万物简史 第443期:小生物的世界(14)

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　　It's not hard to see why. 原因不难明白，

　　On Woese's model, the worlds of botany and zoology⁵ are relegated⁶ to a few twigs⁷ on the outermost⁸ branch of the Eukaryan limb. 按照沃斯的模式，植物界和动物界都被挂在真核细胞这根主枝最外缘一根分枝的几根小枝上。

　　Everything else belongs to unicellular beings. 除此以外，别的一切都属于单细胞生物。

　　These folks were brought up to classify in terms of gross morphological similarities and differences, Woese told an interviewer in 1996. “这些人向来就是完全按照形态上的异同来进行分类的，”沃斯1966年在接受采访时说，

　　"The idea of doing so in terms of molecular⁹ sequence is a bit hard for many of them to swallow." “对许多人来说，按照分子顺序来分类的观点是不大容易接受的。”

　　In short, if they couldn't see a difference with their own eyes, they didn't like it. 总而言之，要是他们不亲眼看到有什么不同之处，他们就不会喜欢。

　　And so they persisted with the traditional five-kingdom division, 因此，他们坚持比较普通的五界分类法。

　　an arrangement that Woese called "not very useful" in his milder moments and "positively¹⁰ misleading" much of the rest of the time. 对于这种安排，沃斯在脾气好的时候说是“不大有用”，更经常说是“完全把人引入歧途”。

　　"Biology, like physics before it," Woese wrote, “像之前的物理学一样，”沃斯写道，

　　"has moved to a level where the objects of interest and their interactions often cannot be perceived through direct observation." “生物学已经发展到一个水平，有关的物体及相互作用往往不是通过直接观察所能看到的。”

　　In 1998 the great and ancient Harvard zoologist³ Ernst Mayr 1998年，哈佛大学伟大的动物学家厄恩特·迈尔

　　(who then was in his ninety-fourth year and at the time of my writing is nearing one hundred and still going strong) （他当时已经94岁高龄；到我写这本书的时候，他快到100岁了，依然身强力壮）

　　stirred the pot further by declaring that there should be just two prime divisions of life—"empires" he called them. 更是唯恐天下不乱，宣称生命只要分成两大类——即他所谓的“帝国”。

　　In a paper published in the Proceedings¹¹ of the National Academy of Sciences, 迈尔在《国家科学院公报》上发表的一篇论文中说，

　　Mayr said that Woese's findings were interesting but ultimately misguided, noting that 沃斯的发现很有意思，但绝对是错误的，并指出，

　　"Woese was not trained as a biologist and quite naturally does not have an extensive familiarity with the principles of classification," “沃斯没有接受过当生物学家的训练，对分类原则不大熟悉，这是很自然的”。

　　which is perhaps as close as one distinguished¹² scientist can come to saying of another that he doesn't know what he is talking about. 一位杰出的科学家对别人发表这样一番评论，差不多是在说，那个人简直不知道自己在说什么。

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