万物简史 第60期:事物的测定(7)

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极其偶然，历史也只有过几次吧，有人作出如此敏锐而又出人意料的观察，人们无法确定究竟哪个更加惊人--是那个事实还是他的思想。《原理》的问世就是这样的一个时刻。它顿时使牛顿闻名遐迩。

For the rest of his life he would be draped with plaudits and honors, becoming, among much else, the first person in Britain knighted for scientific achievement. Even the great German mathematician¹ Gottfried von Leibniz, with whom Newton had a long, bitter fight over priority for the invention of the calculus², thought his contributions to mathematics equal to all the accumulated work that had preceded him. "Nearer the gods no mortal may approach," wrote Halley in a sentiment that was endlessly echoed by his contemporaries and by many others since.

在他的余生里，他将生活在赞扬声和荣誉堆里，尤其成了英国因科学成就而被封为爵士的第一人。连伟大的德国数学家戈特弗里德·莱布尼兹也认为，他对数学的贡献比得上在他之前的所有成就的总和，尽管在谁先发明微积分的问题上，牛顿曾跟他进行过长期而又激烈的斗争。"没有任何凡人比牛顿本人更接近神。"哈雷深有感触地写道。他的同时代人以及此后的许多别人对此一直怀有同感。

Although the Principia has been called "one of the most inaccessible³ books ever written" (Newton intentionally⁴ made it difficult so that he wouldn't be pestered⁵ by mathematical "smatterers," as he called them), it was a beacon⁶ to those who could follow it. It not only explained mathematically the orbits of heavenly bodies, but also identified the attractive force that got them moving in the first place—gravity. Suddenly every motion in the universe made sense.

《原理》一直被称为"最难看懂的书之一"（牛顿故意把书写得很难，那样就不会被他所谓的数学"门外汉"纠缠不休），但对看得懂的人来说，它是一盏明灯。它不仅从数学的角度解释了天体的轨道，而且指出了使天体运行的引力--万有引力。突然之间，宇宙里的每种运动都说得通了。

 

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