研究生口笔译英语之科学之美.docVIP

The Beauty of Science 科学之美 1)Judging from the scientists I know,including Eva and Ruth,and those 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 along career deciphering what must be happening in the interior of stars.Herecalls for me this thrill on grasping for the first time Dirac’s 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.” 从我认识的科学工作者（包括伊娃和鲁斯）及我从书中读到的科学家来看，只要去探寻自然法则，用不了多久，就能与美不期而遇。一位朋友说，“我不敢肯定这就是夕阳西下那种美，但感觉上两者是相同的。”这位朋友是物理学家，长期致力于破译天体内部的变化。他回想起第一次领悟狄拉克的量子力学方程式和爱因斯坦相对论等式时的兴奋感，“它们太美了，你一眼就可看出它们必定是正确，或至少接近正确。”当我问及什么能使理论变得美丽时，他回答说：“简单、对称、优雅、力量。” 2)Why nature should conform to theories we find beautiful is far from obvious.The most incomprehensible thing about the universe,as Einsteinsaid,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 along way from under-standing everything,but we do understand a great deal about how nature behaves. 自然界为何会与令我们觉得美的理论相一致？这问题远未明了。正如爱因斯坦所言，宇宙最不可理解之处就在于它是可以理解的。人类，这种生活在一个微不足道的星球上的两足动物，历史并不久远，竟能测算光速，揭示原子结构，并估算黑洞的万有引力，这是多么不可思议啊。我们远未能通晓万物，但我们确已对自然界的运作规律所知甚多。 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.We launch a satellite into orbit and use it to bounce messages from continent tocontinent.The machine on which I write these words embodies hundreds of insights into the workings of the mat