Judging from the scientists I know, including Eva and Ruth, and those whom I've read about, you can't pursue the laws of nature very long without bumping into beauty. "I don't know if it's the same beauty you see in the sunset," a friend tells me, "but it feels the same." This friend is a physicist, who has spent long career deciphering what must be happening in the interior of stars. He recalls for me this thrill on grasping for the first time Dirac's equations describing quantum mechanics, or those of Einstein describing relativity. "They're so beautiful," he says, "you can see immediately they have to be true. Or at least on the toward truth." I ask him what makes a theory beautiful, and he replies, "Simplicity, symmetry, elegance, and power."
從我認(rèn)識或了解的科學(xué)家那里（包括伊娃和魯思），我得出如下的判斷：在追求自然法則的過程中，一個(gè)人很快就會發(fā)現(xiàn)美。“我不知道和你在落日中見到的是不是同一種美，”一個(gè)朋友告訴我，“但感受是一樣的。”這位朋友是個(gè)物理學(xué)家，職業(yè)生涯中很長時(shí)間都在解密星體內(nèi)部的玄妙。他給我講述第一次領(lǐng)悟狄拉克量子作用方程式或愛因斯坦相對論方程式時(shí)的興奮。“它們非常美，”他說，“你馬上就看得出它們肯定正確，或至少接近真理。”我問他是什么使理論變得美麗。他答道：“簡潔、對稱、優(yōu)雅和力量。”
Why nature should conform to theories we find beautiful is far from obvious. The most incomprehensible thing about the universe, as Einstein said, is that it's comprehensible. How unlikely, that a short-lived biped on a two-bit planet should be able to gauge the speed of light, lay bare the structure of an atom, or calculate the gravitational tug of a black hole. We're a long way from understanding everything, but we do understand a great deal about how nature behaves. Generation after generation, we puzzle out formulas, test them, and find, to an astonishing degree, that nature agrees. An architect draws designs on flimsy paper, and her buildings stand up through earthquakes. We launch a satellite into orbit and use it to bounce messages from continent to continent. The machine on which I write these words embodies hundreds of insights into the workings of the material world, insights that are confirmed by every burst of letters on the screen, and I stare at that screen through lenses that obey the laws of optics first worked out in detail by Isaac Newton.
大自然為什么會遵守這些美的原理，目前還沒有明確答案。正如愛因斯坦所說，關(guān)于宇宙最難理解的就是它是可理解的。居住在一顆普通星球上的一種生命短暫的兩足動物能夠計(jì)算光速，列出原子結(jié)構(gòu)或計(jì)算黑洞引力，是否難以想象？我們還遠(yuǎn)未了解世間的萬物，但我們又的確對自然規(guī)律了解很多。列出原一代又一代的人發(fā)現(xiàn)規(guī)律、驗(yàn)證規(guī)律，并吃驚地發(fā)現(xiàn)自然界認(rèn)可這些規(guī)律。一名建筑師在薄脆的圖紙上設(shè)計(jì)圖案，而她的建筑在地震中可以巋然不動。我們將人造衛(wèi)星發(fā)射到軌道用以在洲際間傳遞信息。我用來寫字的機(jī)器包含著千百個(gè)對物質(zhì)世界如何運(yùn)轉(zhuǎn)的洞悉，每一個(gè)迅速呈現(xiàn)在屏幕上的字母都證實(shí)了這一點(diǎn)。同時(shí)，我在通過鏡片看屏幕，片遵循的是由牛頓首先詳盡闡述的光學(xué)原理。
By discerning patterns in the universe, Newton believed, he was tracing the hand of God. Scientists in our day have largely abandoned the notion of a Creator as an unnecessary hypothesis, or at least an untestable one. While they share Newton's faith that the universe is ruled everywhere by coherent set of rules, they cannot say, as scientists, how these particular rules came to govern things. You can do science without believing in a divine Legislator, but not without believing in laws.
牛頓相信，辨識宇宙的種種模式就是在追尋上帝的創(chuàng)造之手。今天多數(shù)的科學(xué)家認(rèn)為造物者的概念是不一定的假說，或者認(rèn)為這一概念無從考證。他們贊同牛頓提出的宇宙是符合一系列連貫的規(guī)律，這些規(guī)律無處不在。同時(shí)，作為科學(xué)家，他們又無法說明這些特定的法則是如何開始統(tǒng)治世界的。一個(gè)人若不相信神圣造物者的存在，可以研究科學(xué)；一個(gè)人若不相信法則，卻無法研究科學(xué)。
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