英语听力文摘 English Digest 419、独一无二的我们（在线收听）

I heard recently that if the laws of nature were changed even a little bit, there would be no people in the universe. Is this true?

Well, it’s certainly true that if the fundamentalconstants of nature were somehow changed, we wouldn’t be here. For example, if gravity were just a little stronger than it is, planets would crash into their stars, so people would never have had a place to evolve.

If the forces that bind together subatomic particles were just a little weaker, there would be a lot of hydrogen floating around, but no atoms, no molecules, and again, no life. You can do this kind of mental exercise with all the fundamentalconstants.

Is this telling us something? Scientists and philosophers who think so are subscribing to what’s called the “Anthropic Principle”–the suggestion that nature is exactly the way it is in order that it will eventually create us.

The great scientist and popularizer Carl Sagan made fun of the Anthropic Principle by proposing what he jokingly called the “Lithic Principle.” If any of the laws of nature were changed just a little bit, he points out, there would also be no rocks. Therefore, the most important thing in the universe must be rocks!

Even scientists are human beings, and we’d like to think that we are so special that the whole universe is here for us. It’s a cool idea. But Carl Sagan didn’t think that was science at all–just good old-fashioned human vanity.

我最近听说如果自然法则稍稍改变一些，宇宙就不会有人类的存在。真是这样吗？

这当然是真的，如果自然基本常数改变了，我们将不复存在。例如，万有引力大于现在的，行星就会和恒星相撞，人类也没有地方进化。

如果亚原子粒子间的吸引力再弱一点，氢原子就会悬浮不定，也就没有了原子分子，生命也不存在了。你还可以做类似的基本常数推算。

这说明什么呢？科学家和哲学家认为这些可以归结为“人择原理”: 正是大自然这样地演化才最终创造出人类。

伟大的科学普及家卡尔•萨根就戏称“人择原理”而提出“岩屑”法则并指出：如果自然法则稍稍改变一些，就不会有岩石。因此，宇宙中至关重要的是岩石。

甚至科学家也是人，我们可以认为自己是独特的，因为全宇宙为了我们而存在。多棒呀！但是，卡尔•萨根并不认为和科学相关，而是人类由来已久的吹嘘。