[20130831]A Short History of Nearly Everything[serial]

壤驷凯
2023-12-01

传送门:

http://ting.hujiang.com/wanwujianshi/15153691078/


Hints:
Great Lakes

I now know that there is a happy abundance of science writers who pen the most lucid and thrilling prose. Timothy Ferris, Richard Fortey, and Tim Flannery are three that jump out from a single station of the alphabet (and that's not even to mention the late but godlike Richard Feynman)-but sadly none of them wrote any textbook I ever used. All mine were written by men (it was always men) who held the interesting notion that everything became clear when expressed as a formula and the amusingly deluded belief that the children of America would appreciate having chapters end with a section of questions they could mull over in their own time. So I grew up convinced that science was supremely dull, but suspecting that it needn't be, and not really thinking about it at all if I could help it. This, too, became my position for a long time. 

现在,我知道有好多好多科普作家,他们写出了通俗易懂而又激动人心的散文--我一下子就可以点出蒂姆西•费里斯、理查德•福泰和提姆•弗兰纳里等三位(且不说已故的出类拔萃的理查德•费曼)--但是,令人伤心的是,他们没有一人写过我用过的教科书。我用过的教科书全都出自那些怀有一种挺有意思的想法的男人(始终都是男人)的笔下,美国的孩子们会喜欢各个章节的结尾都带有问题部分,供他们在自己的时代冥思苦想。因此,我在成长过程中确信,科学是极其枯燥的,但同时我又认为大可不必如此:科学也可以是非常有趣的,要是我办得到的话。在很长的时间里,这成了我的立场。

Then much later-about four or five years ago-I was on a long flight across the Pacific, staring idly out the window at moonlit ocean, when it occurred to me with a certain uncomfortable forcefulness that I didn't know the first thing about the only planet I was ever going to live on. I had no idea, for example, why the oceans were salty but the Great Lakes weren't. Didn't have the faintest idea. I didn't know if the oceans were growing more salty with time or less, and whether ocean salinity levels was something I should be concerned about or not. ( I am very pleased to tell you that until the late 1970s scientists didn't know the answers to these questions either. They just didn't talk about it very audibly.)

接着,很久以后--我想大约是在四五年之前--我正做一次飞越太平洋的长途旅行,我漫不经心地朝飞机的舷窗外望去,只见一轮皓月挂在天空,下面是洒满银色月光的一望无际的海洋,突然,一种强烈的不安感涌上我的心头,足迹遍及世界各地的我,对于自己长期以来置身其间,而且这辈子也只能生活其间的地球,竟然是那样的缺乏了解。比如,我不知道为什么海水是咸的,而五大湖的湖水却是淡的。我一点儿也不知道。我不知道随着时间的过去,海水会变得越来越咸,还是越来越淡,不知道海水的咸度是不是我该关心的问题。(我很乐意告诉你,直到20世纪70年代,科学家们也不知道这些问题的答案。他们只是悄悄地议论这些事。)


/*英语听写连载.坚持一件事.~*/

 类似资料: