为何人人都要学习进化论.docVIP

为何人人都要学习进化论 翻译：后溪金 | 2009-01-01 14:12:51 | 阅读1261 | 来源 Evolution should be taught as a practical tool for understanding drug resistance and the price of fish 进化应当作为一个理解耐药性和鱼价的实用工具讲授 Charles Darwin did not think of himself as a genius. “I have no great quickness of apprehension or wit which is so remarkable in some clever men ...” he remarked in one passage of his autobiography. Fortunately for the rest of us, he was profoundly wrong in his assessment. So on February 12 the world will mark the bicentennial birthday of a scientist who holds a rightful place alongside Galileo, Copernicus, Newton and Einstein. 查尔斯·达尔文不认为自己是一个天才。“我不擅长迅速理解事物，即没有一些聪明人引人注目的才智...”他在自传里的一段谈到。幸运的是，对于我们其余的人来说，他的评价大错特错。因此，2月12日，全世界将纪念一位科学家诞辰200周年，这位科学家理应享有与伽利略、哥白尼、牛顿和爱因斯坦并列的地位。 Darwin’s genius—and, yes, genius is the right word—is manifest in the way his theory of evolution can tie together disparate biological facts into a single unifying framework. Evolutionary geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky’s oft-cited quotation bears repeating here: “Nothing in biology makes sense, except in the light of evolution.” 达尔文的天才——是的，天才一词是准确的，而且在他的进化论中是显然的——能够把根本不同的生物事实联系在一起，形成一个单一的统一框架。进化遗传学家西奥多西厄斯·多布赞斯基的口头禅值得在这里重复一遍：“除非按照进化论来理解，否则生物学毫无意义。” Yet it is also worth noting during this anniversary year that Darwin deserves a lot better than he gets. When the popular press needs an iconic image of a brilliant scientist, it invariably recycles the famous photograph of Albert Einstein having a bad hair day. Einstein accompanies John Lennon and Andy Warhol on Forbes’s list of top-earning deceased celebrities. Darwin’s failure to achieve icon status is the legacy of creationists and neocreationists and of the distortion of his ideas by the eugenics movement a century ago. 然而，同样值得注意的是，在这一年的周年纪念期间，达尔文应得到比他得到的更多更好才是。当大众传媒需要一明亮耀眼的科学家偶像时，就毫无例外地重复使用阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦那张头发凌乱的著名照片。（爱因斯坦陪伴约翰·列侬和安迪·沃霍尔出现在《福布斯》娱乐界已故最赚钱的名流之中。）达尔文未能获得偶像地位是神创论者与新神创论者以及一个世纪前歪曲他的思想的优生学运动的遗产。 But Darwin is so much more than just a quaint, Victorian historical fig