪异(quirky)”
His doctoral thesis in 1959 inquired into the political behaviour of blacks in Chicago, finding that their subservience to white power brokers was a way of getting benefits for themselves. His masterwork “Bureaucracy” (1989) looked at armies, prisons and schools as well as government agencies, discovering that policymakers rarely knew what the cliff-face workers did. From the mid-1960s he was periodically sucked in to sit on government commissions agonising over the crime rate, because no one else asked questions about it in the fresh-eyed way that he did.
他在1959年撰写的博士论文，主题是关于芝加哥地区黑人行为的调查。在调查中他发现，黑人向白人权利家妥协，其实也是一种利己行为。他的代表著作《官僚机构:政府机构的作为及其原因》（1989年出版）审视了军队、监狱、学校、以及政府机构，他发现，鲜有政策制定者了解冷面工人们的所作所为。自六十年代中期开始，威尔逊时常被政府调查团请去，共同探讨令人头疼的犯罪率问题，原因是从未有人可以像威尔逊那样，对问题的切入点如此新鲜。
The approach he took was empirical and practical. Grand, simple theories never fitted neatly, though in his giddy youth he had hoped to find them. Instead he looked at human behaviour on the ground, talked to people, and built up details. None was too small. One policeman on a street corner would nod and wink at scuffling boys, while another arrested them; he concluded that there were three distinct styles of police behaviour, linked sometimes merely to mood, but often to the nature and prosperity of the neighbourhood. A patrolman on the beat did not necessarilyreduce the crime rate; but the elderly woman at the bus stop, who felt safer,thought he did. Most famously, if one window was broken in a building and left unrepaired (his italics), soon all the other windows would be broken too, and criminal elements would take over. If places were visibly cared for, crime was deterred.
威尔逊处理问题时往往是经验主义与实用主义并行。虽然年轻时，他曾希望提出简单又宏大的理论，但二者与现实并不切合。后来，他转而开始脚踏实地反观人类行为，与人交谈，并着眼细节，慢慢发现没有理论小到不足以研究。举个例子，看到斗殴的青年，街角的警察有的点点头、眨眨眼便不予追究，而有些则要将其逮捕起来。威尔逊由此归纳，警察行为有三大类型，有时视心情而定，但多数是受街区性质以及繁荣程度影响。四处走动的巡视员未必能够抑制犯罪，但公交车站旁的老妇人却认为其存在有效，并由此感到更安全。威尔逊还有更广为人知的一大理论: 假设大楼坏掉一块玻璃，在无人问津的情况下，不久后其他窗子也会被悉数打破，随后各种犯罪事件也会接踵而至。相反，如果该地带看上去有严密监管的迹象，犯罪活动就会有所收敛。
This “broken windows” theory, written up with George Kelling in the Atlantic in 1982, made Mr Wilson's name, especially when it was taken up, years later, by the police departments of New York and many other cities. He was glad of that, but also modestly irritated. Among his many books, he was proudest of those that investigated the workings of government in all its flawed, shambling efforts to balance fairness, fiscal prudence, big goals and multiple clashing interests. The label “sociologist” annoyed him. “Political scientist”, though, was fine and good.
威尔逊的这一“破窗理论”与乔治·凯林共同提出，于1982年在《大西洋月刊》上发表。他由此一举成名。数年后纽约及其他不少城市警署采用了该理论，更是令其声名大振。对此成果，威尔逊很是欣慰，但同时，他对此也略有不快。在其众多作品中，威尔逊最为得意的是对于政府绩效的调查，该调查揭露政府在确保公正、实现财政节流、达到宏伟目标以及应对多方利益冲突方面的工作漏洞百出，办事不力。他不喜欢人们称他“社会学家”，“政治科学家”这个叫法还算不错，可以接受。
A flickering candle
风中烛火
The word “neocon” was also tacked on him,as an eager follower of Irving Kristol and adviser to the American Enterprise Institute. He shook it off, pointing out his broad liberal streak (his friendship with Pat Moynihan, a Democrat who also investigated the pathology of black families, and his youthful campaigning for Hubert Humphrey). “Policysceptic”, he thought, defined him better. Though he came to favour stiff prison sentences for criminals and public orphanages for welfare mothers, he never set out on his quests with pre-set answers. Thus he favoured capitalism, but teased out the immorality in it; he knew America's government needed to be smaller,but marvelled that the monster worked as well as it did, keeping liberty and order, however tenuously, in balance.
威尔逊也被冠名为“新保守主义者”。他极为推崇埃文·克里斯托的学说，并在美国企业研究所担任顾问。不过，他极力摆脱了这一称号，举证表态自己是自由派（他与帕特·莫伊尼汉是朋友，后者是民主党成员，曾对黑人家庭的痼疾展开过调查，威尔逊在青年时期是休伯特·汉弗莱的支持者）。威尔逊认为用“政策怀疑论者”形容自己更贴切。虽然他后来开始逐渐倾向支持对罪犯严格量刑，为福利母亲开设相应孤儿院，但威尔逊从不为研究预设解答。也正是如此，他虽然支持资本主义，但同时又对其不道德性嗤之以鼻。他知道美国需要一个更加精简的政府机构，但看到现有庞大的国家机器尽管力量微弱，却一如往日维持自由与秩序平衡，又大为惊叹。
Much of his most elegant writing dealt with morality and virtue. He wanted to restore these ideas to public discourse,rather than the limp word “values”; for most human beings, he believed, had amoral sense and tried to live by it. This was “not a strong beacon light”,rather “a small candle flame, casting vague and multiple shadows”. Parents inculcated it with admonitions and rewards, and perhaps even policymakers, by reforming welfare or the tax code, could help it along a little. Like Aristotle, whose shade he revered, he believed in habituation to virtuous acts.Both upbringing and instinct made him an optimist, as be fitted a thinker formed in safe, sunny, small-town California.
威尔逊最为简要明确的作品多是有关道德与品行。他想要唤起公众对于这些话题的讨论，而不是仅靠区区“价值观”三字。他认为，多数人都有其道德观，并竭力奉行。道德观并不是“灯塔强光”，而更像是“点点烛火，投射出几重模糊的灯影”。塑造道德观，要靠家长晓之以礼，奖惩并行，或许还要依靠制定政策，改革福利与税收。威尔逊推崇亚里士多德，和他一样相信通过潜移默化来培养美德。家境和天性使他成为乐观主义者，正如一个在加州阳光明媚的安稳小镇成长起来的思想家应该的那样。
Problems remained, however. None was more thorny, for him, than quantifying the evidence. Many of the social problems he pondered seemed to boil down to culture and ways of thinking, for which the data were ungathered and ungatherable. As a scientist, political or social, he needed to count and collate things to find the answers to his questions. But nothing that was really important about human beings, he once said, could be measured in that fashion. Like the parrot fish, flicking their blue tails around him, his objects of inquiry would ultimately get away.
尽管如此，问题犹存。对威尔逊而言，最为棘手的是确立证据。他思索的不少问题归根结底是由于文化和思维方式迥异，因此，相关数据无人收集也无从收集。作为一个科学家，不论是在政治学领域还是社会学领域，威尔逊需要通过计算对照来解答疑惑。但他曾说过，人性中真正重要的部分是无法倚重此法的。他的疑问对象，就如拖着蓝色尾巴在身边环绕的鹦鹉鱼一样，最终会消失不见。
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