5篇英语精读文章+翻译.doc

1.Can We Know the Universe? - Reflections on a Grain of Salt Carl Sagan Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge. Its goal is to find out how the world works, to seek what regularities there may be, to penetrate to the connections of things - from sub-nuclear particles, which may be the constituents of all matter, to living organisms, the human social community, and thence to the cosmos as a whole. Our intuition is by no means an infallible guide. Our perceptions may be distorted by training and prejudice or merely because of the limitations of our sense organs, which, of course, perceive directly but a small fraction of the phenomena of the world. 与其说科学是一套知识体系倒不如说是一种思维方式。其目标是弄清世界如何运转，探求可能存在的规律，洞察事物之间的联系-从可能是构成万物的基本单位的亚核粒子到生命有机体及人类社会乃至整个宇宙之间的联系。我们的直觉是一点也不可靠的。由于教育和偏见，或者由于我们感觉器官的局限，我们的认知会出现偏差，我们的感觉器官只能直接感知世界上的一小部分现象。Even so straightforward a question as whether in the absence of friction a pound of lead falls faster than a grain of fluff was answered incorrectly by Aristotle and almost everyone else before the time of Galileo. Science is based on experiment, on a willingness to challenge old dogma, on an openness to see the universe as it really is. Accordingly, science sometimes requires courage-at the very least, the courage to question the conventional wisdom. 甚至像“在没有摩擦力的情况下，一磅铅是否要比一点绒毛下落得快”这样简单的问题，在伽利略之前的亚里士多德和几乎所有的人都回答错了。科学基于实验，基于勇于怀疑古训，基于渴求探索宇宙真理。因此，科学有时需要勇气，至少需要有敢于怀疑传统知识的勇气。But to what extent can we really know the universe around us? Sometimes this question is posed by people who hope the answer will be in the negative, who are fearful of a universe in which everything might one day be known. And sometimes we hear pronouncements from scientists who confidently state that everything worth knowing will soon be known - or even is already known. 我们对周围的世界能认识多少呢？有时那些提出这样问题的人希望得到否定的答案，他们害怕一个终将可能被完全认识的世界。有时这样的问题是一些科学家提出的，他们自信地宣称，一切值得我们认识的事物很快就会被认识，甚至已经被认识了。Let us approach a much more modest question: not whether we can know the universe or the Milky Way Galaxy or a star or a world. Can we know ultimately and in detail, a grain of salt? Consider one microgram of table salt, a speck just barely large enough for someone with keen eyesight to make out without a microscope. In that grain of salt there are about 1016 sodium and chlorine atoms. This is a 1 followed by 16 zeros, 10 million billion atoms. If we wish to know a grain of salt, we must know at least the three-dimensional positions of each of these atoms. (In fact, there is much more to be known - for example, the nature of the forces between the atoms - but we are making only a modest calculation.) Now, is this number more or less than the number of things which the brain can know? 让我们来考虑一个要小得多的问题：不是我们能否认识宇宙，或者银河系，或者一个星球，或者一个世界的问题，而是我们能否最终完全认识一粒盐的问题。设想一微克的食盐，只有一个视力好的人不借助显微镜刚好能看到的那么大一粒。在那一粒盐中，有约1016个钠和氯的原子，也就是1后面有16个0，即1亿亿个原子。如果我们想要认识一粒盐的话，至少我们得知道每一个原子的空间位置。（事实上，还有许多需要知道的-比如，原子之间力的性质等问题，不过我们现在尽量少考虑一些。)这个数字和人脑能够认知的事情相比是多还是少呢？How much can the brain know? There are perhaps 1011 neurons in the brain, the circuit elements and switches that are responsible in their electrical and chemical activity for the functioning of our minds. A typical brain neuron has perhaps a thousand little wires, called dendrites, which connect it with its fellows. If, as seems likely, every bit of information in the brain corresponds to one of these connections, the total number of things knowable by the brain is no more than 1014, one hundred trillion. But this number is only one percent of the number of atoms in our speck of salt. 人脑有多大认知能力呢？大脑中约有1011 个神经元，它们是在电和化学反应中控制我们大脑活动的电路元件和开关。典型的神经元上面有约1000个须状物，叫做树突, 树突把这些神经元与其同类连接起来。如果大脑中的每条信息对应一个树突的话（情况很可能是这样的），大脑最多可以认知1014 个事物，也就是100万亿，不过这个数字仅仅是我们那一粒盐中原子数量的1%。So in this sense the universe is intractable, astonishingly immune to any human attempt at full knowledge. We cannot on this level understand a grain of salt, much less the universe. 因此，在这个意义上，宇宙是难以认识的，人类想要获得完全的认知是不可能的，这个结论出乎我们的意料。在这个层面上，我们连一粒盐也认识不了，更不用说认识宇宙了。But let us look more deeply at our microgram of salt. Salt happens to be a crystal in which, except for defects in the structure of the crystal lattice, the position of every sodium and chlorine atom is predetermined. If we could shrink ourselves into this crystalline world, we could see rank upon rank of atoms in an ordered array, a regularly alternating structure - sodium, chlorine, sodium, chlorine, specifying the sheet of atoms we are standing on and all the sheets above us and below us. An absolutely pure crystal of salt could have the position of every atom specified by something like 10 bits of information. This would not strain the information-carrying capacity of the brain. 不过，让我们再深入研究一下我们这一微克的盐。盐正好是晶体，在晶体中，除非晶格结构有缺陷，每个氯原子和钾原子的位置是固定的。如果我们能缩小身体，走进这个晶体世界的话，我们就会看到一排排的原子有序排列，呈规则的交互结构-氯、钠、氯、钠，这样的结构规则统治着我们所站立的这排原子，以及我们上面和下面所有的原子。一粒纯晶体盐中原子的位置可以说是由10位信息的规则所规定的，这就不会让大脑的信息负荷能力感到吃力了。If the universe had natural laws that governed its behavior to the same degree of regularity that determines a crystal of salt, then, of course, the universe would be knowable. Even if there were many such laws, each of considerable complexity, human beings might have the capacity to understand them all. Even if such knowledge exceeded the information-carrying capacity of the brain, we might store the additional information outside our bodies - in books, for example, or in computer memories - and still, in some sense, know the universe. 如果宇宙运行的自然规律都像一粒晶体盐那样有规则的话，那么宇宙当然可以被认知了。即使有许多这样的规则，每条规则都相当复杂，人类也可能有能力全部认识它们。即便这样的知识超出了大脑的信息负荷能力，我们可以把放不下的信息储存在体外，比如储存在书本中、计算机存储器中，我们仍然可以在某种程度上认识宇宙。Human beings are, understandably, highly motivated to find regularities, natural laws. The search for rules, the only possible way to understand such a vast and complex universe, is called science. The universe forces those who live in it to understand it. Those creatures who find everyday experience a muddled jumble of events with no predictability, no regularity, are in grave peril. The universe belongs to those who, at least to some degree, have figured it out. 人类非常积极地探求规则和自然规律是可以理解的，它是认识如此浩瀚复杂宇宙的惟一可能的途径，探求规律就叫做科学。宇宙迫使居住其间的生命认识它，那些没有预见能力，没有规律，每天生活在混沌中的生命是很危险的。宇宙至少在某种程度上属于那些认识了它的生命。It is an astonishing fact that there are laws of nature, rules that summarize conveniently - not just qualitatively but quantitatively - how the world works. We might imagine a universe in which there are no such laws, in which the 1080 elementary particles that make up a universe like our own behave with utter and uncompromising abandon. To understand such a universe we would need a brain at least as massive as the universe. It seems unlikely that such a universe could have life and intelligence, because beings and brains require some degree of internal stability and order. But even if in a much more random universe there were such beings with an intelligence much greater than our own, there could not be much knowledge, passion or joy. 让人惊讶的是居然有数量众多的、高质量的自然规律和规则，方便地总结了世界是如何运行的。我们可以设想一个没有这些规律的宇宙：那些和组成我们这个宇宙一样的1080个基本粒子完全自由、互不相让地任意运动。要认识这样的宇宙，我们需要一个至少和这个宇宙一样大的大脑，看来这样的宇宙不可能有生命和智慧，因为生命和大脑需要一定程度的内部稳定和秩序。即使在一个混乱的宇宙中有比我们智慧高得多的生命，也不可能有多少知识、激情和快乐。Fortunately for us, we live in a universe that has at least important parts that are knowable. Our common-sense experience and our evolutionary history have prepared us to understand something of the workaday world. When we go into other realms, however, common sense and ordinary intuition turn out to be highly unreliable guides. 我们很幸运，生活在一个至少其重要部分可以被认识的宇宙，我们的日常经历和我们的进化史给我们提供了某种程度上认识这个世界的前提，然而我们进入到其他领域时，常识和日常的直觉还是很不可靠的向导。For myself, I like a universe that includes much that is unknown and, at the same time, much that is knowable. A universe in which everything is known would be static and dull, as boring as the heaven of some weak-minded theologians. A universe that is unknowable is no fit place for a thinking being. The ideal universe for us is one very much like the universe we inhabit. And I would guess that this is not really much of a coincidence. 2.Extraterrestrial Life A. Bowdoin Van RiperWhether life exists anywhere in the universe besides Earth is an open question, one that Western scholars have debated for over 200 years without coming significantly closer to a solution. Proving that extraterrestrial life does not exist is, by definition, impossible. Our galaxy is too large for us to investigate every corner of it where life might have arisen since we last looked, and it is only one galaxy among many. Proving that extraterrestrial life does exist is easy in principle but difficult in practice. The discovery of an alien organism would provide proof, but searching for one would require interstellar travel-something well beyond humans technological reach. 在地球之外， 宇宙的其他地方是否存在生命现仍无定论。西方学者已就此争论了200多年，但与最终结论还有相当的距离。要证明外星生物不存在从概念上讲是不可能的。银河系太大了，使我们无法探索其每个角落。或许在我们的探索工作刚刚完成之后，生命却产生了，况且银河系只不过是众多星系中的一个。要证明外星生物确实存在，理论上虽容易，但实际上是很困难的。找到外星生物体可以为此提供证据，但是要寻找这样的证据就需要进行星际旅行-这远远超乎了人类科技发展水平。NONINTELLIGENT LIFE IN OUR GALAXY银河系中的非智慧生物Most of the planets and moons in our solar system appear inhospitable to life as we know it. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune lack solid surfaces and receive only limited sunlight. Mercury is baked and irradiated by the sun, while Pluto is perpetually dark and frozen. Venuss dense atmosphere creates crushing pressures, intense heat, and corrosive rain at its surface. Few of the solar systems moons, and none of its asteroids, are large enough to hold even a thin atmosphere. The most likely places to search for life in our solar system appear to be Mars and the larger moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Robot spacecraft have photographed Mars, Europa, and Titan from space. Robot landers have explored small portions of the Martian surface. Finding intelligent life on any of the three worlds now seems unlikely. Finding simpler forms of life, if they exist at all, is likely to require systematic observation at close range. 我们知道，太阳系中大多数的行星和卫星似乎不适合生命存在。木星、土星、天王星和海王星缺乏坚实的地表，光照也非常有限。水星处于太阳的烘烤和辐射之下。而冥王星则常年暗无天日，天寒地冻。金星浓稠的大气形成了极具毁灭性的、被压力、炽热和酸雨所笼罩的地表。太阳系中的所有小游星和绝大多数卫星都没有大到足以吸聚哪怕非常稀薄的大气层。在太阳系中最有可能寻求生命的地方看来只有火星以及木星、土星的大卫星。载有机器人的宇宙飞船已从太空拍下了火星、欧罗巴星以及泰坦星的情况。机器人着陆舱也已对火星表面的少部分进行了探测。现在看来已经不可能在这其中任何一个星球上找到高级生物了。如果较为低级的生物存在的话，寻找它们可能会需要在近距离进行系统观测。The probability that life exists somewhere else in our galaxy is high, simply because the number of stars in our galaxy is so high. Even if only a tiny fraction of stars have planets, even if only a tiny fraction of those planets are suitable for life, even if life only develops on a fraction of those planets, and even if intelligence only evolves on a fraction of the planets with life, there are still likely to be thousands of life-bearing planets in our galaxy. Finding such life will, however, mean finding the planets. Even if interstellar travel was routine, the job would be daunting. It would mean finding one world among thousands, with no evidence of its special status visible at interstellar distances. 在我们这个星系的其他地方存在生命的可能性是极高的，因为此星系中的恒星数量极多。即使恒星中只有极少部分有行星，即使这些行星中只有极少数适合生命存在，即使适合生命生存的行星中只有部分孕育出了生命，即使这些孕育了生命的行星中只有一部分发生了智慧进化，那么在我们星系中仍可能有成千上万颗行星中有生命体存在。不过要找到这些生命体就意味着要找到这些行星。即便是星际旅行已成家常便饭，这项工作也会使人却步。由于在茫茫星空中无法确定其特殊状况，要想找到它们无异于大海捞针。INTELLIGENT LIFE IN OUR GALAXY银河中的智慧生物Intelligent life, if it exists elsewhere, is likely to be much rarer than nonintelligent life. It may, however, prove easier actually to find. Our own species beams a steady stream of radio and television signals into space and attaches information-laden metal plates to spacecraft headed out of the solar system. The signals are an accidental by-product of broadcasting; the plates are a conscious attempt at communication. Both announce our existence, our level of technological sophistication, and a tiny bit about our culture. 如果智慧生物在其他星球存在的话，它会比非智慧生物稀少得多。不过，智慧生物可能会更容易找到。我们人类一直在向太空发射无线电及电视信号。并且在飞出太阳系的宇宙飞船上安装了存储信息的金属盘。发出的信号是进行广播时偶然的副产品；金属盘是进行联络的有意尝试。这两种方式都在宣告我们的存在、科技的发展水平和一小部分文化。It is also possible that a sufficiently intelligent and technologically adept species might find us before we develop the ability to go looking for it. Believers in the extraterrestrial origin of UFOs argue that such encounters have already happened, either in the past or in the present. Most mainstream scientists are skeptical of such beliefs, explaining purported encounters with aliens in more prosaic terms. 另外一种可能就是某个智能发达、技术先进的物种在我们有能力找到它们之前先发现我们。那些相信UFO来自外星的人们认为，无论是过去还是现在，这种与外星人的接触业已发生。大多数正统科学家对此持怀疑态度。他们在解释这些所谓的“遭遇”时，语气要平淡得多。EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE IN POPULAR CULTURE大众文化中的外星人Popular culture depicts thousands of human encounters with extraterrestrial life. Entire subgenres of science fiction are devoted to such encounters: first contact stories, alien invasion stories, aliens among us stories, and so on. A detailed discussion of popular cultures treatment of aliens could easily fill a book. Nearly all stories about extraterrestrial life, however, follow three well-established conventions. 大众文化中有着成千上万人类同外星人相遇的情景。科幻小说中也有单独的类别专门叙述这样的内容：“初次相遇”、“外星人入侵”、“外星人在我们身边”等等。有关大众文化对外星人的处理方式的详细讨论可以很容易就写成一本书。不过几乎所有关于外星人的故事都依照以下三个固定的套路。First, most stories featuring imagined extraterrestrial life tend to focus on one or, at most, two species from any given world. Gatherings of intelligent aliens from many worlds are common, but fully imagined alien ecosystems are not. The reason for this is both obvious and understandable. Ecosystems are extraordinarily complex. Describing one on Earth, the building blocks of which are familiar, is a significant challenge; creating a plausible alien ecosystem from scratch, using very different building blocks, is an even greater challenge. 第一，大多数故事在对想像中的外星人描述时都集中体现在一种或至多两种来自特定星球的生命体上。关于各种星球上的智慧生物的素材比比皆是，但精心构想的有关外星人生态系统的描述却是罕有的。其原因既显而易见，又情有可原。生态系统是错综复杂的。对于我们熟知其组成部分的地球的描述已具有一定的挑战性，拟造一个合情合理的且具有不同组成部分的外星生态系统则是更大的挑战。Second, the physical form of extraterrestrial species reflects human attitudes toward species on Earth. The sweet-natured title character of Stephen Spielbergs film E.T. has a head that is large in proportion to its body and eyes that are large in proportion to its head. It has, in other words, the basic morphology of a human infant. Alien species that invade or attack the earth often resemble creatures that Western culture deems unpleasant. Powerful and benevolent aliens, on the other hand, recall angels in their lack of permanent physical bodies. Their evolution beyond the need for physical form is also suggestive of ideas about the afterlife. 第二，外星人的外形反映出人类对于地球物种的态度。在斯蒂文斯皮尔伯格的电影外星人中，性情温柔的主人公就有着一个与身体不相称的大脑袋和一双与头部不相称的大眼睛。换句话说，它有着婴儿的基本形象。入侵或进攻地球的外星人经常与西方文化中令人生厌的形象相类似。另一方面，强壮、乐善好施的外星人则形体飘忽不定，映射出天使的外形。这种可以“脱离肉身”的进化也是对于来世的暗示。Third, the personalities and thought patterns of intelligent aliens closely resemble those of humans. Alien invaders of Earth want what human invaders want: territory, resources, slaves, or mates. Alien benefactors of Earth act out of altruism or paternalism or to secure allies in a hostile universe. Humans and aliens routinely discover that despite their physical differences, they share many of the same hopes and fears. 第三，智慧生物的性情及思维方式与人类极其接近。外星入侵者想要得到的东西与人类侵略者毫无两样：土地、资源、奴隶或者情人。乐善好施的外星人在地球上的行为体现了大公无私或承担重任，抑或在充满敌意的宇宙空间保护同盟者的精神。人类和外星人经常会发现，尽管长相各异，他们具有共同的希望，怀着同样的畏惧。We know nothing of how extraterrestrial life - if it exists - appears, behaves, or (if intelligent) thinks. Stories about it thus allow for limitless imagination. We tend, nevertheless, to imagine aliens whose appearance reflects our attitudes toward species here on Earth and whose thought and behavior patterns mirror our own. The reason for this is less a failure of imagination than an acknowledgement of dramatic necessity. 我们不了解外星人-如果他们的确存在的话-是如何产生的，行为举止如何，如何思考（如果是智慧生物的话）。因此外星人的故事拥有无限的想像空间，不过我们想像中外星人的样子一般都反映出了我们对于地球物种的看法。外星人的思想及行为方式也是我们自身的映射。究其原因，与其说这是想像力的枯竭，倒不如承认这是出于营造戏剧效果的需要。Stories about human encounters with alien species are, ultimately, stories about us rather than the aliens. The innocent, stranded aliens of films like Escape from the Planet of the Apes and Starman are litmus tests for human society. Good-hearted individuals shelter and aid them, but those in power persecute them; the stories simultaneously reveal the best and worst of human behavior. Stories like these require aliens that are more human than any real alien species is likely to be-aliens that are human enough for human characters to interact with and for human audiences to care about. 3.We Are All Scientists Thomas H. HuxleyThe method of scientific investigation is nothing but the expression of the necessary mode of working of the human mind. It is simply the mode at which all phenomena are reasoned about. There is no more difference, between the mental operations of a man of science and those of an ordinary person, than there is between the operations and methods of a baker weighing out his goods in common scales, and the operations of a chemist in performing a difficult and complex analysis by means of his balance and finely graduated weights. It is not that the action of the scales in the one case, and the balance in the other, differ in the principles of their construction or manner of working; but the beam of one is set on an infinitely finer axis than the other, and of course turns by the addition of a much smaller weight. 科学调查的方法其实只是人类大脑思维必要方式的一种表达。它只是对所有现象做出推理的一种方式。科学家与普通人的思维方式之区别无异于面包师用普通秤秤货的方式和化学家用天平秤和精确砝码作困难复杂分析的方式之区别。并不是两者的秤在构造原理和操作方式上有什么区别，只是后者的秤杆比前者的精确得多，砝码也小得多。You have all heard it repeated, that men of science work by means of induction and deduction: and that by the help of these operations, they wring from Nature certain other things, which are called natural laws and causes, and that out of these, they build up hypotheses and theories. And it is imagined by many that the operations of the common mind can by no means be compared with these processes, and that they have to be acquired by a sort of special apprenticeship to the craft. To hear all these large words, you would think that the mind of a man of science must