萬物簡史 第89期:敲石頭的人們(21)

By the middle of the nineteenth century mostlearned people thought the Earth was at least a fewmillion years old, perhaps even some tens of millionsof years old, but probably not more than that. So itcame as a surprise when, in 1859 in On the Origin ofSpecies, Charles Darwin announced that thegeological processes that created the Weald, an areaof southern England stretching across Kent, Surrey,and Sussex, had taken, by his calculations, 306,662,400 years to complete.

到19世紀(jì)中葉，大多數(shù)學(xué)者認(rèn)為地球的年齡起碼有幾百萬年，甚至也許幾千萬年，但也很可能沒有那么大。因此，當(dāng)1859年查爾斯·達(dá)爾文在《物種起源》一書中宣稱，根據(jù)他的計算，創(chuàng)造威爾德地區(qū)——英格蘭南部的一個地區(qū)，包括肯特、薩里和蘇塞克斯——的地質(zhì)進(jìn)程花了306662400年時間才完成時，人們不由得大吃一驚。

The assertion was remarkable partly for being so arrestingly specific but even more forflying in the face of accepted wisdom about the age of the Earth. Darwin loved an exactnumber. In a later work, he announced that the number of worms to be found in an averageacre of English country soil was 53,767. It proved so contentious that Darwin withdrew it fromthe third edition of the book. The problem at its heart remained, however. Darwin and hisgeological friends needed the Earth to be old, but no one could figure out a way to make it so.

這個結(jié)論是很了不起的，部分原因是他說得那么確切，但更因為是他公然不顧公認(rèn)的有關(guān)地球年齡的看法。達(dá)爾文熱衷于用精確的數(shù)字表達(dá)。在隨后的一部著作中，他發(fā)表文章稱英國農(nóng)村的土壤中，每英畝可找到的蠕蟲數(shù)量有53767之多結(jié)果，它引起了激烈的爭議，達(dá)爾文在該書的第三版中收回了他的看法。然而，問題實際上依然存在。達(dá)爾文和他的地質(zhì)界朋友希望地球很古老，但誰也想不出辦法。