Science finds order and meaning in our experience, and sets about this in quite a different way. It sets about it as Newton did

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问题     Science finds order and meaning in our experience, and sets about this in quite a different way. It sets about it as Newton did in the story which he himself told in his old age, and of which the school-books give only a caricature. In the year 1665, when Newton was twenty-two, the plague broke out in southern England, and the University of Cambridge was closed. Newton, therefore, spent the next eighteen months at home, removed from traditional learning, at a time when he was impatient for knowledge and, in his own phrase, "I was in the prime of my age for invention." In this eager, boyish mood, sitting one day in the garden of his widowed mother, he saw an apple fall. So far the books have the story right; we think we even know the kind of apple; tradition has it that it was a Flower of Kent. But now they miss the crux of the story. For what struck the young Newton at the sight was not the thought that the apple must be drawn to the earth by gravity; that conception was older than Newton. What struck him was the conjecture that the same force of gravity, which reaches to the top of the tree, might go on reaching out beyond the earth and its air, endlessly into space. Gravity might reach the moon; this was Newton’s new thought; and it might be gravity that holds the moon in her orbit. There and then he calculated what force from the earth would hold the moon, and compared it with the known force of gravity at tree height. The forces agreed; Newton says laconically, " I found the answer pretty nearly." Yet they agreed only nearly: the likeness and the approximation go together, for no likeness is exact. In Newton’s science modern science is full grown.

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答案 科学从经验中发现事物的规律和意义,方式全然不同,正如牛顿在晚年时讲述的那个故事那样,而教科书里对此却只有漫画式的描述。1665年,牛顿22岁时,英格兰南部爆发瘟疫,剑桥大学因此被迫停课。于是接下来的18个月,牛顿便在家中度过,脱离了传统的课堂学习,而此时正值他强烈渴求知识之时,用他本人的话说:“当时我正处于创造力的黄金时期。”带着这种孩子气的迫切心情,一天他正坐在寡母的园子里,看到一个苹果从树上落下。至此,教科书对这个故事的描述都是正确的,我们甚至以为自己知道那个苹果是什么品种,相传它是“肯特郡之花”。然而却弄错了这个故事的关键。青年牛顿此时想到的不是苹果是受到引力作用而落到地面的,这种想法早在牛顿之前就存在了。他想到的是,到达树梢的引力也许能冲出地球和大气层,到达无边无际的宇宙。这种引力也许能到达月球,这才是牛顿的新想法;也许正是由于这种引力,月球才得以绕着地球以固定的轨道运行。牛顿当即测算了地球要吸引月球需要多大的力,并将其与苹果树高度的已知引力作比较。两种力的数值一致。牛顿言简意赅地说:“我发现结果十分接近。”然而,两者之间只是接近:相似意味着近似,没有绝对一致的相似。在牛顿的科学理论的基础上,现代科学才得以完善。

解析     本文为一篇科技文,以牛顿发现万有引力为例,介绍了科学发现规律和意义的方式,具有科学性、客观性、准确性的特点,语言上不仅涉及一些基本的科技知识,同时也包含科技文特有的艺术性。翻译时,需要将科技性与艺术性相结合,在追求准确与通顺的同时,体现语言的美感。
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