The conscious expression of this dream is an obsessive response to the certainty of biological death: the belief that a big enough win in the game of science will beat death itself by conferring a form of immortality on the winner. Nothing but the thinnest membrane of denial separates the notion of scientific immortality through priority of discovery from this deeper, older, and wholly non-scientific dream of escaping one’s own inevitable death.
对这种幻想的有意识阐释是对生物死亡确定性的一种痴迷的回应：即一个信念，认为这种在科学游戏中取胜的重大意义能使胜利者获得某种形式的永生，从而战胜死亡本身。将这种通过科学发现优先获得科学永生的概念和这种更深层次、更古老和完全非科学的幻想区分开来的只有一层薄之又薄的否认的隔膜。