Unit9THEEDUCATIONOFAPHYSICIST课文翻译大学英语四.docVIP

Unit 9 THE EDUCATION OF A PHYSICIST MICHIO KAKU Idly watching fish swimming in a pond and allowing the mind to wander can lead to some surprising results. Two incidents from my childhood greatly enriched my understanding of the world and sent me on a course to become a theoretical physicist. I remember that my parents would sometimes take me to visit the famous Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco. One of my happiest childhood memories is of crouching next to the pond, fascinated by the brilliantly colored carp swimming slowly beneath the water lilies. In these quiet moments, I felt free to let my imagination wander; I would ask myself silly questions that only a child might ask, such as how the carp in that pond would view the world around them. I thought, What a strange world theirs must be! Living their entire lives in the shallow pond, the carp would believe that their “universe” consisted of the dark water and the lilies. Spending most of their time moving around for food on the bottom of the pond, they would be only dimly aware that an alien world could exist above the surface. The nature of my world was beyond their comprehension. I was intrigued that I could sit only a few inches from the carp, yet be separated from them by a very huge gap. The carp and I spent our lives in two distinct universes, never entering each other’s world, yet were separated by only the thinnest barrier, the water’s surface. I once imagined that there may be carp “scientists” living among the fish. They would, I thought, laugh at any fish who proposed that a parallel world could exist just above the lilies. To a carp “scientist,” the only things that were real were what the fish could see or touch. The pond was everything. An unseen world beyond the pond made no scientific sense. Once I was caught in a rainstorm. I noticed that the pond’s surface was bombarded by thousands of tiny raindrops. The pond’s surface became turbulent, and the water lilies were being pushed i