万物简史 第567期:达尔文的非凡见解(16)

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Lucky flukes might arise from time to time, but they would soon vanish under the general impulse to bring everything back to a stable mediocrity. 在进化过程中，特异现象时有发生但是它们很快就会消失，因为生物体总是倾向于使一切都回归于平常。

If natural selection were to work, some alternative, unconsidered mechanism¹ was required. 如果自然选择要起作用的话，就得需要某种尚未发现的替代机制。

Unknown to Darwin and everyone else, 达尔文和其他所有人都不知道的是，

eight hundred miles away in a tranquil² corner of Middle Europe a retiring monk³ named Gregor Mendel was coming up with the solution. 关于这个问题，远在1200公里外的欧洲中部的一个不起眼的角落，一个名为格列高利·孟德尔的离群索居的修道士将会提供一个答案。

Mendel was born in 1822 to a humble⁴ farming family in a backwater of the Austrian empire in what is now the Czech Republic. 孟德尔1822年出生于奥地利帝国的一个偏僻小镇（现属捷克共和国）的一个贫苦农民家庭。

Schoolbooks once portrayed⁵ him as a simple but observant provincial⁶ monk whose discoveries were largely serendipitous⁷, 中学课本曾将他描述为一个单纯的乡下修道士，有比较敏锐的观察力，他的很多发现很大程度上都带有偶然的成分，

the result of noticing some interesting traits of inheritance while pottering about with pea plants in the monastery⁸'s kitchen garden. 他在修道院的菜园里种植豌豆的时候发现了一些很有意思的遗传特点。

In fact, Mendel was a trained scientist 事实上，孟德尔是一个训练有素的科学家，

he had studied physics and mathematics at the Olmutz Philosophical⁹ Institute and the University of Vienna — and he brought scientific discipline to all he did. 他曾经在奥尔慕茨哲学研究所和维也纳大学攻读过物理学和数学——他对他所研究的一切进行了非常科学的整理和归纳。

Moreover, the monastery at Brno where he lived from 1843 was known as a learned institution. 不仅如此，从l843年起，他所供职的修道院成了一个非常有名的学术中心。

It had a library of twenty thousand books and a tradition of careful scientific investigation¹⁰. 修道院有个拥有2万册藏书的图书馆，具有严谨的科学研究的传统。

Before embarking¹¹ on his experiments, Mendel spent two years preparing his control specimens¹², seven varieties of pea, to make sure they bred true. 在着手他的实验之前，孟德尔花了两年时间培育研究所需的标本。他选择了七种不同的豌豆，在确保它们繁殖纯种之后，

Then, helped by two full-time¹³ assistants, he repeatedly bred and crossbred hybrids¹⁴ from thirty thousand pea plants. 他在两个全职助手的帮助下开始反复种植这些豌豆并将其中的30000株进行杂交。

 

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