萬物簡史 第44期:事物的測定(2)

At one point the group had to suspend work foreight months while La Condamine rode off to Lima tosort out a problem with their permits. Eventually heand Bouguer stopped speaking and refused to worktogether. Everywhere the dwindling party went itwas met with the deepest suspicions from officialswho found it difficult to believe that a group ofFrench scientists would travel halfway around theworld to measure the world. That made no sense atall. Two and a half centuries later it still seems areasonable question. Why didn't the French maketheir measurements in France and save themselves all the bother and discomfort of theirAndean adventure?

測量小組有一次不得不停止工作8個月;同時，孔達米納騎馬去利馬，解決一個許可證問題。他最后和布格互不說話，拒絕合作。這個人數(shù)越來越少的測量小組每到一處都讓當?shù)毓賳T們心存狐疑。他們很難相信，這批法國科學家為了測量世界而會繞過半個地球。這根本說不通。兩個半世紀以后，這似乎仍是個很有道理的問題。法國人犯不著吃那么多苦頭跑到安第斯山脈，干嗎不就在法國搞測量?

The answer lies partly with the fact that eighteenth-century scientists, the French in particular,seldom did things simply if an absurdly demanding alternative was available, and partlywith a practical problem that had first arisen with the English astronomer Edmond Halleymany years before—long before Bouguer and La Condamine dreamed of going to SouthAmerica, much less had a reason for doing so.

一方面，這是因為18世紀的科學家，尤其是法國科學家，辦事很少用簡單的辦法。另一方面，這與一個實際問題有關(guān)。這個問題起源于多年以前--早在布格和孔達米納夢想去南美洲之前，更不用說有理由這么做之前--英國天文學家埃德蒙·哈雷。

Halley was an exceptional figure. In the course of a long and productive career, he was a seacaptain, a cartographer, a professor of geometry at the University of Oxford, deputy controllerof the Royal Mint, astronomer royal, and inventor of the deep-sea diving bell. He wroteauthoritatively on magnetism, tides, and the motions of the planets, and fondly on the effectsof opium. He invented the weather map and actuarial table, proposed methods for working outthe age of the Earth and its distance from the Sun, even devised a practical method for keepingfish fresh out of season. The one thing he didn't do, interestingly enough, was discover thecomet that bears his name. He merely recognized that the comet he saw in 1682 was thesame one that had been seen by others in 1456, 1531, and 1607. It didn't become Halley'scomet until 1758, some sixteen years after his death.

哈雷是個不同凡響的人物。在漫長而又多產(chǎn)的生涯中，他當過船長、地圖繪制員、牛津大學幾何學教授、皇家制幣廠副廠長、皇家天文學家，是深海潛水鐘的發(fā)明人。他寫過有關(guān)磁力、潮汐和行星運動方面的權(quán)威文章，還天真地寫過關(guān)于鴉片的效果的文章。他發(fā)明了氣象圖和運算表，提出了測算地球的年齡和地球到太陽的距離的方法，甚至發(fā)明了一種把魚類保鮮到淡季的實用方法。他惟一沒有干過的就是發(fā)現(xiàn)那顆冠以他名字的彗星。他只是承認，他在1682年見到的那顆彗星，就是別人分別在1456年、1531年和1607年見到的同一顆彗星。這顆彗星直到1758年才被命名為哈雷彗星，那是在他去世大約16年之后。