萬(wàn)物簡(jiǎn)史 第43期:事物的測(cè)定(1)
第二部分 地球的大小
Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night;
大自然和大自然的法則藏匿于黑夜之中;
God said, Let Newton be! And all was light.
上帝說(shuō)，讓牛頓出世吧!于是世界一片光明。
-Alexander Pope
--亞歷山大·蒲珀
4 THE MEASURE OF THINGS
第四章 事物的測(cè)定
IF YOU HAD to select the least convivial scientific field trip of all time, you could certainly doworse than the French Royal Academy of Sciences' Peruvian expedition of 1735. Led by ahydrologist named Pierre Bouguer and a soldier-mathematician named Charles Marie de LaCondamine, it was a party of scientists and adventurers who traveled to Peru with the purposeof triangulating distances through the Andes.
要是讓你挑出有史以來(lái)最不愉快的實(shí)地科學(xué)考察，你肯定很難挑得出比1735年法國(guó)皇家科學(xué)院的秘魯遠(yuǎn)征更加倒霉的。在一位名叫皮埃爾·布格的水文工作者和一位名叫查理·瑪麗·孔達(dá)米納的軍人數(shù)學(xué)家的率領(lǐng)下，一個(gè)由科學(xué)家和冒險(xiǎn)家組成的小組前往秘魯，旨在用三角測(cè)量法測(cè)定穿越安第斯山脈的距離。
At the time people had lately become infected with a powerful desire to understand the Earth—to determine how old it was, and how massive, where it hung in space, and how it hadcome to be. The French party's goal was to help settle the question of the circumference ofthe planet by measuring the length of one degree of meridian (or 1/360 of the distance aroundthe planet) along a line reaching from Yarouqui, near Quito, to just beyond Cuenca in what isnow Ecuador, a distance of about two hundred miles.
那個(gè)時(shí)候，人們感染上了一種了解地球的強(qiáng)烈欲望--想要確定地球有多大年齡，多少體積，懸在宇宙的哪個(gè)部分，是怎樣形成的。法國(guó)小組的任務(wù)是要沿著一條直線，從基多附近的雅羅基開始，到如今位于厄瓜多爾的昆卡過(guò)去一點(diǎn)，測(cè)量1度經(jīng)線(即地球圓周的三百六十分之一)的長(zhǎng)度，全長(zhǎng)約為320公里，從而幫助解決這顆行星的周長(zhǎng)問(wèn)題。
Almost at once things began to go wrong, sometimes spectacularly so. In Quito, the visitorssomehow provoked the locals and were chased out of town by a mob armed with stones. Soonafter, the expedition's doctor was murdered in a misunderstanding over a woman. Thebotanist became deranged. Others died of fevers and falls. The third most senior member ofthe party, a man named Pierre Godin, ran off with a thirteen-year-old girl and could not beinduced to return.
事情幾乎從一開始就出了問(wèn)題，有時(shí)候還是令人瞠目的大問(wèn)題。在基多，訪客們不知怎的激怒了當(dāng)?shù)厝耍皇帜檬^的暴民攆出了城。過(guò)不多久，由于跟某個(gè)女人產(chǎn)生誤解，測(cè)量小組的一名醫(yī)生被謀殺。組里的植物學(xué)家精神錯(cuò)亂。其他人或發(fā)熱死去，或墜落喪命?？疾礻?duì)的第三號(hào)人物--一個(gè)名叫讓·戈丁的男人--跟一位13歲的姑娘私奔，怎么也勸不回來(lái)。
