达尔文PK林肯：谁更重要？由刀豆文库小编整理，希望给你工作、学习、生活带来方便，猜你可能喜欢“质疑达尔文阅读及答案”。
Who Was More Important: Darwin or Lincoln? 达尔文PK林肯：谁更重要？
By Malcolm Jones 译/张曦
2009年是林肯和达尔文诞生两百周年，大西洋两岸的英美两国分别展开了为期一年的庆祝活动。除了同年同月同日生，林肯和达尔文还有哪些共同点？他们对世界的深远影响是怎样的？作为杰出历史人物，两者“谁更重要”？也许文中的论述可以让你一见分晓。
How’s this for a coincidence? Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born in the same year, on the same day: Feb.12, 1809.As historical facts go, it amounts to little more than a footnote.Still, while it’s just a coincidence, it’s a coincidence that’s guaranteed to make you do a double take1)the first time you run acro it.Everybody knows Darwin and Lincoln were near-mythic figures in the 19th century.But who ever thinks of them in tandem 2)? But instinctively, we want to say that they belong together.It’s not just because they were both great men, and not because they happen to be exact coevals 3).Rather, it’s because the scientist and the politician each touched off 4)a revolution that changed the world.As soon as you do start comparing this odd couple, you discover there is more to this birthday coincidence than the same astrological 5)chart.Both lost their mothers in early childhood.Both suffered from depreion, and both wrestled with religious doubt.Each had a strained relationship with his father, and each of them lost children to early death.Both spent the better part of their 20s trying to settle on a career, and neither man gave much evidence of his future greatne until well into middle age: Darwin published The Origin of Species when he was 50, and Lincoln won the presidency a year later.Both men were private and guarded 6).Most of Darwin’s friendships were conducted through the mail, and after his five-year voyage on HMS 7)Beagle 8)as a young man, he rarely left his home in the English countryside.Lincoln, though a much more public man, carefully cultivated a bumpkin 9)persona that encouraged both friends and enemies to underestimate his considerable, almost Machiavellian 10)skill as a politician.Self-Made Men Darwin, the man who would almost singlehandedly redefine biological science, started out as an amateur naturalist, a beetle collector, a rockhound 11), a 22-year-old rich-kid dilettante 12).His father had all but 13)ordered him not to go to sea, worrying that it was nothing more than one of Charles’s lengthening list of aimle exploits.How could the father know that when the son came ashore after his five-year voyage, he would not only have shed his aimlene but would have replaced it with a scientific sense of skepticism and curiosity so rigorous and abiding 14)that he would be a workaholic almost to the day he died? But the crucial thing is that he did all this by himself.Darwin may have been independently wealthy, but in terms of his vocation, he was a self-made man.Lincoln was self-made in the more conventional sense—a walking, talking embodiment of the frontier myth made good 15).Like Darwin, Lincoln was not a quick study.Both men worked slowly to master a subject.But both had restle, hungry minds.After about a year of schooling as a boy—and that spread out in dribs and drabs 16)of three months here and four months there—Lincoln taught himself.He read
Blackstone 17)on his own to become a lawyer.He memorized swaths 18)of the Bible and Shakespeare.At the age of 40, after he had already served a term in the U.S.House of Representatives, he undertook Euclidean geometry 19)as a mental exercise.Compulsive Scribbler Darwin seems to have been able to think only with a pen in his hand.He was a compulsive note taker and list maker.His first published work, The Voyage of the Beagle, is a tidied-up version 20)of the log he kept on the five-year trip around the world, and he is unflaggingly 21)meticulous in his observations of the plant and animal life he saw or collected along the way.To live, for Darwin, meant looking and examining and then writing down what he saw and then trying to make sense of it.Reading The Origin of Species, you feel as though he is addreing you as an equal.He is never autocratic 22), never bullying.Instead, he is always willing to admit what he does not know or understand, and when he poses a question, he is never rhetorical.He seems genuinely to want to know the answer.The quality of Darwin’s mind is in evidence everywhere in this book, but so is his character—generous, open-minded and always respectful of those who he knew would disagree with him.Like Darwin, Lincoln was a compulsive scribbler, forever jotting 23)down phrases, notes and ideas on scraps of paper, then squirreling 24)the notes away in a coat pocket, a desk drawer—or sometimes his hat—where they would collect until he found a use for them in a letter, a speech or a document.He was also a compulsive reviser.He knew that words heard are not the same as words read.The Gettysburg Addre apparently gestated 25)in a somewhat similar fashion.Lincoln said what he had to say in two minutes.Brevity is only one of the several noteworthy aspects of what is surely one of the greatest speeches ever made.In 272 words, he defined the national principle so thoroughly that today no one would think of arguing otherwise.Lincoln understood that language could heal, and he knew when to use it.Lincoln, no le than Mark Twain, forged what we think of today as the American style: forthright, rhythmic, muscular, beautiful but never pretty.Revolutionaries Lincoln and Darwin were both revolutionaries, in the sense that both men upended 26)realities that prevailed when they were born.So, considering the joint magnitude of their contributions—and the coincidence of their conjoined birthdays—it is hard not to wonder: who was the greater man? It’s an apples-and-oranges—or Superman-vs.-Santa—comparison.But if you limit the question to influence, it bears pondering, all the more 27)if you turn the question around and ask, what might have happened if one of these men had not been born? Very quickly the balance tips 28)in Lincoln’s favor.Ideas about evolution surfaced throughout the first part of the 19th century, and while none of them was as cogent 29)as Darwin’s, it was not as though he was the only man who had the idea.Lincoln, in contrast, is sui generic 30).Take him out of the picture, and there is no telling what might have happened to the country.True, his election to the presidency did provoke seceion 31)and, in turn, the war itself, but that war seems inevitable—not a question of if but when.Once in office, he becomes the indispensable man.Certainly we know what happened once he was aainated: Reconstruction 32)was administered punitively 33)and then abandoned, leaving the iue of racial equality to dangle for another
century.But here again, what Lincoln said and wrote matters as much as what he did.He framed the conflict in language that united the North—and inspires us still.If anything, with the paage of time, he only looms larger—more impreive, and also more mysterious.Lincoln forever remains just beyond our grasp—though not for want of trying.If Darwin was not so irreplaceable as Lincoln, that should not gainsay 34)his accomplishment.No one could have formulated his theory any more elegantly—or anguished more over its implications.Like Lincoln, Darwin was brave.He risked his health and his reputation to advance the idea that we are not over nature but a part of it.Lincoln prosecuted a war—and became its ultimate casualty—to ensure that no man should have dominion over another.Their identical birthdays afford us a superb opportunity to observe these men in the shared context of their time—how each was shaped by his circumstances, how each reacted to the beliefs that steered the world into which he was born and ultimately how each reshaped his corner of that world and left it irrevocably 35)changed.Answer: Lincoln 难道这是巧合？查尔斯•达尔文和亚伯拉罕•林肯同年同月同日生：1809年2月12日。在历史事件中，这至多不过是个小小的注脚，微不足道。虽然这只是个巧合，但如果你是 歇、渴求知识的头脑。林肯小时候大约上了一年学，这儿上几个月，那儿上几个月，之后他都是自学。为了当一名律师，他独自研习了布莱克斯通的著作；他背诵了《圣经》和莎士比亚作品的很多段落；40岁的时候——当时他已在美国众议院工作了一个任期——为了训练大脑，他学习了欧几里德几何学。
用笔思考
对于达尔文来说，似乎只有手中有枝笔，他才能思考。他总是禁不住地要记笔记、列清单。他出版的 越出我们的理解力，虽然我们试图理解的努力并不少。
即使达尔文并不像林肯那样不可替代，却并不能因此否定他的成就。没有人能比他更精炼地阐述他的理论——也没有人比他更痛苦于该理论所隐含的意义。达尔文同林肯一样勇敢。他冒着牺牲健康和损坏名誉的风险提出自己的观点——人类并非凌驾于自然之上而只是自然的一部分。林肯发起一场战争，来确保人人平等，无人拥有控制他人的权力——最终他成了这场战争的殉难者。他们共同的生日给了我们一个极好的机会，得以在相同的时代背景下观察他们——观察他们各自如何被环境塑造，如何应对操控他们所处世界的信念，最终又如何重塑了各自所在的一方世界，并使其发生了不可逆转的变化。
PK的结果是：林肯胜。
1.do a double take：大吃一惊
2.in tandem：一前一后，一个跟着一个 3.coeval [kəu'i:vəl] n.同时代的人 4.touch off：开始，引发
5.astrological [æstrə'lɔdʒikəl] adj.占星的，占星术的6.guarded ['gɑ:did] adj.谨慎的，有保留的7.HMS abbr.(英国)皇家海军舰艇(Her/His Majesty’s Ship)
8.Beagle ['bi:gl] n.小猎犬号
9.bumpkin ['bʌmpkin] n.土包子，乡巴佬
10.Machiavellian [mækiə'veliən] adj.马基雅弗利的，以诡计、欺骗和狡诈为特征的。马基雅弗利(Machiavelli，1469~1527)，是意大利政治家和历史学家，以主张为达目的可以不择手段而著称于世。
11.rockhound ['rɔk'haund] n.岩石迷，业余矿物学家
12.dilettante [dili'tænti] n.(在艺术或知识领域)浅薄的涉猎者
13.all but：几乎，差不多
14.abiding [ə'baidiŋ] adj.持久的15.16.make good：变得富有，白手起家 16.in dribs and drabs：少量地，零零碎碎地 17.Blackstone：Sir William Blackstone(1723~1780)，英国法理学家，曾对《判例法》(Commentaries on the Laws of England)进行历史性、分析性的论述，至今仍为判例法及其原则的重要经典来源之一。文中代指其著作。18.swath [swɔ:θ] n.长而宽的一条
19.Euclidean geometry：欧几里得几何学
20.tidied-up version：经整理的洁本
21.unflaggingly [ʌn'flægiŋli] adv.不屈不挠地 22.autocratic [ɔ:tə'krætik] adj.独裁的，专制的 23.jot [dʒɔt] v.草草地记下，略记 24.squirrel ['skwirəl] vt.贮藏
25.gestate ['dʒesteit] vt.孕育，构思 26.upend [ʌp'end] vt.颠覆
27.all the more：更加，越发，格外 28.tip [tip] vi.倾斜
29.cogent ['kəudʒənt] adj.强有力的，使人信服的，恰到好处的30.sui generis['sju(:)ai'dʒenəris] adj.独特的，自成一格的31.seceion [si'seʃən] n.脱离联邦，1860~1861年美国有11个州从联邦中脱离，从而引发了美国内战。
32.Reconstruction ['ri:kən'strʌkʃən] n.南部重建时期，1865~1877年美国政府致力于废除奴隶制，彻底清除南部邦联的残余，保障被解放黑奴的权利，通过三个新的宪法修正案加强了联邦政府和法律对南方的控制。
33.punitively ['pju:nitivli] adv.刑罚地，惩罚性地 34.gainsay [gein'sei] vt.否认
35.irrevocably [i'revəkəbli ] adv.不能取消地，不能撤回地
