万物简史 第565期:达尔文的非凡见解(14)

 Louis Agassiz dismissed it as poor conjecture¹. 杰出的瑞典古生物学家路易斯·阿加西斯拒绝接受他的观点，认为它纯属臆想。

Even Lyell concluded gloomily: "Darwin goes too far." 连莱尔也不胜郁闷地得出结论说：“达尔文走得太远了。”

T. H. Huxley disliked Darwin's insistence² on huge amounts of geological time because he was a saltationist, T.H.赫胥黎不喜欢达尔文所主张的进化要经历漫长的地质时间的观点，因为他是一个突变论者，

which is to say a believer in the idea that evolutionary³ changes happen not gradually but suddenly. 也就是说他相信进化是突然而非逐渐发生的。

Saltationists (the word comes from the Latin for "leap") couldn't accept that complicated organs could ever emerge in slow stages. 突变论者（这个词来自拉丁语“跳跃”）无法相信复杂的器官会慢幔地分阶段出现。

What good, after all, is one-tenth of a wing or half an eye? 十分之一的翅膀，或者二分之一的眼睛，试同这样的器官究竟有什么用处？

Such organs, they thought, only made sense if they appeared in a finished state. 在他们看来，这种器官只有以已经完成的形式出现才有意义。

The belief was surprising in as radical⁴ a spirit as Huxley 赫胥黎所主张的这种突变论是十分极端的，有点儿令人吃惊

because it closely recalled a very conservative religious notion first put forward by the English theologian William Paley in 1802 and known as argument from design. 因为它很容易使人联想起由英国神学家威廉·佩利于1802年首先提出的一个极为保守的宗教观念，这种观念被称为“来自设计的论证”。

Paley contended that if you found a pocket watch on the ground, 佩利认为，如果你在地上发现了一块怀表，

even if you had never seen such a thing before, you would instantly perceive that it had been made by an intelligent entity⁵. 即使你以前从未见过这样的东西，你也会立刻意识到它是由某个有才干的人制造的。

So it was, he believed, with nature: its complexity⁶ was proof of its design. 他相信大自然也是如此，它的复杂性就是精心设计的证明。

The notion was a powerful one in the nineteenth century, and it gave Darwin trouble too. 这种观念在19世纪影响极大，也令达尔文感到不安。

"The eye to this day gives me a cold shudder," he acknowledged in a letter to a friend. “直到今天，我一想到眼睛心里就直打冷战。”在给朋友的一封信里，达尔文这样写道。

In the Origin he conceded that it "seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree" that natural selection could produce such an instrument in gradual steps. 他在《物种起源》中承认，自然选择能以渐进的方式产生这样一种器官，“坦率地说，似乎是个极其荒唐的观念”。

 

1 conjecture   

n./v.推测，猜测

参考例句：

• She felt it no use to conjecture his motives.她觉得猜想他的动机是没有用的。
• This conjecture is not supported by any real evidence.这种推测未被任何确切的证据所证实。

2 insistence   

n.坚持；强调；坚决主张

参考例句：

• They were united in their insistence that she should go to college.他们一致坚持她应上大学。
• His insistence upon strict obedience is correct.他坚持绝对服从是对的。

3 evolutionary   

adj.进化的；演化的，演变的；[生]进化论的

参考例句：

• Life has its own evolutionary process.生命有其自身的进化过程。
• These are fascinating questions to be resolved by the evolutionary studies of plants.这些十分吸引人的问题将在研究植物进化过程中得以解决。

4 radical   

n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的

参考例句：

• The patient got a radical cure in the hospital.病人在医院得到了根治。
• She is radical in her demands.她的要求十分偏激。

5 entity   

n.实体，独立存在体，实际存在物

参考例句：

• The country is no longer one political entity.这个国家不再是一个统一的政治实体了。
• As a separate legal entity,the corporation must pay taxes.作为一个独立的法律实体，公司必须纳税。

6 complexity   

n.复杂(性)，复杂的事物

参考例句：

• Only now did he understand the full complexity of the problem.直到现在他才明白这一问题的全部复杂性。
• The complexity of the road map puzzled me.错综复杂的公路图把我搞糊涂了。