Beauty翻译(强壮)

Why nature should conform to theories we find beautiful is far from obvious. The most incomprehensible thing about the universe, as Einstein said, is that it’s comprehensible. However 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 a long way from understanding everything, but we do understand a great deal about how nature behaves. 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 to continent. The machine on which I write these words embodies hundreds of insights into the workings of the material world, insights that are confirmed by every burst of letters on the screen, and I stare at that screen through lenses that obey the laws of optics first worked out in detail by Isaac Newton.没有人知道自然界的运转为什么会与那些神奇而伟大的理论暗暗相合。

爱因斯坦说，宇宙最让人费解之处就源于它的可被理解。

试想一下，一颗再平凡不过的星球所孕育的短暂生命，在双脚的支撑下竟然可以完成衡量光的速度、揭秘原子结构甚至计算黑洞引力的壮举，这是怎样的一种不可思议。

诚然，人类并非全知全能，但自然运作的基本规律我们却也了熟于心。

一代又一代先贤后辈的前赴后继，孕育、锤炼并最终铸就出了让大自然都俯首称臣的金科玉律。

设计师的蓝图似乎吹弹可破，高楼大厦却可以山崩地裂而面不改色。

人造卫星可以千里传情，即便是我用以工作的这台机器，伴随着屏幕上跃动的每一个字符，也都深刻反映着物质世界的运转规律。

当然，我观察屏幕的这幅眼镜更是牛顿光学钻研的伟大结晶。

By discerning patterns in the universe, Newton believed, he was tracing the hand of God. Scientists in our day have largely abandoned the notion of a Creator as an unnecessary hypothesis, or at least an untestable one. While they share Newton’s faith that the universe is ruled everywhere by a coherent set of rules, they cannot say, as scientist, how these particular rules came to govern things. You can do science without believing in a divine Legislator, but not without believing in laws.牛顿坚信对宇宙奥秘的探求如同追寻上帝之手。

现今绝大多数科学家已视造物主说为草芥，或至少无从查证。

此消彼长牛顿的理论得到广泛认同，即宇宙万物遵循一系列的相关准则，虽然科学家们未能解释这些特定的准则究竟如何发挥作用。

或曰，夫为科学，毋为神怪所累，世事皆律。

I spent my teenage years scrambling up the mountain of mathematics. Midway up the slope, however, I staggered to a halt, gasping in the rarefied air, well before I reached the heights where the equations of Einstein and Dirac would have made sense. Nowadays I add, subtract, multiply, and do long division when no calculator is handy, and I can do algebra and geometry and even trigon ometry in a pinch, but that is about all that I’ve kept from the language of numbers. Still, I remember glimpsing patterns in mathematics that seemed as bold and beautiful as a skyful of stars.少年时的我曾跋涉数学的高峰，行将过半就已步履蹒跚，气喘吁吁，然则相比爱因斯坦、迪拉克等先贤所到之处，仍路漫漫其修远。

现如今即使手边没有计算器，也可以随意进行加减乘除、几何代数甚至三角运算，但这些已是我对数字语言的全部了解。

数学的奥秘无疑像浩瀚星空，一瞥就足以动容。

I’m never aware of the limitations of language than when I try to describe beauty. Language can create its own loveliness, of course, but it cannot deliver to us the radiance we apprehend in the world, any more than a photograph can capture the stunning swiftness of a hawk or the withering power of a supernova., Eva’s wedding album holds only a faint glimmer of the wedding itself. All that pictures or words can do is gesture beyond themselves toward the fleeting glory that stirs our hearts. So I keep gesturing.美丽面前，任何语言都略显苍白，虽仰其灵动，却难再现生活的光彩。

一张照片难以捕捉雄鹰技惊四座的速度，更无从展示超新星气吞山河的力量，艾娃的结婚相册也不过只是那个伟大时刻的只言片语。

所有的文字图片都是在描摹那些震撼心灵的短暂瞬间，吾亦如此。

“All nature is meant to make us think of paradise,” Thomas Merton observed. Because the Creation puts on a nonstop show, beauty is free and inexhaustible, but we need training in order to perceive more than the most obvious kinds. Even 15 billion years or so after the Big Bang, echoes of that event still linger in the form of background radiation, only a few degrees above absolute zero. Just so, I believe, the experience of beauty is an echo of the order and power that permeate the universe. To measure background radiation, we need subtle instruments; to measure beauty, we need alert intelligence and our five keen senses.托马斯·莫顿认为“自然界的万事万物都让人类感觉身处伊甸园”。

造物主的不舍昼夜，铸就了天地之间的美不胜收，但个中精粹仍需乍看之下的细细揣摩。

宇宙大爆炸经过150亿年岁月的平息，余波犹在，即使能量微不足道。

正因如此，我相信，美之所以为美，无外乎宇宙秩序和力量的余波使然。

测量前者，我们需要精密的仪器；而对于美，我们则需要机警的智慧和敏锐的感官。

Anyone with eyes can take delight in a face or a flower. You need training, however, to perceive the beauty in mathematics or physics or chess, in the architecture of a tree, the design of a bird’s wing, or the shiver of breath through a flute. For most of human history, the training has come from elders who taught the young how to pay attention. By paying attention, we learn to savor all sorts of patterns, from quantum mechanics to patchwork quilts. This predilection brings with it a clear evolutionary advantage, for the ability to recognize patterns helped our ancestors to select mates, find food, avoid predators. But the same advantage would apply to all species, and yet we alone compose symphonies and crossword puzzles, carve stone into statues, map time and space.朱唇轻启，三月繁花，这样的胜景人尽可享。