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英译汉部分
Beauty (excerpt) 美(节选)
Judging from the scientists I know, including Eva and Ruth, and those whom I’ve read about, you can’t pursue the laws of nature very long without bumping into beauty. “I don’t know if it’s the same beauty you see in the sunset,” a friend tells me, “but it feels the same.” This friend is a physicist, who has spent a long career deciphering what must be happening in the interior of stars. He recalls for me this thrill on grasping for the first time Dirac’s⑴ equations describing quantum mechanics, or those of Einstein describing relativity. “They’re so beautiful,” he says, “you can see immediately they have to be true. Or at least on the way toward truth.” I ask him what makes a theory beautiful, and he replies, “Simplicity, symmetry, elegance, and power.”
我结识一些科学家（包括伊娃和露丝），也拜读过不少科学家的著作，从中我作出推断：人们在探求自然规律的旅途中，须臾便会与美不期而遇。一个朋友对我说：“我不敢肯定这种美是否与日落之美异曲同工，但至少，两者带给我的感受别无二致。” 我的这个朋友是一位物理学家，他大半辈子都在致力于破解群星内部的秘密。他向我讲述了当年邂逅科学之美时的狂喜：那是当他生平第一次顿悟狄拉克的量子力学方程式，或是洞彻爱因斯坦相对论的方程式时的感受。“那些方程式是如此动人，”他说道，“只消看一眼你就会明白，它们一定是正确的，或者说---至少，它们的指向是正确的。” 我好奇一个“动人的”理论是个什么样，他的回答是：“简约、和谐、典雅，有力。”
Why nature should conform to theories we find beautiful is far from obvious. The most incomprehensible thing about the universe, as Einstein said, is that it’s comprehensible. How unlikely, that a short-lived biped on a two-bit planet should be able to gauge the speed of light, lay bare the structure of an atom, or calculate the gravitational tug of a black hole. We’re a long way from understanding everything, but we do understand a great deal about how nature behaves. Generation after generation, we puzzle out formulas, test them, and find, to an astonishing degree, that nature agrees. An architect draws designs on flimsy paper, and her buildings stand up through earthquakes.
那些打动我们的理论，往往受到自然之母的肯定，其中奥妙不可言宣。诚如爱因斯坦所言：这个世界最让人费解之处就在于：它是能够被了解的。想想这一切是多么地不可思议：在一个不起眼的星球上，生存着一种拥有短暂生命的两足生物，然而，正是这些微不足道的小生物，不但测量出了光速，而且把原子层层剥开，还计算出了黑洞的引力。人类虽然尚未全知全能，但是，关于大自然的脾性，我们所知道的确实不能算少。人类经过世世代代的努力，猜想出各种定理公式，并在实践中检验它们，然后惊讶地发现：大自然竟然与我们不谋而合。这就像一位建筑师在薄薄的图纸上绘制出设计方案，依此
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建造的高楼大厦，竟能够经受住地震的洗礼考验，依然耸立。
⑴ Dirac: 迪拉克，保罗·阿德利安·莫里斯1902-1984英国数学和物理学家。1933年因新原子理论公式与人分享诺贝尔奖。
We launch a satellite into orbit and use it to bounce messages from continent to continent. The machine on which I write these words embodies hundreds of insights into the workings of the material world, insights that are confirmed by every burst of letters on the screen, and I stare at that screen through lenses that obey the laws of optics first worked out in detail by Isaac Newton⑵.
我们发射一枚人造卫星，它便帮助我们将讯息传遍世界各地。而我，正在一台机器上记录下这些文字，这台机器包涵着人类思想的精髓---对物质世界运作方式的真知灼见---每一次敲打键盘，这些真知便化为字母跳入屏幕；当我注视着屏幕，架在鼻梁上的眼镜则是根据光学原理配制而成的，而对这一理论进行详细论证的开山始祖则是艾萨克·牛顿。
By discerning patterns in the universe, Newton believed, he was tracing the hand of God. Scientists in our day have largely abandoned the notion of a Creator as an unnecessary hypothesis, or at least an untestable one. While they share Newton’s faith that the universe is ruled everywhere by a coherent set of rules, they cannot say, as scientists, how these particular rules came to govern things. You can do science without believing in a divine Legislator, but not without believing in laws.
通过对万物造化的深入观察，牛顿相信自己正追随着上帝的笔触。如今的科学家大都摒弃了“造物主”一说，认为那是无稽的假设，即使不全盘否定，至少也认定那是不可能得到验证的假说。诚然，他们坚信牛顿的看法---世界受一套整合的法则所支配，但问题在于，发轫之始，这些法则是如何开始掌管世界的？对此，身为科学家的他们也无从知晓。在科学的疆界，我们可以拒绝相信上帝的存在，但我们不能否认万物之法的存在。 I spent my teenage years scrambling up the mountain of mathematics. Midway up the slope, however, I staggered to a halt, gasping in the rarefied air, well before I reached the heights where the equations of Einstein and Dirac would have made sense. Nowadays I add, subtract, multiply, and do long division when no calculator is handy, and I can do algebra and geometry and even trigonometry in a pinch, but that is about all that I’ve kept from the language of numbers. Still, I remember glimpsing patterns in mathematics that seemed as bold and beautiful as a skyful of stars.
少年时，我曾试图攀登数学之颠。可惜才到半山腰，便开始步履踉跄；空气稀薄，使我气喘吁吁，不得不停下脚步，而爱因斯坦和狄拉克的方程式却仍旧远在高处。现在的我，若是手边没有计算器，便通过心算处理加减乘除；有必要时，我还能应付代数、几何，甚至三角运算；但是话说回来，数字世界留给我的也就只有这些零星点滴了。不过，我
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至今仍然记得曾在数学王国里浅尝到的无穷变幻---大胆、迷人，犹如群星漫天。 ⑵ Isaac Newton: 牛顿 (1642-1727) 英国物理学家、数学家。
I’m never more aware of the limitations of language than when I try to describe beauty. Language can create its own loveliness, of course, but it cannot deliver to us the radiance we apprehend in the world, any more than a photograph can capture the stunning swiftness of a hawk or the withering power of a supernova⑶. Eva’s wedding album holds only a faint glimmer of the wedding itself. All that pictures or words can do is gesture beyond themselves toward the fleeting glory that stirs our hearts. So I keep gesturing.
每当我尝试着将美付诸于文字时，我便极为深刻地意识到：文字的力量是多么有限。语言自有其灵动可人之处，可它却无法传达大千世界的绚烂。正如一方相片框不住一只鹰的迅捷，也再现不了一颗超新星毁灭时的壮丽。伊娃的婚礼相册仅仅留存了一丝微弱的光芒，以见证婚礼现场的光鲜夺目。相片和文字能够做到的最多只是描摹那些瞬息即逝的、那些让我们心潮涌动的光芒。于是，我一直都在努力描摹。
“All nature is meant to make us think of paradise,” Thomas Merton⑷ observed. Because the Creation puts on a nonstop show, beauty is free and inexhaustible, but we need training in order to perceive more than the most obvious kinds. Even 15 billion years or so after the Big Bang⑸, echoes of that event still linger in the form of background radiation⑹, only a few degrees above absolute zero⑺. Just so, I believe, the experience of beauty is an echo of the order and power that permeate the universe. To measure background radiation, we need subtle instruments; to measure beauty, we need alert intelligence and our five keen senses. 托马斯·梅尔顿说过，“世间造物之神奇无不令人联想到天堂乐土”，因为创世纪本身就是一出永不落幕的表演；其间芳华之美悠游自在，无穷无尽。有些美显而易见，容易为我们所捕捉，但另一些则不然：若要欣赏她们，我们得付出一点努力。宇宙大爆炸在一百五十多亿年后的今天仍余波未平，爆炸当时所释放的能量（即使这些能量看起来似乎微不足道）仍以背景辐射现象的形式存在着。由此，我得出一个观点：人类对美的体验中暗含着秩序和力量的影子，而这些秩序和力量充斥着整个宇宙空间。测量背景辐射，我们需要精密仪器；而衡量美，则需要动用我们的聪慧和所有敏锐的感官。
⑶ supernova: 超新星，一种罕见的天文现象，表现为一恒星中的绝大部分物质爆炸后，产生能放射极大能量的极为明亮而存在时间极短的物体。
⑷ Thomas Merton: 默顿，托马斯1915-1968美国天主教教士和作家，其作品主要是关于当代宗教和世俗生活的，包括 《七重山》（1948年）和 《无人为孤岛》（1955年）。 ⑸ the Big Bang: 创世大爆炸按照大爆炸理论，标志宇宙形成的宇宙爆炸。
(6) background radiation: 背景辐射,又名3K宇宙背景辐射，是60年代天文学上的四大发现之一，它是由美国射电天文学家彭齐亚斯和威尔逊发现的。该学说认为，大爆炸之初，宇宙的温度高得惊人。随着宇宙膨胀的进行，其温度不断降低，到现在平均只有绝对温
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度２．７度（相当于零下２７０．４６摄氏度）左右。
(7) absolute zero: 绝对零度在此温度下物质没有热能，相当于摄氏-273.15度或华氏-459.67度。
Anyone with eyes can take delight in a face or a flower. You need training, however, to perceive the beauty in mathematics or physics or chess, in the architecture of a tree, the design of a bird’s wing, or the shiver of breath through a flute. For most of human history, the training has come from elders who taught the young how to pay attention. By paying attention, we learn to savor all sorts of patterns, from quantum mechanics to patchwork quilts. This predilection brings with it a clear evolutionary advantage, for the ability to recognize patterns helped our ancestors to select mates, find food, avoid predators. But the same advantage would apply to all species, and yet we alone compose symphonies and crossword puzzles, carve stone into statues, map time and space.
任何人都能在一颦一笑，一花一草中体验快乐。但是，发现数学之美、物理之绝、象棋之妙的眼睛并不是与生俱来，而欣赏树木形态、鸟翼构造、或是悠扬笛声的心灵也非浑然自成。我们需要点拨和引领。纵观历史传承，这样的点拨和引领往往来自长者，籍此，年轻人学会专注；因为专注，我们领略到万千形态的美，无论是量子力学中精妙的理论，还是棉被上漂亮的拼花图案。正是出于对美的强烈偏爱，才使得人类在物种进化的追逐比拼中处于上风。因为人类能够辨识出美的事物，而我们的祖先则因循这一标准选择伴侣，寻找食物，躲避敌人。如果自然界中所有的物种都拥有发现美的能力，那么它们都将在进化过程中称霸一方。然而，惟独人类在演变中独占鳌头：我们谱写交响曲，创造字谜游戏；在我们的手中，顽石诞生为雕像，时空归依为坐标。
Have we merely carried our animal need for shrewd perceptions to an absurd extreme? Or have we stumbled onto a deep congruence between the structure of our minds and the structure of the universe?
这一切究竟来源于何？仅仅是我们将本能的敏锐感知力推向了荒谬的极致，还是我们不经意间摸索到了扎根于人类思想和苍茫万物间那深刻的一致性？
I am persuaded the latter is true. I am convinced there’s more to beauty than biology, more than cultural convention. It flows around and through us in such abundance, and in such myriad forms, as to exceed by a wide margin any mere evolutionary need. Which is not to say that beauty has nothing to do with survival: I think it has everything to do with survival. Beauty feeds us from the same source that created us.
我相信后者是正确的。我坚信美不仅仅存在于生物学和文化习俗中。美我们身边流淌，充盈、润泽着我们的心田；而其量之充沛，形态之多变已经远远超越了进化本身的需要。我这样说并不意味着美和生存毫无干系；恰恰相反，我相信美和生存之间有着千丝万缕的联系。如果说是自然造就了我们，那么，是美通过自然滋养了我们。
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