第18句見：Day18
《哲學的故事》的第19句：序言中的第2段第6句。

Some ungentle reader will check us here by informing us that philosophy is as useless as chess, as obscure as ignorance, and as stagnant as content. "There is nothing so absurd," said Cicero, "but that it may be found in the books of the philosophers." Doubtless some philosophers have had all sorts of wisdom except common sense; and many a philosophic flight has been due to the elevating power of thin air. Let us resolve, on this voyage of ours, to put in only at the ports of light, to keep out of the muddy streams of metaphysics and the "many-sounding seas" of theological dispute. But is philosophy stagnant? Science seems always to advance, while philosophy seems always to lose ground.Yet this is only because philosophy accepts the hard and hazardous task of dealing with problems not yet open to the methods of science--problems like good and evil, beauty and ugliness, order and freedom, life and death; so soon as a field of inquiry yields knowledge susceptible of exact formulation it is called science. Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art; it arises in hypothesis and flows into achievement. Philosophy is a hypothetical interpretation of the unknown (as in ethics or political philosophy); it is the front trench in the siege of truth. Science is the captured territory; and behind it are those secure regions in which knowledge and art build our imperfect and marvelous world. Philosophy seems to stand still, perplexed; but only because she leaves the fruits of victory to her daughters the sciences, and herself passes on, divinely discontent, to the uncertain and unexplored.

浙江大學版本： 科學似乎從未停止過前進的步伐，而哲學的領(lǐng)地似乎日益縮減。

解析

這句承接上句But is philosophy stagnant?而來，先來個表面上的現(xiàn)象：科學在前進，而哲學在退步。
1、seems always to：留下破綻，seem似乎來指明只是表面現(xiàn)象。 用重復來強調(diào)這個現(xiàn)象的深入人心。
2、lose ground： to move slower so that you are farther away from someone or something that is in front of you失勢，失寵

She was beginning to lose ground (to the leaders) in the race.
— often used figuratively
The political party lost ground [=became less popular or successful; did not do well] in the election.
The company is losing ground to [=falling behind; not doing as well as] its competitors.

似乎科學一往無前，而哲學一直退縮。