內容簡介

沒錯，這是一本科普讀物，一本跨度宏偉，著書嚴肅，語言卻“過分”幽默活潑的科普作品。全書大致是按照兩條線同時進行的：一條是按照某類科學發(fā)現(xiàn)在歷史中如何演變，比如地質學以及地球的年齡是怎么被發(fā)現(xiàn)的；比如生物學以及物種的進化；比如物理學以及宇宙的誕生。還有一條脈絡是按照近兩百年的時間線，講述了科學的奇跡與成就，以及科學家們鮮為人知的趣事。

全書對“我們從哪里來？我們是誰？我們到哪里去？”這一千古命題作了極其精妙的闡釋。傳說：每一個人在閱讀此書之后，都會對生命、對人生、對我們所生活的世界產生全新的感悟。另有：一位美國小讀者的父親說，讀過《萬物簡史》之后，他對死亡不再感到恐懼……作者認為，這是一本書所能獲得的最高評價。

作者簡介

比爾·布萊森，享譽世界的美國旅游文學作家。1951年出生于美國艾奧瓦州，畢業(yè)于美國德雷克大學，曾任職于《泰晤士報》與《獨立報》，輾轉定居英美兩地，目前與妻子孩子定居于英國諾?？丝?。布萊森擅長用不同的眼光來看待他所游歷的世界，在他的書里，英國式的睿智幽默與美國式的搞笑絕妙地融合在了一起。他的尖刻加上他的博學，讓他的文字充滿了幽默、機敏和智慧。

他的游記類代表作有《歐洲在發(fā)酵》、《哈！小不列顛》、《偏跟山過不去》等多種，每本均高居美、英、加暢銷書排行榜前列。其中《哈！小不列顛》更被英國讀者推選為“最能深刻傳達出英國靈魂的作品”。語言學方面著有《麻煩詞匯詞典》、《母語》、《美式英語》等書，皆為擁有廣大擁躉的幽默之作。

入了他的道后，你會發(fā)現(xiàn)他還有各種產出：科普類、傳記類、歷史類、回憶錄……

So thank goodness for atoms. But the fact that you have atoms and that they assemble in such a willing manner is only part of what got you here. To be here now, alive in the twenty-first century and smart enough to know it, you also had to be the beneficiary of an extraordinary string of biological good fortune. Survival on Earth is a surprisingly tricky business. Of the billions and billions of species of living thing that have existed since the dawn of time, most—99.99% it has been suggested—are no longer around. Life on Earth, you see, is not only brief but 1)dismayingly 2)tenuous. It is a curious feature of our existence that we come from a planet that is very good at promoting life but even better at extinguishing it.

所以，謝天謝地，有了原子。不過，有了原子，并且讓它們心甘情愿地聚集為一體，這只是你來到這個世界上的部分條件。你現(xiàn)在能在這個地方，生活在21世紀，并聰明地知道有這回事，你還必須是生物學上一連串極不尋常的好運氣的受益者。在地球上幸存下來，是一件非常微妙的事。自開天辟地以來，存在過數(shù)以億兆的物種，其中大多數(shù)——據(jù)稱是99.99%——已經(jīng)不復存在。你看，地球上的生命不僅是短暫的，而且是令人沮喪般脆弱的。這是我們存在于此的一個很奇特的特征，這顆星球善于創(chuàng)造生命，但同時又更善于毀滅它。

The average species on Earth lasts for only about four million years, so if you wish to be around for billions of years, you must be as 3)fickle as the atoms that made you. You must be prepared to change everything about yourself—shape, size, color, species 4)affiliation, everything—and to do so repeatedly. Thats much easier said than done, because the process of change is random. To get from“5)protoplasmal 6)primordial atomic 7)globule” (as the 8)Gilbert and Sullivan song put it) to 9)sentient upright modern human has required you to 10)mutate new traits over and over in a precisely timely manner for an exceedingly long while. So at various periods over the last 3.8 billion years you have 11)abhorred oxygen and then 12)doted on it, grown fins and limbs and 13)jaunty sails, laid eggs, flicked the air with a forked tongue, been sleek, been furry, lived underground, lived in trees, been as big as a deer and as small as a mouse, and a million things more. The tiniest deviation from any of these evolutionary imperatives, and you might now be licking 14)algae from cave walls or 15)lolling 16)walrus-like on some stony shore, or 17)disgorging air through a blowhole in the top of your head before diving 60 feet for a mouthful of delicious sandworms.

Not only have you been lucky enough to be attached since time 18)immemorial to a favored evolutionary line, but you have also been extremely—make that miraculously—fortunate in your personal ancestry. Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the Earths mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so. Not one of your 19)pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its lifes quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment to perpetuate the only possible sequence of 20)hereditary combinations that could result—eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly—in you.

地球上的普通物種只能延續(xù)大約四百萬年，因此，若要在這里待上幾十億年，你不得不像創(chuàng)造出你的原子那樣變個不停。你要準備著改變自身的一切——形狀、大小、顏色、物種屬性等等——并且不斷地重復這一過程。這說起來容易但做起來難，因為變化的過程是隨機進行的。從“細胞質的原始原子顆粒”（用吉爾伯特和沙利文的話來說），到有知覺、能直立的現(xiàn)代人，你必須在非常長的時間里，遵循著特別精確的時間點，不斷地變異出新的特性。因此，在過去38億年里的不同時期，你先是憎惡氧氣，后又酷愛氧氣，長過鰭、肢和漂亮的翅膀，生過蛋，用叉子般的舌頭舔過空氣，曾經(jīng)長得油光光、毛茸茸，住過地下，也住過樹上，曾經(jīng)長得麋鹿般大，也曾小得像老鼠，你還曾擁有超過一百萬種別的形態(tài)。這些都是必不可少的演變步驟，只要發(fā)生哪怕最細微的一點偏差，你現(xiàn)在也許就會在舔食長在洞壁上的藻類，或者像海象那樣懶洋洋地躺在某個卵石海灘上，或者用你頭頂?shù)谋强淄鲁隹諝猓缓筱@到60英尺（約18.3米）的深處去吃一口美味的沙蟲。

你不光自古以來一直非常幸運，屬于一條受到優(yōu)待的進化鏈，而且就你個人祖先們的存在而言，你可以說是享有奇跡般的好運氣。想一想啊，在38億年的時間里，在這段比地球上的山脈、河流和海洋還要久遠的時間里，你父母雙方的祖先都得很有魅力，從而能找到配偶，都健康得能生兒育女，都有不錯的運氣能活到生兒育女的年齡。這些跟你有關的祖先，一個都沒有被壓死，被吃掉，被淹死，被餓死，被卡住，早年傷病，或者無法在其生命過程中在恰當?shù)臅r刻把一小泡遺傳物質釋放給健康的伴侶，以使這惟一可能的遺傳組合過程持續(xù)下去，最終在極其短暫的時間里令人驚嘆地——產生了你。