Judging from the scientists I know, including Eva and Ruth, and those whom 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 long career deciphering what must be happening in the interior of stars. He recalls 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 toward truth." I ask him what makes a theory beautiful, and he replies, "Simplicity, symmetry, elegance, and power."
从我认识或了解的科学家那里（包括伊娃和鲁思），我得出如下的判断：在追求自然法则的过程中，一个人很快就会发现美。“我不知道和你在落日中见到的是不是同一种美，”一个朋友告诉我，“但感受是一样的。”这位朋友是个物理学家，职业生涯中很长时间都在解密星体内部的玄妙。他给我讲述第一次领悟狄拉克量子作用方程式或爱因斯坦相对论方程式时的兴奋。“它们非常美，”他说，“你马上就看得出它们肯定正确，或至少接近真理。”我问他是什么使理论变得美丽。他答道：“简洁、对称、优雅和力量。”
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. 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 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.
大自然为什么会遵守这些美的原理，目前还没有明确答案。正如爱因斯坦所说，关于宇宙最难理解的就是它是可理解的。居住在一颗普通星球上的一种生命短暂的两足动物能够计算光速，列出原子结构或计算黑洞引力，是否难以想象？我们还远未了解世间的万物，但我们又的确对自然规律了解很多。列出原一代又一代的人发现规律、验证规律，并吃惊地发现自然界认可这些规律。一名建筑师在薄脆的图纸上设计图案，而她的建筑在地震中可以岿然不动。我们将人造卫星发射到轨道用以在洲际间传递信息。我用来写字的机器包含着千百个对物质世界如何运转的洞悉，每一个迅速呈现在屏幕上的字母都证实了这一点。同时，我在通过镜片看屏幕，片遵循的是由牛顿首先详尽阐述的光学原理。
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 coherent set of rules, they cannot say, as scientists, how these particular rules came to govern things. You can do science without believing in a divine Legislator, but not without believing in laws.
牛顿相信，辨识宇宙的种种模式就是在追寻上帝的创造之手。今天多数的科学家认为造物者的概念是不一定的假说，或者认为这一概念无从考证。他们赞同牛顿提出的宇宙是符合一系列连贯的规律，这些规律无处不在。同时，作为科学家，他们又无法说明这些特定的法则是如何开始统治世界的。一个人若不相信神圣造物者的存在，可以研究科学；一个人若不相信法则，却无法研究科学。
评论
打印
