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。