A COLLECTION OF GOOD WORDS
进化
Evolution
Ever since then, all descendant vertebrates have had the forward end of the digestive system and the forward end of the respiratory system very much involved with each other. This manifests itself in the human body with a crossing of the two systems in the throat.
从那时起，所有的脊椎动物后代都有消化系统的前端和呼吸系统的前端彼此紧密相连。这表现在人的身体与两个系统的交叉在喉咙。
Agricultural practice served Darwin as the material basis for the elaboration of his theory of Evolution, which explained the natural causation of the adaptation we see in the structure of the organic world. That was a great advance in the knowledge of living nature.
农业实践是达尔文阐述进化论的物质基础，他的进化论解释了我们在有机世界结构中看到的适应性的自然原因。这是对生命自然知识的一大进步。
My own field of paleontology has strongly challenged the Darwinian premise that life's major transformations can be explained by adding up, through the immensity of geological time, the successive tiny changes produced generation after generation by natural selection.
我自己的古生物学领域对达尔文主义的前提提出了强烈的挑战。达尔文的前提是，通过漫长的地质时间，将一代又一代自然选择产生的微小变化叠加起来，就可以解释生命的重大转变。
Science Fiction is not just about the future of space ships travelling to other planets, it is fiction based on science and I am using science as my basis for my fiction, but it's the science of prehistory - palaeontology and archaeology - rather than astronomy or physics.
科幻小说不仅仅是关于宇宙飞船去其他星球旅行的未来，它是基于科学的小说，我把科学作为我小说的基础，但它是史前科学——古生物学和考古学——而不是天文学或物理学。
If I read not amiss, this powerful race will move down upon Mexico, down upon Central and South America, out upon the islands of the sea, over upon Africa and beyond. And can any one doubt that the results of this competition of races will be the "survival of the fittest?"
如果我没有读错的话，这个强大的种族将向墨西哥、中美洲和南美洲、海上岛屿、非洲和更远的地方进军。谁能怀疑这场竞赛的结果将是“适者生存”?
What I try to do in the book is to trace the chain of relationships running from elementary particles, fundamental building blocks of matter everywhere in the universe, such as quarks, all the way to complex entities, and in particular complex adaptive system like jaguars.
我在书中试图做的是追踪从基本粒子，宇宙中所有物质的基本组成部分，如夸克，到复杂的实体，特别是像美洲虎这样的复杂的适应性系统之间的关系链。
This fact immediately suggested a singular event - that at some time in the distant past the universe began expanding from an extremely small size. To many people this inference was loaded with overtones of a supernatural event - the creation, the beginning of the universe.
这个事实立即暗示了一个奇异的事件——在遥远的过去的某个时候，宇宙开始从一个非常小的尺寸膨胀。对许多人来说，这一推论带有超自然事件的意味——创世，宇宙的起源。
The best opinion now is, that there are multitudinous forms which are not sufficiently differentiated to be distinctively either plant or animal, while, as respects ordinary plants and animals, the difficulty of laying down a definition has become far greater than ever before.
现在最好的意见是，有许多形态没有足够的区别来区分植物或动物，而就普通的植物和动物而言，给它们下一个定义比以往任何时候都困难得多。
The evolutionary explanation for origins, although impossible either to prove or to test scientifically, is nevertheless defended by its proponents on the basis that it is the only explanation which is naturalistic, not involving the 'supernatural' element of a divine Creator.
进化论对起源的解释，虽然既无法证明也无法科学地检验，但它的支持者却为其辩护，理由是它是唯一的自然主义解释，不涉及神圣造物主的“超自然”因素。
I want to know what changed in fully modern humans, compared with Neanderthals, that made a difference. What made it possible for us to build up these enormous societies, and spread around the globe, and develop the technology that I think no one can doubt is unique to humans.
我想知道，与尼安德特人相比，完全现代人类发生了什么变化，从而产生了不同。是什么让我们有可能建立这些庞大的社会，并传播到全球，发展我认为没有人能怀疑的人类独有的技术。
Certainly the first true humans were unique by virtue of their large brains. It was because the human brain is so large when compared with that of a chimpanzee that paleontologists for years hunted for a half-ape, half-human skeleton that would provide a fossil link between the human and the ape.
当然，第一个真正的人类是独一无二的，因为他们有巨大的大脑。正是因为人类的大脑与黑猩猩的大脑相比是如此之大，古生物学家们多年来一直在寻找半猿半人的骨骼，以便在人类和猿之间找到化石上的联系。
It has actually been suggested that warfare may have been the principle evolutionary pressure that created the huge gap between the human brain and that of our closest living relatives, the anthropoid apes. Whole groups of hominids with inferior brains could not win wars and were therefore exterminated.
事实上，有人提出，战争可能是进化压力的主要原因，它造成了人类大脑与我们现存的近亲类人猿之间的巨大鸿沟。整群智力低下的原始人无法赢得战争，因此被消灭了。
KEEP EXPLORING
沿着这个主题，再读几句。
The most telling and profound way of describing the evolution of the universe would undoubtedly be to trace the evolution of love.
描述宇宙进化最生动、最深刻的方式无疑是追溯爱的进化。
It was Nietzsche who first made us conscious of the significance of the individual as a term in the evolutionary process-in that part of the evolutionary process which has still to take place.
尼采首先让我们意识到个人在进化过程中作为一个术语的重要性——这是进化过程中仍需发生的部分。
The argument for intelligent design basically depends on saying, 'You haven't answered every question with evolution,'... Well, guess what? Science can't answer every question.
智能设计的论点基本上取决于这样说:“你并没有用进化论来回答所有的问题。”好吧,你猜怎么着?科学不能回答所有的问题。
A final proof of our ideas can only be obtained by detailed studies on the alterations produced in the amino acid sequence of a protein by mutations of the type discussed here.
我们的想法的最后证据只能通过对蛋白质的氨基酸序列被这里讨论的突变所产生的变化的详细研究来获得。
Today the theory of evolution is about as much open to doubt as the theory that the earth goes round the sun.
今天，进化论就像地球绕着太阳转一样，同样值得怀疑。
Love is a sacred reserve of energy; it is like the blood of spiritual evolution.
爱是一种神圣的能量储备;它就像精神进化的血液。