英語聽力文摘 獨(dú)一無二的我們

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“巖屑”法則

I heard recently that if the laws of nature were changed even a little bit, there would be no people in the universe. Is this true?

Well, it’s certainly true that if the fundamentalconstants of nature were somehow changed, we wouldn’t be here. For example, if gravity were just a little stronger than it is, planets would crash into their stars, so people would never have had a place to evolve.

If the forces that bind together subatomic particles were just a little weaker, there would be a lot of hydrogen floating around, but no atoms, no molecules, and again, no life. You can do this kind of mental exercise with all the fundamentalconstants.

Is this telling us something? Scientists and philosophers who think so are subscribing to what’s called the “Anthropic Principle”–the suggestion that nature is exactly the way it is in order that it will eventually create us.

The great scientist and popularizer Carl Sagan made fun of the Anthropic Principle by proposing what he jokingly called the “Lithic Principle.” If any of the laws of nature were changed just a little bit, he points out, there would also be no rocks. Therefore, the most important thing in the universe must be rocks!

Even scientists are human beings, and we’d like to think that we are so special that the whole universe is here for us. It’s a cool idea. But Carl Sagan didn’t think that was science at all–just good old-fashioned human vanity.

我最近聽說如果自然法則稍稍改變一些，宇宙就不會有人類的存在。真是這樣嗎?

這當(dāng)然是真的，如果自然基本常數(shù)改變了，我們將不復(fù)存在。例如，萬有引力大于現(xiàn)在的，行星就會和恒星相撞，人類也沒有地方進(jìn)化。

如果亞原子粒子間的吸引力再弱一點(diǎn)，氫原子就會懸浮不定，也就沒有了原子分子，生命也不存在了。你還可以做類似的基本常數(shù)推算。

這說明什么呢?科學(xué)家和哲學(xué)家認(rèn)為這些可以歸結(jié)為“人擇原理”: 正是大自然這樣地演化才最終創(chuàng)造出人類。

偉大的科學(xué)普及家卡爾•薩根就戲稱“人擇原理”而提出“巖屑”法則并指出：如果自然法則稍稍改變一些，就不會有巖石。因此，宇宙中至關(guān)重要的是巖石。

甚至科學(xué)家也是人，我們可以認(rèn)為自己是獨(dú)特的，因為全宇宙為了我們而存在。多棒呀!但是，卡爾•薩根并不認(rèn)為和科學(xué)相關(guān)，而是人類由來已久的吹噓。