I’m preparing to teach a class in Roman History, which meets for the first time tomorrow, Tuesday. We’ll start ab urbe condita—from the time of Rome’s legendary founding in 753 BC—-and end sometime in Late Antiquity, with the unraveling of Romanum Imperium. One of the first things I plan to ask the class is what they know, or think they know, about the Romans and I’m semi-sure someone will mention the hypothesis about lead poisoning causing the decline of Rome—–just as, when anyone in the future teaches about the history of autism, there will be mention of the autism/MMR hypothesis (here’s some history on that by Kevin Leitch).
To quote philosopher Santayana’s oft-paraphrased statement: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” It’s not that we need to make autism a “word for history books“—-we need first of all to write the real history of autism, both in the recent past as Leitch does, and even further back.
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译文:
历史课[自闭症者的声音]
我准备上一堂罗马史，这节课明天也就是星期二才同学生见面，我将从传说中罗马成立的公元前753年一直讲到晚古时代罗马政权土崩瓦解。首先，我会问学生他们知道或者想知道关于罗马书的什么，我还是确定不了的是是否会有人提到铅中毒导致了罗马的衰败的假说。；就象将来有人在教“孤独性”的历史时可能会提到MMR疫苗导致孤独性的假说那样。
我引用了哲学家Santayana那句被反复解释的话：“忘记过去就意味着背叛。”我们不要把“孤独性”作为一个历史书上的名词，我们要书写真实的“孤独性”的历史，象凯文刚刚做的那样，现在是，将来也是。