萬物簡史 第43期:事物的測定(1)

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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，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最不愉快的實地科學考察，你肯定很難挑得出比1735年法國皇家科學院的秘魯遠征更加倒霉的。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·孔達米納的軍人數(shù)學家的率領下，一個由科學家和冒險家組成的小組前往秘魯，旨在用三角測量法測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.

那個時候，人們感染上了一種了解地球的強烈欲望--想要確定地球有多大年齡，多少體積，懸在宇宙的哪個部分，是怎樣形成的。法國小組的任務是要沿著一條直線，從基多附近的雅羅基開始，到如今位于厄瓜多爾的昆卡過去一點，測量1度經(jīng)線(即地球圓周的三百六十分之一)的長度，全長約為320公里，從而幫助解決這顆行星的周長問題。

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題，有時候還是令人瞠目的大問題。在基多，訪客們不知怎的激怒了當?shù)厝耍皇帜檬^的暴民攆出了城。過不多久，由于跟某個女人產(chǎn)生誤解，測量小組的一名醫(yī)生被謀殺。組里的植物學家精神錯亂。其他人或發(fā)熱死去，或墜落喪命?？疾礻牭牡谌柸宋?-一個名叫讓·戈丁的男人--跟一位13歲的姑娘私奔，怎么也勸不回來。