内容简介

没错，这是一本科普读物，一本跨度宏伟，著书严肃，语言却“过分”幽默活泼的科普作品。全书大致是按照两条线同时进行的：一条是按照某类科学发现在历史中如何演变，比如地质学以及地球的年龄是怎么被发现的；比如生物学以及物种的进化；比如物理学以及宇宙的诞生。还有一条脉络是按照近两百年的时间线，讲述了科学的奇迹与成就，以及科学家们鲜为人知的趣事。

全书对“我们从哪里来？我们是谁？我们到哪里去？”这一千古命题作了极其精妙的阐释。传说：每一个人在阅读此书之后，都会对生命、对人生、对我们所生活的世界产生全新的感悟。另有：一位美国小读者的父亲说，读过《万物简史》之后，他对死亡不再感到恐惧……作者认为，这是一本书所能获得的最高评价。

作者简介

比尔·布莱森，享誉世界的美国旅游文学作家。1951年出生于美国艾奥瓦州，毕业于美国德雷克大学，曾任职于《泰晤士报》与《独立报》，辗转定居英美两地，目前与妻子孩子定居于英国诺福克郡。布莱森擅长用不同的眼光来看待他所游历的世界，在他的书里，英国式的睿智幽默与美国式的搞笑绝妙地融合在了一起。他的尖刻加上他的博学，让他的文字充满了幽默、机敏和智慧。

他的游记类代表作有《欧洲在发酵》、《哈！小不列颠》、《偏跟山过不去》等多种，每本均高居美、英、加畅销书排行榜前列。其中《哈！小不列颠》更被英国读者推选为“最能深刻传达出英国灵魂的作品”。语言学方面著有《麻烦词汇词典》、《母语》、《美式英语》等书，皆为拥有广大拥趸的幽默之作。

入了他的道后，你会发现他还有各种产出：科普类、传记类、历史类、回忆录……

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，谢天谢地，有了原子。不过，有了原子，并且让它们心甘情愿地聚集为一体，这只是你来到这个世界上的部分条件。你现在能在这个地方，生活在21世纪，并聪明地知道有这回事，你还必须是生物学上一连串极不寻常的好运气的受益者。在地球上幸存下来，是一件非常微妙的事。自开天辟地以来，存在过数以亿兆的物种，其中大多数——据称是99.99%——已经不复存在。你看，地球上的生命不仅是短暂的，而且是令人沮丧般脆弱的。这是我们存在于此的一个很奇特的特征，这颗星球善于创造生命，但同时又更善于毁灭它。

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.

地球上的普通物种只能延续大约四百万年，因此，若要在这里待上几十亿年，你不得不像创造出你的原子那样变个不停。你要准备着改变自身的一切——形状、大小、颜色、物种属性等等——并且不断地重复这一过程。这说起来容易但做起来难，因为变化的过程是随机进行的。从“细胞质的原始原子颗粒”（用吉尔伯特和沙利文的话来说），到有知觉、能直立的现代人，你必须在非常长的时间里，遵循着特别精确的时间点，不断地变异出新的特性。因此，在过去38亿年里的不同时期，你先是憎恶氧气，后又酷爱氧气，长过鳍、肢和漂亮的翅膀，生过蛋，用叉子般的舌头舔过空气，曾经长得油光光、毛茸茸，住过地下，也住过树上，曾经长得麋鹿般大，也曾小得像老鼠，你还曾拥有超过一百万种别的形态。这些都是必不可少的演变步骤，只要发生哪怕最细微的一点偏差，你现在也许就会在舔食长在洞壁上的藻类，或者像海象那样懒洋洋地躺在某个卵石海滩上，或者用你头顶的鼻孔吐出空气，然后钻到60英尺（约18.3米）的深处去吃一口美味的沙虫。

你不光自古以来一直非常幸运，属于一条受到优待的进化链，而且就你个人祖先们的存在而言，你可以说是享有奇迹般的好运气。想一想啊，在38亿年的时间里，在这段比地球上的山脉、河流和海洋还要久远的时间里，你父母双方的祖先都得很有魅力，从而能找到配偶，都健康得能生儿育女，都有不错的运气能活到生儿育女的年龄。这些跟你有关的祖先，一个都没有被压死，被吃掉，被淹死，被饿死，被卡住，早年伤病，或者无法在其生命过程中在恰当的时刻把一小泡遗传物质释放给健康的伴侣，以使这惟一可能的遗传组合过程持续下去，最终在极其短暂的时间里令人惊叹地——产生了你。