CHAPTER 25 The Greatest Show on Earth 第25章 地球上最壮观的演出

时间:2023-03-10 01:27:00
CHAPTER 25 The Greatest Show on Earth 第25章 地球上最壮观的演出

CHAPTER 25 The Greatest Show on Earth 第25章 地球上最壮观的演出

Go for a walk in the countryside and you will find yourself among trees, flowers, mammals, birds and insects that belong in your part of the world. Go to a zoo and you will find exotic plants and animals from far away. Go to a natural history museum and there will be fossils, perhaps giant dinosaur skeletons, that are millions of years old. The person who taught us how all these living and fossil species are actually related was a quiet, modest man named Charles Darwin (1809-82). He changed the way we think about ourselves.

去乡间走一走,你会发现自己置身于大树、花朵、哺乳动物、鸟儿和昆虫之中,这些都是你周围世界的一部分。去动物园转转,会发现远方的奇异植物和动物。去一所自然历史博物馆参观一下,就会发现里面有化石,可能是巨大的恐龙骸骨,有几百万年的年龄。这些活着的物种和化石物种都是相互联系的,告诉我们这一点的是一位安静、谦虚的人,名字叫Charles Darwin (1809-82),他改变了我们对自身的看法。

Carl Linnaeus (Chapter 19) named plants and animals with the idea that biological species are fixed. We still name them according to his principles. We can do this because, although we now know plants and animals do change, it's very slow. A biological species has real meaning. But with species there is variation. Children may differ from their parents: perhaps taller or with a different hair color, or a bigger nose. Young fruit flies that swarm around rotting fruit in summer also differ from their parents, but because of their size it's hard to see. Easier to see are the differences between puppies or cats in a litter. What Darwin realized is that variations between parents and their offspring are very important, whether or not we see them. Even if we cannot always appreciate them, nature can, and does. Darwin's road to this vital insight was full of adventure and quiet thought.

Carl Linnaeus(见第19章)认为生物物种是固定的,并以这种想法为动植物命名。我们现在仍然以他的原则命名。虽然动植物物种确实在变化,但速度非常慢,所以我们仍然可以这做。一个生物物种有真实的意义,但也有变化。子辈与父辈可能会有不同,可能高一点,也可能头发颜色不一样,或者鼻子大一点。围绕腐烂的水果嗡嗡飞舞的果蝇的子辈也有父辈不同,但由于尺寸,很难看到,容易看到的是垃圾堆旁边的猫猫狗狗之间的差异。Darwin意识到父辈与后代的差异非常重要,不论你能不能看得到。即使我们并不欣赏这些差异,但自然可以,而且会。Darwin通过探险经历和安静的思考形成了这种关键的见解。

Darwin's father and grandfather were successful doctors. His grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, had a theory of how plants and animals evolved, and wrote poems about science. Charles was a happy child, even though his mother died when he was eight. He discovered a love of nature and experimented with his chemistry set. He was only an average student at school. His father sent him to the University of Edinburgh to study medicine, but he was much more interested in natural history and biology. After the first surgical operation he saw made him physically sick, he knew he

could never become a doctor. Darwin always remained extremely sensitive to suffering.

Darwin的父亲和祖父都是成功的医生。他的祖父,Erasmus Darwin,对于动植物怎样演化有一套理论,并为科学写诗。Charles是一个快乐的孩子,即使他母亲在八岁就去世了,他形成了对自然的爱好,并用自己的化学实验设备进行实验,他在学校时只是一个普通的学生,他父亲将他送到Edinburgh大学去学习医学,但他对自然历史和生物学更感兴趣。在他看了第一场外科手术后,他居然生病了,他知道他永远不可能成为一个医生,Darwin一直对折磨非常敏感。

After his failure in Edinburgh, he went to the University of Cambridge to study for a basic arts degree, with the idea that he would become a clergyman. He passed his exams. Just. But Cambridge turned out to be vitally important because of the friendships he forged with the professors of botany and geology. They inspired him to become a naturalist. John Henslow took him plant collecting in the Cambridge countryside. Adam Sedgwick went with him to Wales to study the local rocks and fossils. After this tour with Sedgwick, Darwin had graduated from the university and was at a loose end, not sure what to do next. He was saved by an unusual offer: would he like to become the 'gentleman naturalist' on a surveying voyage aboard the ship HMS Beagle, led by Captain Robert Fitzroy of the Royal Navy? His father said no, but his uncle convinced his father that it was actually a great idea. The voyage on the Beagle was the making of Charles Darwin.

在Edinburgh失败后,他去了剑桥大学学习基础艺术,希望能成为一名牧师。他通过了考试,但由于在剑桥与植物学与生物学教授形成了良好的友谊,所以剑桥对于他来说还是极其重要的,他们激励他成为一个博物学家。John Henslow带着他到剑桥郊区进行植物收集,Adam Sedgwick与他一起去威尔士去研究当地的岩石和化石。在与Sedgwick的这次旅行之后,Darwin从大学毕业了,并赋闲在家,还没确定下一步去做什么。他被一份不寻常的邀请所拯救:皇家海军的Robert Fitzroy船长正准备启动HMS Beagle号轮船,进行海外调查旅行,邀请他成为这次旅行的绅士博物学家。他的父亲不赞成这次旅行,但他的叔叔说服了他父亲,认为这实际上是个非常好的主意。在Beagle号上的旅行造就了Charles Darwin。

For almost five years, from December 1831 to October 1836, Darwin was away from home as the ship sailed gradually around the world. He was seasick for much of his time at sea, but he also spent plenty of time on land, especially in South America. He was an outstanding observer of all kinds of natural phenomena: landscapes, people and their customs, and plants, animals and fossils. He collected thousands of specimens and shipped them home, all carefully labeled. Today he would have written a blog, but he kept a wonderful journal, which he published after he came home. His Journal of Researches (1839) was immediately popular and remains a classic account of one of the most important scientific journeys ever taken. We know it as The Voyage of the Beagle.

在接近五年里,从1831年9月到1836年10月,Darwin随着轮船到了世界各地,远离家乡。他在海上的大部分时间都晕船,但他也在陆上待了很多时间,尤其是在南美洲。他非常擅长于观察各种自然现象:风景,人物,习俗,植物,动物以及化石。他收集了几千件标本,并随轮船运回了家,全部仔细进行了标记。如果是今天,他肯定会写个blog,但他记了优美的日志,回到家后进行了发表。他的《研究日志》(1839)立刻就流行起来,并一直是最重要的科学旅行之一的经典记录。今天这以《Beagle号航行》为我们所知。

Darwin's ideas about evolution would be worked out in the future, but even then he was privately wondering how plants and animals changed over time. His Journal of Researches told its readers about three especially important things. First, while Darwin was in Chile, he experienced - from the safety of the Beagle - a violent earthquake that dramatically raised the level of the coastline by almost fifteen feet (4.5 meters). Darwin had his copy of Lyell's Principles of Geology with him and was very impressed by Lyell's idea that violent events such as earthquakes could explain the past. The earthquake in Chile convinced Darwin that Lyell was right.

Darwin关于进化的观点会在将来提出,但那时他就开始私下想弄明白动物和植物怎么随着时间变化。《研究日志》告诉读者三件重要的事情。第一,Darwin在智利的时候,他经历了一场剧烈的地震,将海岸线抬高了15英尺(4.5米)。Darwin随身带着Lyell的《地质学原理》,对Lyell的像地震这样的剧烈事件可以解释故去的观点印象深刻。智利的地震使Darwin相信Lyell是正确的。

Second, Darwin was struck by the relationships between living species and recent fossils of plants and animals. On the eastern side of South America, he found large living armadillos, and fossils that were similar: similar, but clearly not of the same actual species. He discovered many other examples, and added his own to those found by other naturalists.

第二,Darwin被活着的物种与最近的动植物化石之间的关系所震惊。在南美东面,他发现了活的犰狳,以及类似的化石,但仅仅是类似,很明显不是实际的物种。他发现了很多其他例子,将自己的发现与其他博物学家的发现放在了一起。

Third, and most famous, were his discoveries on the Galapagos Islands. This group of islands is separated by hundreds of miles from the western coast of South America. Here there were some amazing plants and animals, including giant tortoises and beautiful birds, many of which were unique to a single island. Darwin visited several of the islands and carefully collected specimens. He met an old man who could tell which island a turtle came from, so specific was the appearance of turtles from these islands. But it was only after Darwin returned to England that he began to realise the significance of what he had found. A bird expert looked at the finches collected from the different islands, and found that they were actually of different species. Each island of the Galapagos was, it seemed, a kind of mini-laboratory of change.

第三,也是最著名的一点,是Galapagos群岛的发现。这个群岛与南美西海岸线数百英里,这里有很多神奇的动植物,包括巨大的乌龟和美丽的鸟类,很多都是一个岛屿独有的物种。Darwin拜访了几个岛屿,仔细收集了标本,他遇到了一位老人,可以告知一只海龟具体来自哪个岛屿,这些岛屿上的乌龟外形都非常独特,但Darwin要回到英国之后才意识到这些发现是多么重要。一位鸟类专家观察了从这些不同岛屿上带回来的雀类,发现实际上它们属于不同的物种,似乎Galapagos每个岛屿都是物种变化的一个微型实验室。

Leaving South America, the Beagle sailed across the Pacific to Australia, then under the southern tip of Africa. It returned to England via another brief visit to South America. When the ship arrived back in England in 1836, Darwin had become a first-class naturalist, very different from the nervous young man who had set out. He had also acquired a scientific reputation at home through the reports, letters and specimens he had sent back.

离开南美后,Beagle号穿过大西洋,到达澳大利亚,然后到达非洲最南端。又对南美进行了简短的访问,然后回到英国。当轮船1836年回到英国,Darwin已经成为了一流的博物学家,与刚出发时的那个紧张的年轻人有着天壤之别。通过发回的报道、信件和样本,他也在本土赢得了科学荣誉。

He spent the next few years working on many of the things he had collected on the expedition, writing three books. He also married his cousin Emma Wedgwood, and moved to a large house in the Kent countryside. Down House would be his home for the rest of his life, the place where he would do his most important work. It was just as well that he liked to be at home, since he suffered from a mysterious illness and he was often unwell. Whatever his illness was - and we still don't know what was wrong with him – he and Emma had nine children. He also wrote a steady stream of books and papers. One of these is the most important book in the whole history of biology: On the Origin of Species, published in 1859.

后面几年,他的工作都放在了这次远征中收集的众多物品中,并写了3本书。他还与他的表妹Emma Wedgwood结了婚,搬到了Kent乡村的一间大房子里。他的余生基本都在房间里度过,并做出了他重要的工作。由于他得了一种神秘的疾病,经常不舒服,所以他也很喜欢在家里。不管他得了什么病,事实上我们现在仍然不知道他到底哪里不对,他和Emma生了9个孩子。他一直在不断的出书、发表文章,其中一本就是生物学史上最重要的书,《物种起源》,出版于1859年。

Years before that book was published, Darwin had begun keeping his private notebooks on ‘transmutation’. He began the first in 1837, soon after he returned from the Beagle voyage. In 1838, Darwin read Thomas Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population. Malthus, a clergyman, was mostly interested in why so many people are poor. He suggested that the poor marry too early and have more children than they can look after properly. Malthus said that all species of animals produce far more offspring than can survive. Cats can have three litters a year, each with six or more kittens. Each year an oak tree produces thousands of acorns, and each acorn can become another tree. Flies can produce millions of young flies each year. If all the offspring of these plants or animals survived, and if this happened in the following generations too, the world would soon be completely overrun with cats, oak trees or flies.

在这本书出版前几年,Darwin已经开始记录有关“演变”的私人笔记。第一次开始于1837年,也就是从Beagle号航行归来后不久。1838年,Darwin读了Thomas Malthus的论文《人口论》。Malthus是一位牧师,他对于为什么这么多人都很贫穷很感兴趣。他的意见是,穷人结婚太早,生孩子太多,不能妥善的进行照看。他说所有动物物种都生育非常多的后代,但能活下来的却少的多。猫每年可以生三次,每次有6个或更多的幼崽;橡树每年产生数千个橡子,每个橡子都可以成为另一棵橡树;苍蝇每年可以生产数百万只苍蝇;如果这些动植物所有的后代都存活下来,如果它们的下一代也可以这样,这个世界很快就会充满了猫、橡树或苍蝇。

Malthus believed that all these extra offspring were essential because there is so much wastage. Nature is harsh - it's tough out there. When Darwin read Malthus's essay, he realized that he had discovered a reason why some young make it, and some don't. It would also explain why plants and animals change very gradually over long periods of time. Those that survive must have some advantage over their siblings, and there would be ‘the survival of the fittest’, or natural selection as Darwin called it. Darwin reasoned that all offspring inherit some traits from their parents, such as being fast runners. The offspring with the most useful traits were more likely to survive: they could run a bit faster, or had slightly spinier thorns. So those traits would be 'selected', because the less successful individuals, who did not have these traits, would not survive long enough to have offspring of their own.

Malthus认为这些多余的后代很关键,因为损耗太多。自然是很严酷的,外面很艰苦。当Darwin读到Malthus的文章,他意识到他发现了一个原因,为什么有的年轻个体能活下来,有的则不能,这也可以解释为什么动植物在长长的时间中会逐渐的变化。存活下来的个体比它们的兄弟姐妹有某些优势,也就是说“适者生存”,Darwin称之为自然选择。Darwin推理说,所有的后代都会从父辈遗传到一些特征,比如成为跑的快的个体。得到最有用特质的后代最有可能生存下来:它们可以跑的快一点,或者刺更多一点。所以这些特征将会被“选择”,因为不那么成功的个体,也就是没有这些特征的个体,不会存活的太久,从而没有它们自己的后代。

Darwin realized that change in nature is very slow. But, he argued, we know that change can be much quicker when human beings are in charge of the process, selecting the traits they desire in their plants and animals. He called this artificial selection, and humans have been doing it for thousands of years. Darwin bred pigeons, and exchanged many letters with his fellow pigeon fanciers. He knew just how quickly the shapes and behavior of their show pigeons could change, when the breeders carefully selected pigeons with certain traits for breeding chicks. Farmers had been doing the same thing with their cows, lambs and pigs. So had plant breeders when they tried to improve their crops, or produce more beautiful flowers. You know how very different a sheepdog is from a bulldog. It is easy to create variety in animals if the breeder selects the traits they desire.

Darwin意识到自然中的变化是非常缓慢的。但他辩论到,我们知道如果人类掌握这个过程,选择他们希望的动植物的特征,变化会快的多。他称这个为人工选择,人类已经做这个几千年了。Darwin养鸽子,与其他养鸽爱好者交换了很多信件。他知道如果养殖者仔细选择幼鸽的某些特征进行饲养,鸽子的形体与行为都会变化的很快。农场主也对牛、羊和猪做着同样的事,植物养殖者想改良作物,或生产更漂亮的花朵时,也是一样的。你知道一个牧羊犬和斗牛犬是非常不一样的。如果养殖者选择他们想要的特征,动物很容易就分化了。

Darwin saw that nature acts much more slowly, but, given enough time and the right environmental conditions, exactly the same thing happens. What he had learned of the birds and turtles in the Galapagos Islands illustrated how natural selection worked. The local conditions - soil, predators, food supplies - were slightly different on each island. So the local plants and animals had adapted to the differing local circumstances. The beaks of the various kinds of finches had been 'selected' for the different things they could find to eat: seeds, fruit, or ticks that lived on the tortoises. In some cases, as Darwin had learned, the differences had become great enough to create different species, although all the finches were still closely related. Time and isolation had allowed significant change to occur, and new species had evolved.

Darwin看到自然的这个过程是非常缓慢的,但如果有足够的时间、足够的环境条件,发生的事是相同的。他从Galapagos群岛上的鸟和乌龟那里学到的东西描述了自然选择是怎样工作的。当地的条件,包括土壤、捕食者、食物供应,在每个岛屿上都略有不同。所以,当地的植物与动物适应了不同的当地环境。众多雀类的鸟嘴已经经过了“选择”,确保可以吃到它们能找到的东西,包括种子、水果,或乌龟身上的虱子。Darwin还了解到,虽然所有的雀类仍然密切相关,在一些情况下,差异已经大到可以形成新的物种。时间与隔离使明显的变化得以可能,新的物种已经演化。

Silently, Darwin read widely and collected many other observations. He wrote a brief sketch of his theory in 1838 and a longer version in 1842. But he didn't publish his thoughts. Why? He wanted to be certain he was right. He knew he had a revolutionary view of the living world and that other scientists would criticize him severely if his account was not convincing. In 1844, Robert Chambers, an Edinburgh publisher and amateur naturalist, anonymously published his own version of species change. Chambers' Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation created a sensation. 'Transmutation' became a hot topic. Chambers had gathered a lot of evidence suggesting that living species are the descendants of previous ones. His ideas were rather vague, and he had no real theory about how this had happened. He made many mistakes. His book sold very well, but was savaged by the leading scientists – the very people Darwin hoped to convince. So Darwin waited. He finished some important publications from the Beagle work, and tackled an unusual but safe topic: barnacles. Dissecting and studying these small sea creatures was difficult, but Darwin always insisted that it gave him valuable insights into a group of animals with a large number of living and fossil species, each adapted differently to the way they lived.

Darwin悄悄的进行广泛的阅读并收集了很多其他观察结果。1838年他写下了自己理论的简要梗概,1842年写了一个更长的版本,但他没有发表这些他的思想,为什么呢?他想确定他是正确的。他知道他对生物世界的观点是革命性的,如果他的理由没那么可信,就会遭到其他科学家严厉的批评。1844年,一个Edinburgh的出版家、业余博物学家,Robert Chambers,匿名出版了他自己的物种变化的版本。Chambers的《自然造物历史的痕迹》造成了一时的轰动,“演变”成了热门话题。Chambers收集了大量的证据,认为活着的物种是以前物种的后代。他的观点非常模糊,对于这一切如何发生的,也没有成型的理论,他犯了很多错误。他的书卖的很好,但受到那些主要科学家们的粗暴对待,这些人也是Darwin想说服的人,所以Darwin继续等待。出版完了Beagle号任务相关的重要著作后,他处理了一个不寻常但安全的课题,藤壶。解剖并研究这种很小的海洋生物非常困难,但Darwin坚持认为,这使他可以难得的深入理解这群既有大量存活着的又有大量化石的物种,而且都根据生活方式的不同得到了不同的进化。

After the barnacles, Darwin at last returned to his great work. In 1858, when he was writing a long book that he was calling ‘Natural Selection’, the postman delivered disastrous news. From far-away Asia came a letter asking for Darwin's opinion on a short paper. It was a brief account of the way natural selection could lead to species change over time. Darwin groaned. Its author, Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913), could have been summarizing Darwin's own slow and painful path towards that same conclusion.

藤壶之后,Darwin终于回到了他伟大的著作上。1858年,他在写作他自己称为《自然选择》的著作中,邮递员带来了灾难性的新闻。从遥远的亚洲来了一封信,向他征求对一篇短文的意见。这是一篇自然选择可以随着时间导致物种变化的简短陈述。Darwin叹了口气。它的作者是Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913),可能已经将Darwin自己缓慢而痛苦的道路总结出了相同的结论。

Darwin's friends Charles Lyell and Joseph Hooker, who both knew of his views on species, helped him out. They arranged for a joint presentation of Wallace's and Darwin's ideas at the Linnean Society in London. Nobody paid much attention to what was said at the meeting. Darwin was sick at home and Wallace didn't even know about it - he was 8,000 miles away. But Wallace's letter had persuaded Darwin that he must quickly write a summary of his ideas, instead of the long book he was working on. So On the Origin of Species was published on 24 November 1859. The publisher had 1,250 copies printed. They all sold in one day.

Darwin的朋友Charles Lyell和Joseph Hooker帮助了他,他们都知道Darwin关于物种的观点,他们在伦敦Linnaeus协会上安排了一场Wallace和Darwin的共同观点的联合展示。没有人关注那场会议到底说了啥,因为Darwin正生病在家,Wallace根本就不知道这事,他正在8000英里之外。但Wallace的信使Darwin必须很快将他自己的观点形成摘要,而不是他正在写的巨著。所以《物种起源》在1859年11月24日出版了。出版商印刷了1250册,一天内全部售出。

At the heart of his book were his two main ideas. First, natural selection favors the survival of useful traits, that is, characteristics that help individuals live and reproduce. (Artificial selection showed how human beings could dramatically alter the characteristics of plants and animals if they wanted to, illustrating how changeable plants and animals could be.) Second, natural selection, acting in the wild and over the long run, produced new species. They evolved slowly over time. The rest of the book was a brilliant demonstration of how well these ideas explained the natural world. Darwin wrote about the relationship between living species and their closely related fossil ancestors. He described the geographical distribution of plants and animals throughout the world. He explained how geographical isolation (as in the Galapagos Islands) provides the conditions in which new species can develop. And he emphasized that the embryos of some animals were surprisingly similar to the embryos of others. Darwin's Origin did for biology what Newton's Principia had done for physics. It made sense of a vast number of things in the natural world.

书中包括他的两大核心观点。第一,自然选择支持能存活的有用特征,也就是能帮助个体生存和繁衍的特征(人工选择展示了如果人类想的话,可以显著改变动植物的特征,这说明动植物改变的潜力巨大)。第二,在野生动物身上长期发生的自然选择,会产生新的物种。它们随着时间流逝缓慢的演化。书中剩余的部分精彩的证明了这些观点多么充分的解释了自然世界。Darwin写到了活着的物种与密切联系的祖先的化石之间的关系。他描述了动植物在全世界的地理分布。他解释了地理隔离(就像在Galapagos群岛那里)是如何提供进化新物种的条件的。他还强调了一些动物的胚胎与其他一些动物的惊人的相似。Darwin的《物种起源》对生物学的作用,就像牛顿的《基本原理》对物理学的作用一样。这使自然世界中数量众多的事物有了意义。

Darwin's biggest problem was inheritance: why offspring might be like their parents, and at the same time be slightly different from them and from each other. He read carefully and thought about it. He suggested some explanations, but he knew that heredity (genetics) was poorly understood, and he said so. He also knew that what was important was not saying how inheritance worked but that it did happen.

Darwin最大的问题在于遗传:为什么后代可能像父母,但同时会与它们有些许不同,而且后代之间也有些许不同。关于这个问题,他小心的阅读、思考。他提出一些解释,但他知道遗传学理解的还很不够,他也是这么说的。他还知道重要的不是说出遗传是怎么工作的,而是遗传确实在发生。

On the Origin of Species created a stir. People wrote and talked about it. Some had good things to say about it, others criticized it. Darwin simply kept working on it - he published six editions before he died. He developed his ideas, partly in response to criticisms, and partly because his own ideas continued to mature. As well as keeping the Origin up to date, he continued to write an astonishing number of other books on things that interested him: beautiful orchids, with their flowers adapted to the insects that pollinate them; plants that catch and digest insects; climbing plants that can cling to a wall; and even the humble earthworm. No wonder he was described as ‘a man of enlarged curiosity’. Nothing seemed to escape his notice.

《物种起源》产生了轰动,人们写了很多文章,热烈讨论。一些人说它的好,一些人批评。Darwin则仅仅继续工作,他去世前,这本书出了六版。他发展自己的观点,部分是为了回应批评,部分因为他自己的观点在逐渐成熟。除了持续更新《物种起源》,他还写了非常多的书,都是他自己感兴趣的主题:美丽的兰花,其花朵适应了对其授粉的昆虫;捕捉并消化昆虫的植物;能攀附墙面爬升的植物;还有小小的蚯蚓。难怪形容他是“拥有放大好奇心的人”。什么都逃不过他的注意力。

The Origin didn't say anything about human evolution, although Darwin knew that his insights were just as true for our own biological history. It was pretty clear to any reader of the first edition of the Origin that Darwin believed in the evolution of the human species, but he waited for more than a decade to say so openly, in The Descent of Man (1871).

虽然Darwin知道他的观点对于人类自己的生物历史一样是正确的,但《物种起源》没有提及人类的演化。对《物种起源》第一版的任何读者来说,Darwin是相信人类这个物种的演化的,这个观点是非常清楚的,但他多等了十几年才在《人类的由来》一书中(1871年)公开发表了这个观点。

Darwin made biological evolution a valid scientific theory. Some scientists were not convinced, but most were, even if they sometimes proposed their own versions of how and why it had happened. Many of the details of Darwin's great work have been corrected by later scientific work. It wasn't utterly perfect. It didn't have to be - science is like that. But from his study and garden at Down House, Darwin ensured that we would never look at life on earth in the same way again. The evolutionary history of our planet is simply the greatest show on earth.

Darwin使生物演化成为正当的科学理论。一些科学家还是没被说服,但大部分都被说服了,即使他们有时候提出自己关于这为什么以及如何发生的理论。Darwin巨著的很多细节被后世的科学工作所修正,它并不是绝对完美的,也没必要是,科学就是这样的。但从他的研究和家里的花园中,Darwin确信了这个世界再也不能用相同的方式来看待这个地球上的生命了。我们星球的演化历史简直就是历史上最伟大的表演。