边走边唱
岁月像条河，河中荡着船，船里盛满好听的歌。
《美丽》译文
翻译：打馕的乡亲
原发时间：2005-10-23
原发地址：http://post.baidu.com/f?kz=54079474
《美丽》（节选）
就我所认识的如伊娃和鲁思及知道的那些科学家们而言，一个人在对自然法则进行跟进和了解的时候，往往在开始不久，就会与美遭遇。我的一个朋友告诉我说：“我不知道这种美与夕阳落日的美是不是一回事情，但我感觉它们是一样的。”说这话的朋友是位物理学家，在他的职业生涯中，他花费了大量的时间研究星球内部必然发生的运动和变化。这位朋友使我想起了我初遇迪拉克的量子力学方程式以及爱因斯坦的那些对相对论进行解说的理论时带给我的激动和震颤。“它们是如此的美丽，你几乎立即就可以确定他们肯定是真理，或者说，它们处在走向真理的道路之上。”他说到。当我问他，是什么使得一个理论变得美丽的时候，朋友答到：“朴素、匀称、典雅和力量”。
关于这一点，即为什么自然会得与我们认为的美丽的理论保持一致，是很不明显的。爱因斯坦说，关于宇宙，最不可理解的事情就是，它是可以被理解的。想到我们作为星球上生命如此短暂的动物，居然能够测量光速，能够解析原子结构，还能够计算黑洞引力，这是多么的难得与奇妙。我们距离全知实在还有太长的路要走，但是在了解自然的运行之路上我们收获颇丰。一代又一代，我们苦苦地思索着方程式，验证着它们，然后，相当地出乎人们的预料，我们发现，自然居然是与之吻合的。建筑师们在绘图纸上绘制着设计图纸，她设计的楼体经受了地震的考验。我们将人造卫星送入轨道，然后利用卫星在大陆架之间传递着信息。我正在用来写下这些文字的这架机器，将千百个我此时的顿悟物化为具体的形象，印证在这个物质的世界里。透过那字里行间，在我的顿悟里面，每一个欢跳的字母折射着我的顿悟。它们歇息在屏幕上，我透过镜片凝视着屏幕，意识到这透视的原理在每一个微小的点滴上，都遵循着古老的牛顿定律。
……
在我试图对美以文字加以描述和表达的时候，我陷入此前从未遇见过的语言藩篱。语言可以创造它自身的美丽，当然，但它自身却无法向我们传达我们自领会这个世界时所感受到的温暖和光辉。一张捕捉住使人可以产生眩晕感的雄鹰迅飞图和一张表现出超行星摧枯拉朽之力的成功照片，带给我们的感受，胜过千言万语。伊娃的婚礼相册中所保留住的婚礼本身的光亮屈指可数，相册中所有的图像和文字解说都超出了姿势和表情的范畴。直指我们内心深处的，是那飞扬在图形之外的光辉和美丽。所以我不停地摆着姿势。
汤玛士默顿说：“自然的意义就在于使我们想到天堂。”因为造物主给了我们永不歇场的剧目，美丽的上演就成了免费的欣赏和无穷无尽的存在。但是，除却那些特别普遍的美丽类型，我们若想享受更多，我们得接受训练才能达到目的。至今，尽管距离那场大爆炸已经有150亿年的时间了，那个大事件的回声仍然在我们生存背景上稍微高过绝对温度的地方震荡着。美刺激起我的欲望，我相信，对美的经历是弥漫渗透于宇宙之中的秩序和力量的回声。测量背景的光热需要精密的仪器，测量美丽，需要的则是我们苏醒的心智和我们敏锐的五官。
任何一个有眼睛的人，都可以从一张笑脸和一朵花卉上面得到欢快的感觉。但是，若想从数学、物理学科里，或国际象棋的游戏中，从对一棵树的造型上，对羽翼的形状或从长笛的孔里震颤流出的气流中，若想从上面这些事物中获得对美的感觉的话，你不经训练，恐怕难能消受。就绝大多数的人类历史而言，这种训练来自上一代对下一代的教诲，长者告诉子孙应该如何以及怎样交付注意。通过注意，我们学习着品尝各种各样的美丽滋味，从量子力学到拼接而成的被单床罩。随着这种爱好而至的，是明显的进化优势。这种对于模式格调的择优能力，帮助我们的祖先挑选伴侣、择取食物、躲避进攻。虽然这种优势也会对其它的物种产生作用，但是却只有我们人类有能力编排交响乐，玩纵横字谜游戏，将石块雕刻成像，给时间和空间绘制坐标。
（不过问题在于）我们是仅仅把我们作为动物的需要精明地发挥到了一个可笑的极致，还是在将我们的智力结构与宇宙结构极力重叠的道路上蹒跚而行？
Beauty (excerpt)
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 a 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 way toward truth." I ask him what makes a theory beautiful, and he replies," Simplicity, symmetry, elegance, and power."
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.
……
I'm never more aware of the limitations of language than when I try to describe beauty. Language can create its own loveliness, of course, but it cannot deliver to us the radiance we apprehend in the world, any more than a photograph can capture the stunning swiftness of a hawk or the withering power of a supernova. Eva's wedding album holds only a faint glimmer of the wedding itself. All that pictures or words can do is gesture beyond themselves toward the fleeting glory that stirs our hearts. So I keep gesturing.
"All nature is meant to make us think of paradise," Thomas Merton observed. Because the Creation puts on a nonstop show, beauty is free and inexhaustible, but we need training in order to perceive more than the most obvious kinds. Even 15 billion years or so after the Big Bang, echoes of that event still linger in the form of background radiation, only a few degrees above absolute zero. Lust so, I believe, the experience of beauty is an echo of the order and power that permeate the universe. To measure background radiation, we need subtle instruments; to measure beauty, we need alert intelligence and our five keen senses.
Anyone with eyes can take delight in a face or a flower. You need training, however, to perceive the beauty in mathematics or physics or chess, in the architecture of a tree, the design of a bird' s wing, or the shiver of breath through a flute. For most of human history, the training has come from elders who taught the young how to pay attention. By paying attention, we learn to savor all sorts of patterns, from quantum mechanics to patchwork quilts. This predilection brings with it a clear evolutionary advantage, for the ability to recognize patterns helped our ancestors to select mates, find food, avoid predators. But the same advantage would apply to all species, and yet we alone compose symphonies and crossword puzzles, carve stone into statues, map time and space.
Have we merely carried our animal need for shrewd perceptions to an absurd extreme? Or have we stumbled onto a deep congruence , between the structure of our minds and the structure of the universe?
附 回10楼聊天（转自 http://post.baidu.com/f?kz=54079474 13楼）
“我一直欣赏着交流电的正弦波在坐标图上的流淌。它教会我们理解事物的高峰与低谷前持平衡心态。”
聊天，你的这种在观察理解人事情形时的清醒和欣赏的心态，我此前在你发在刀吧的帖子中已略有领略。
这种对事物发展进程中所难以避免的低谷的接纳和对高超的预知与把握，是一种积淀了相当的人生经验以后才能体现出来的豁达与胸襟。这里面包含的，除了善意与智慧外，还具备着成熟的美感和女性的坚韧。我对此深觉欣赏与渴望。
图形的美，预演和物化了结构的美。有那简洁有力的人，潜心研究“结构”于世界的意义。我曾听说，木炭与钻石不过互为彼此，之所以在价值上具有天壤之别，不过是因为原子的排列不同，意即结构有易。那人由此断言，这世界是一个“结构”主宰一切的所在。这个观点与周某常提及的“外部世界不过是个人心境的映照与反观罢了”的观点特具异曲同工之势，就像苏小妹笑哥哥：你的心中是团牛粪，看人自然就是牛粪了。
世界，包括物质的和精神的两重世界，究竟什么是主宰你的力量？真？善？美？这个世界到底是自然演化的产物还是造物主的功绩？基督教的传教者们说，这世界，一定是基督的创造，否则怎么可能在每一个物种的内部存在那么严谨的程序？这世界所显示出的秩序和力量，如果没有精心的设计，何以能显示出这样的美丽和井然？
我面对这生生世世的谜团，哑口无言，默默无语……
《小河淌水》
月亮出来亮汪汪，亮汪汪
想起我的阿哥在深山
哥象月亮天上走，天上走
哥啊哥啊哥啊
山下小河淌水清悠悠
月亮出来照半坡，照半坡
望见月亮想起我阿哥
一阵轻风吹上坡，吹上坡
哥啊哥啊哥啊
你可听见阿妹叫阿哥
这歌里竟然没有说教!