经济学人｜恐龙化石引发的思想变革

The discovery of dinosaurs Jurassicspark Impossible Monsters

An intellectual revolution began in 1811 when Mary Anning, a 12-year-old living in Lyme Regis, a harbour town in south-west England, excavated the first fossil of a marine reptile, the Ichthyosaurus.
1811年，一场思想革命开始了，12岁的玛丽·安宁居住在英格兰西南部的一个港口小镇莱姆里杰斯，她挖出了一种海洋爬行动物——鱼龙的首块化石。
It culminated in 1881 with the opening of the Natural History Museum in London, imperial capital of the world, by Richard Owen.
1881年，理查德·欧文在帝国主义世界的首都伦敦开设了自然历史博物馆，为这场革命画上了句号。
Those seven decades spanned a change in thinking as profound as thattriggered by the astronomers of the late Renaissance-and as disturbing to the established church.
这场横跨七十年的思想变革与文艺复兴后期的天文学家所引发的变革一样深刻，对教会来说也一样令人不安。
(In this case, the threatened church was that of England, not Rome.) Fossils sparked a revelation of biblical proportions: God had not created the world in six days a few thousand years before, as so many believed.
(这一次，受威胁的是英格兰教会，而不是罗马教会。）化石引发了有关《圣经》的启示：上帝并没有像许多人相信的那样，在几千年前用六天时间创造了世界。
"Impossible Monsters" is a story about time-or, rather, two parallel stories.
《不可能的怪兽》是关于时间的故事，或者说，是关于时间的两个平行故事。
In one, time moves forward, as the players take turns making remarkable discoveries that help advance science and humans' understanding of their place in the world.
第一个里，时间向前移动，不同人物轮番上场，做出杰出的发现，帮助科学界和人类进一步理解自己在世界的位置。
In the second, it moves backwards, as the years needed to accommodate the findings of geologists and naturalists expand from thousands, to hundreds of thousands, to millions, pushing the date of "Creation" further away.
第二个里，时间向后移动，为了把地质学家和博物学家的发现纳入历史，所需的岁月从数千年延长到数十万年，再到数百万年，从而继续将“上帝创世”的日期往后推。
In writing "Impossible Monsters", the task of Michael Taylor, a historian, was to tell a much-told tale better than it had been told before.
在写《不可能的怪兽》时，历史学家迈克尔·泰勒的任务是把一个讲过多遍的故事叙述得比以前更精彩。
He has succeeded splendidly.
而他取得了辉煌的成功。
The cast is many and varied, including Anning, a lowly fossil-seller, who achieved international fame through her discoveries-Ichthyosaurus was but the first-yet was barred from joining the Royal Geological Society because of her sex.
书中的人物众多且五花八门，包括地位低下的化石销售商安宁，她因发现化石而获得了国际声誉——鱼龙化石只是众多发现的第一个——但由于是女性而被禁止加入皇家地质学会。
Many are memorably idiosyncratic, such as William Buckland, an eccentric Oxford don who once ate a mummified morsel of Louis XIV's heart.
书中的许多人都有难忘的个性，比如威廉·巴克兰，一位脾气古怪的牛津大学教师，曾吃过被防腐处理的路易十四的心脏。
He is better remembered for identifying and naming Megalosaurus, the first of the group subsequently dubbed "dinosaurs".
他更为人铭记是鉴定并命名了斑龙，斑龙是后被称为“恐龙”种群中的首个成员。
Some of the characters are familiar, like Charles Darwin (no introduction needed, unless you live somewhere his theory is banned from textbooks).
有些人物为人熟知，比如达尔文（不需介绍，除非你的出生地禁止他的理论出现在教科书）。
But many are less well known, such as Alfred Russel Wallace, a collector and
seller of tropical specimens, who devised the idea of natural selection independently.
但许多并不是那么出名，如阿尔弗雷德·罗素·华莱士，他是热带标本的收藏家和商人，他独立提出了自然选择概念。
Thomas Huxley, Darwin's self-appointed "bulldog", became chief mover and shaker for all things official and scientific in Victorian Britain.
托马斯·赫胥黎，自封达尔文的“斗犬”，成为推动和动摇了维多利亚时代英国的所有官方和科学事务的主要人物。
Owen, Huxley's enemy, held out against Darwin's ideas, yet forced through the construction of the museum many now regard as evolution's temple.
赫胥黎的敌人欧文坚持反对达尔文的思想，但力促自然历史博物馆的建设，如今许多人认为这座博物馆是进化论的圣殿。
It is a grand pageant.
这是场宏大的盛会。
But Mr Taylor also conveys a sense of just how risky it was to believe in and promulgate the new ideas tied to the rocks and tropical forests where people hunted for specimens.
但泰勒先生也感觉到相信和传播那些与石头、热带森林有关的新想法是多么危险，也就是许多标本的搜寻之地。
Some clergymen, Buckland among them, performed intellectual contortions to reconcile the bones with the Bible.
一些神职人员，包括巴克兰，甚至扭转思想，以调和古生物的骨头与圣经之间的矛盾。
Even Darwin, wealthy and well-connected (and at one point himself destined for the church), at first lived in fear of the disgrace that might accrue if his ideas became public.
即使是富有且人脉广泛的达尔文（他自己曾经要去教会任职），起初也生活在恐惧中，担心思想被公开可能带来羞辱。
The intellectual climate changed, of course.
However, lest readers congratulate themselves too readily on theirenlightenment, it is salutary to consider, as the book's prologue does, the case of James Ussher, an Anglo-Irish archbishop who lived in the 17th century.

Ussher devoted his life to calculating the exact date of God's creation of the world.
Unlike some of his 19th-century ecclesiastical successors, he cannot be accused of ignoring or twisting the evidence.
He spent decades and a fortune assembling dusty tomes that gave him what he thought were the data points he needed to anchor biblical passages in time, just as a modern geologist might use the radiometric evidence of volcanic-ash layers to date a series of strata.
Ussher's conclusion was that the world began on October 22nd 4004BC!
It is an idea that sounds almost as prehistoric as a fossil.
But who knows what widely accepted notions of today will also go extinct?

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