万物简史 第412期:生命的起源(6)
时间：2018-06-15 07:39:31
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（单词翻译）
Well, that's essentially1 what Hoyle and others (including many ardent2 creationists) argue when they suggest that proteins spontaneously formed all at once. 哎呀，那基本上就是霍伊尔和其他人（包括许多热心的特创论者）提出的。他们认为，蛋白质是一下子自发形成的。
They didn't—they can't have. 蛋白质不是——也不可能——这样形成。
As Richard Dawkins argues in The Blind Watchmaker, 正如理查德·道金斯在《盲人钟表匠》一书中所说，
there must have been some kind of
cumulative3 selection process that allowed amino acids to assemble in
chunks4. 肯定有某种日积月累的选择过程，使得氨基酸聚集成块状。
Perhaps two or three amino acids linked up for some simple purpose 而三个氨基酸分子也许为了某种简单的目的联结起来，
and then after a time bumped into some other similar small cluster and in so doing "discovered" some additional improvement. 一段时间以后撞在一起成为类似的小群体，在此过程中“发现”又有了某些改进。
Chemical reactions of the sort associated with life are actually something of a commonplace. 这种与生命有关的化学反应实际上比比皆是。
It may be beyond us to cook them up in a lab, a la Stanley
Miller5 and Harold Urey, but the universe does it readily enough. 我们也许无法按照斯坦利·米勒和哈罗德·尤里的方式从实验室制造出来，但宇宙干这事儿很容易。
Lots of
molecules6 in nature get together to form long chains called polymers. 大自然里许多分子聚在一起形成长长的链子，名叫聚合物。
Sugars constantly assemble to form
starches7. 糖分子经常聚在一起形成淀粉。
Crystals can do a number of lifelike things—replicate, respond to environmental
stimuli8, take on a patterned
complexity9. 晶体会干部许多栩栩如生的事——复制呀，对环境的刺激作出反应呀，呈现复杂的图案呀。
They've never achieved life itself, of course, but they demonstrate repeatedly that complexity is a natural, spontaneous,
entirely10 commonplace event. 当然，它们从来不制造生命本身，但它们反复展示，复杂的结构是一种自然、自发、完全可靠的事。
There may or may not be a great deal of life in the universe at large, but there is no shortage of ordered self-assembly, 整个宇宙里也许存在大量生命，也许不存在，但不乏有序的自发聚合。
in everything from the transfixing symmetry of snowflakes to the
comely11 rings of
Saturn12. 它存在于一切东西，从对称的雪花到土星的秀丽光环。
So powerful is this natural impulse to assemble that many scientists now believe that life may be more
inevitable13 than we think, 大自然聚合事物是如此干劲十足，许多科学家现在认为，生命比我们认为的还要不可避免,
that it is, in the words of the Belgian biochemist and Nobel laureate
Christian14 de Duve, 用比利时生物化学家、诺贝尔奖获得者克里斯蒂安·德迪夫的话来说：
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