寫在前面

原視頻來自 TED 講座 David Christian: The history of our world in 18 minutes, March 2011，字幕 (subtitle) 參考自官方網(wǎng)站。

注：本文在字幕基礎(chǔ)上會有一些筆者個(gè)人的筆記，而且字幕會根據(jù)筆者聽記和具體課程內(nèi)容進(jìn)行修改，如有錯誤敬請告知。

Introduction: Backed by stunning illustrations, David Christian narrates a complete history of the universe, from the Big Bang to the Internet, in a riveting 18 minutes. This is "Big History": an enlightening, wide-angle look at complexity, life and humanity, set against our slim share of the cosmic timeline.

導(dǎo)言: 通過一段令人驚嘆的演示，David Christian 在引人入勝的 18 分鐘里向我們講述了從宇宙大爆炸到互聯(lián)網(wǎng)時(shí)代的完整宇宙史，這就是 “大歷史”。演講者嘗試從宏觀的角度看待復(fù)雜性、生命、人性，以及人類在宇宙時(shí)間線上那點(diǎn)微不足道的跨度，試圖給我們帶來啟發(fā)。

Video 1

本節(jié)共 1 小節(jié)，時(shí)長 01:52。

• First, a video.
• Yes, it is a scrambled egg.
• But as you look at it, I hope you'll begin to feel just slightly uneasy.
• Because you may notice that what's actually happening is that the egg is unscrambling itself.
• And you'll now see the yolk and the white have separated.
• And now they're going to be poured back into the egg.
• And we all know in our heart of hearts that this is not the way the universe works.

scrambled egg 炒蛋
uneasy adj. (對某事正確與否) 不確信的，(對做某事) 沒有把握的；不安的，心神不寧的；(狀態(tài)或關(guān)系) 不穩(wěn)定的
unscramble v. 使 (信息、信號等) 恢復(fù)原狀，解碼；整理，使 ... 條理化，理清
in one's heart of hearts 在某人內(nèi)心深處

• A scrambled egg is mush -- tasty mush -- but it's mush.
• An egg is a beautiful, sophisticated thing that can create even more sophisticated things, such as chickens.
• And we know in our heart of hearts that the universe does not travel from mush to complexity.
• And, in fact, this gut instinct is reflected in one of the most fundamental laws of physics, the second law of thermodynamics, or the law of entropy.
• What that says basically is that the general tendency of the universe
• is to move from order and structure to lack of order, lack of structure -- in fact, to mush.
• And that's why that video feels a bit strange.

mush n. 糊狀物；多愁善感的作品 v. 把 ... 碾碎
gut instinct 直覺 instinct n. 本能；天性，天分；直覺 gut adj. 直覺的，感性的，非理性的 n. 腸；內(nèi)臟；(非正式、常用復(fù)數(shù)) 膽量；(非正式) 肚腩 v. 摧毀 (建筑物的) 內(nèi)部；取出 ... 的內(nèi)臟 (以便烹飪)
law /l??/ n. (科學(xué)) 定律，(自然) 規(guī)律；(行為) 準(zhǔn)則，(組織的) 戒律；法律，法規(guī)；法學(xué)；法律行業(yè)
thermodynamics /?θ??rmo?da??n?m?ks/ n. 熱力學(xué)
entropy /?entr?pi/ n. (熱力學(xué)) 熵，體系混亂程度的度量；混亂無序的狀態(tài)

• And yet, look around us.
• What we see around us is staggering complexity.
• Eric Beinhocker estimates that in New York City alone, there are some 10 billion SKUs, or distinct commodities, being traded.
• That's hundreds of times as many species as there are on Earth.
• And they're being traded by a species of almost seven billion individuals,
• who are linked by trade, travel, and the Internet into a global system of stupendous complexity.

staggering adj. 非常驚人的 (very surprising)
commodity /k??mɑ?d?ti/ n. 商品；日用品
stupendous /stu??pend?s/ adj. 令人震驚的；驚人般巨大的 (surprisingly impressive or large)

• 此處第三條中的 Eric Beinhocker 是一名來自英國的經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家，著有 The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics (簡稱《財(cái)富的起源》) 一書，并在該書中闡述了復(fù)雜經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)這一經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)框架。
• 此處第三條中的 SKU 指 Stock Keeping Unit (庫存單位)，每一款商品或服務(wù)都要對應(yīng)唯一的 SKU。

Video 2

本節(jié)共 2 小節(jié)，時(shí)長 06:05。

• So here's a great puzzle:
• In a universe ruled by the second law of thermodynamics,
• how is it possible to generate the sort of complexity I've described,
• the sort of complexity represented by you and me and the convention center?
• Well, the answer seems to be, the universe can create complexity, but with great difficulty.
• In pockets, there appear what my colleague, Fred Spier, calls "Goldilocks conditions":
• not too hot, not too cold, just right for the creation of complexity.

convention n. 大會；習(xí)俗，慣例；公約
in (one's) pocket 在 (某人的) 控制下，在 (某人的) 影響范圍內(nèi)；在口袋里
goldilocks /?ɡo?ld?lɑ?ks/ n. 金鳳花

• 此處第六條中的 goldilocks 源于一名美國傳統(tǒng)童話角色 “金鳳花姑娘”，由于她喜歡一些不好不壞、不多不少的東西，所以常常被用來比喻 “剛剛好” 的事物。

• And slightly more complex things appear.
• And where you have slightly more complex things, you can get slightly more complex things.
• And in this way, complexity builds stage by stage.
• Each stage is magical because it creates the impression of something utterly new appearing almost out of nowhere in the universe.
• We refer in big history to these moments as threshold moments.
• And at each threshold, the going gets tougher.
• The complex things get more fragile, more vulnerable;
• the Goldilocks conditions get more stringent,
• and it's more difficult to create complexity.

utterly adv. (表強(qiáng)調(diào)) 完全地，徹底地
out of nowhere 憑空出現(xiàn)
fragile /?fr?d?l/ adj. 脆弱的；易碎的 fragility /fr??d??l?ti/ n. 脆弱；易碎性；虛弱的狀態(tài)
stringent /?str?nd??nt/ adj. (法律、規(guī)定或條件) 嚴(yán)格的；銀根緊縮的

• Now, we, as extremely complex creatures, desperately need to know this story of how the universe creates complexity despite the second law,
• and why complexity means vulnerability and fragility.
• And that's the story that we tell in big history.
• But to do it, you have to do something that may, at first sight, seem completely impossible.
• You have to survey the whole history of the universe.
• So let's do it.
• Let's begin by winding the timeline back 13.7 billion years, to the beginning of time.

survey /s?r?ve?/ v. 調(diào)查，審視，勘測，房屋鑒定 /?s??rve?/ n. 調(diào)查，勘測，房屋鑒定
wind back 卷回，倒回，倒 (帶)，倒轉(zhuǎn)回

• Around us, there's nothing.
• There's not even time or space.
• Imagine the darkest, emptiest thing you can
• and cube it a gazillion times and that's where we are.
• And then suddenly, bam! A universe appears, an entire universe. And we've crossed our first threshold.
• The universe is tiny; it's smaller than an atom. It's incredibly hot.
• It contains everything that's in today's universe, so you can imagine, it's busting.
• And it's expanding at incredible speed.

cube v. 使變成原來的三次方；將 (食物) 切成方塊 n. 立方體；立方，三次方
gazillion n. 極巨大的數(shù)量
bust v. 突然分解，突然破裂，突然受損；打破，猛烈打擊，破壞；突襲 n. 突襲行動；半身像 adj. 破產(chǎn)的

• And at first, it's just a blur, but very quickly distinct things begin to appear in that blur.
• Within the first second, energy itself shatters into distinct forces including electromagnetism and gravity.
• And energy does something else quite magical: it congeals to form matter,
• quarks that'll create protons and leptons that include electrons.
• And all of that happens in the first second.

blur n. 模糊不清的輪廓，模糊不清的區(qū)域 v. (使) 變模糊
electromagnetism /??lektro??m?ɡn?t?z?m/ n. 電磁；電磁學(xué)
congeal v. 凝固，凝結(jié)
lepton n. 輕子，輕粒子，一種不參與強(qiáng)相互作用、自旋為 1/2 的基本粒子；(希臘貨幣單位) 雷普頓 (等同于 1/100 德拉克馬)

• Now we move forward 380,000 years.
• That's twice as long as humans have been on this planet.
• And now simple atoms appear of hydrogen and helium.

planet n. 行星；地球 (尤指生存環(huán)境)
hydrogen /?ha?dr?d??n/ n. 氫 helium /?hi?li?m/ n. 氦

• Now I want to pause for a moment,
• 380,000 years after the origins of the universe, because we actually know quite a lot about the universe at this stage.
• We know above all that it was extremely simple.
• It consisted of huge clouds of hydrogen and helium atoms, and they have no structure.
• They're really a sort of cosmic mush.
• But that's not completely true.

• Recent studies by satellites such as the WMAP satellite have shown that, in fact, there are just tiny differences in that background.
• What you see here, the blue areas are about a thousandth of a degree cooler than the red areas.
• These are tiny differences, but it was enough for the universe to move on to the next stage of building complexity. And this is how it works.

• 此處第一條中的 WMAP 指 Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (威爾金森微波各向異性探測器)，它是 NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 美國國家航空航天局) 的人造衛(wèi)星，用于觀測宇宙微波背景輻射的微小變化。

• Gravity is more powerful where there's more stuff.
• So where you get slightly denser areas, gravity starts compacting clouds of hydrogen and helium atoms.
• So we can imagine the early universe breaking up into a billion clouds.
• And each cloud is compacted, gravity gets more powerful as density increases,
• the temperature begins to rise at the center of each cloud,
• and then, at the center, the temperature crosses the threshold temperature of 10 million degrees,
• protons start to fuse, there's a huge release of energy, and -- bam! We have our first stars.
• From about 200 million years after the Big Bang, stars begin to appear all through the universe, billions of them.
• And the universe is now significantly more interesting and more complex.

compact v. 把 ... 緊緊壓在一起；使緊密，使壓縮，使簡潔 adj. (東西) 小巧的；(人) 矮小結(jié)實(shí)的
break up 分開，分解，分散；分手；解散，散會，放假 break down 出現(xiàn)故障，垮掉，中止；失敗，破裂，分解；搗毀，破除
fuse v. 熔合，融合，結(jié)合 n. 導(dǎo)火線；保險(xiǎn)絲
star n. 恒星；星星，星狀物；星號；星級 v. (使) 擔(dān)任主演；標(biāo)注星號

• Stars will create the Goldilocks conditions for crossing two new thresholds.
• When very large stars die, they create temperatures so high
• that protons begin to fuse in all sorts of exotic combinations, to form all the elements of the periodic table.
• If, like me, you're wearing a gold ring, it was forged in a supernova explosion.

exotic adj. 奇異的；異國的，外來的；異國情調(diào)的
forge v. 鍛造；努力地締造；偽造；穩(wěn)步移動 n. 可以鍛造的地點(diǎn)

• So now the universe is chemically more complex.
• And in a chemically more complex universe, it's possible to make more things.
• And what starts happening is that, around young suns, young stars,
• all these elements combine, they swirl around, the energy of the stars stirs them around,
• they form particles, they form snowflakes, they form little dust motes, they form rocks,
• they form asteroids, and eventually, they form planets and moons.
• And that is how our solar system was formed, four and a half billion years ago.
• Rocky planets like our Earth are significantly more complex than stars because they contain a much greater diversity of materials.
• So we've crossed a fourth threshold of complexity.

sun n. 恒星；太陽；陽光，日光，太陽的光和熱 asteroid n. 小行星 moon n. 行星的天然衛(wèi)星；月亮
mote n. 塵埃，微粒

Video 3

本節(jié)共 2 小節(jié)，時(shí)長 04:21。

• Now, the going gets tougher.
• The next stage introduces entities that are significantly more fragile, significantly more vulnerable,
• but they're also much more creative and much more capable of generating further complexity.
• I'm talking, of course, about living organisms.
• Living organisms are created by chemistry. We are huge packages of chemicals.
• So, chemistry is dominated by the electromagnetic force.
• That operates over smaller scales than gravity, which explains why you and I are smaller than stars or planets.

• Now, what are the ideal conditions for chemistry?
• What are the Goldilocks conditions? Well, first, you need energy, but not too much.
• In the center of a star, there's so much energy that any atoms that combine will just get busted apart again.
• But not too little.
• In intergalactic space, there's so little energy that atoms can't combine.
• What you want is just the right amount, and planets, it turns out, are just right, because they're close to stars, but not too close.

intergalactic /??nt?rɡ??l?kt?k/ adj. 星系間的

• You also need a great diversity of chemical elements, and you need liquids, such as water. Why?
• Well, in gases, atoms move past each other so fast that they can't hitch up.
• In solids, atoms stuck together, they can't move.
• In liquids, they can cruise and cuddle and link up to form molecules.

hitch up 系上，系住，栓上，栓住，鉤??；拉起，向上拉；(俚語) 結(jié)婚
cruise v. 以平穩(wěn)的速度行駛；巡航；漫游，乘船游覽，開車兜風(fēng)
cuddle v. (親切地、充滿感情地) 摟抱，擁抱，懷抱 n. 擁抱 hug v. 擁抱，抱住；緊靠，緊貼 embrace v. (充滿愛意或出于敬意地) 擁抱；欣然接受；囊括 n. 擁抱；欣然接受

• Now, where do you find such Goldilocks conditions?
• Well, planets are great, and our early Earth was almost perfect.
• It was just the right distance from its star to contain huge oceans of liquid water.
• And deep beneath those oceans, at cracks in the Earth's crust,
• you've got heat seeping up from inside the Earth, and you've got a great diversity of elements.
• So at those deep oceanic vents, fantastic chemistry began to happen, and atoms combined in all sorts of exotic combinations.

crust n. 地殼，(堅(jiān)硬) 外殼；面包皮，餡餅皮，堅(jiān)硬外皮
oceanic /?o??i??n?k/ adj. 海洋的
vent n. 通風(fēng)口，排氣孔，煙囪的煙道，地殼裂縫處的火山口，小動物的肛門；情感發(fā)泄；服飾的開衩部位 (尤指上衣兩旁或背部的開衩) v. 表達(dá)，發(fā)泄，吐露 (強(qiáng)烈感情)；給 ... 提供排放口，使空氣進(jìn)入 ... give (full) vent to one's feeling 某人 (充分地) 表達(dá)或宣泄情緒

• But of course, life is more than just exotic chemistry.
• How do you stabilize those huge molecules that seem to be viable?
• Well, it's here that life introduces an entirely new trick.
• You don't stabilize the individual;
• you stabilize the template, the thing that carries information, and you allow the template to copy itself.

viable adj. 能正常發(fā)育的，可存活的；可行的

• And DNA, of course, is the beautiful molecule that contains that information.
• You'll be familiar with the double helix of DNA. Each rung contains information.
• So, DNA contains information about how to make living organisms.
• And DNA also copies itself.
• So, it copies itself and scatters the templates through the ocean.
• So the information spreads. Notice that information has become part of our story.

helix n. 螺旋，螺旋形
rung n. 梯級，階梯的一級，椅子的橫檔 v.(+n) (ring 的過去分詞) (使) 響起鈴聲；給 ... 打電話；(優(yōu)美的聲音) 回響，回蕩

• The real beauty of DNA though is in its imperfections.
• As it copies itself, once in every billion rungs, there tends to be an error.
• And what that means is that DNA is, in effect, learning.
• It's accumulating new ways of making living organisms because some of those errors work.
• So DNA's learning and it's building greater diversity and greater complexity.
• And we can see this happening over the last four billion years.

in effect (強(qiáng)調(diào)看似不同但效果相同) 實(shí)際上 in fact (強(qiáng)調(diào)陳述內(nèi)容的準(zhǔn)確) 實(shí)際上

• For most of that time of life on Earth, living organisms have been relatively simple -- single cells.
• But they had great diversity, and, inside, great complexity.
• Then from about 600 to 800 million years ago, multi-celled organisms appear.
• You get fungi, you get fish, you get plants, you get amphibia, you get reptiles, and then, of course, you get the dinosaurs.

fungi pl. (fungus 的復(fù)數(shù)) 菌類；真菌，霉菌；蘑菇 (真菌的一種)
amphibia n. 兩棲 (qī) 類，兩棲綱 amphibian n. 兩棲動物；水陸兩用的交通工具

• And occasionally, there are disasters.
• 65 million years ago, an asteroid landed on Earth near the Yucatan Peninsula,
• creating conditions equivalent to those of a nuclear war, and the dinosaurs were wiped out.
• Terrible news for the dinosaurs, but great news for our mammalian ancestors,
• who flourished in the niches left empty by the dinosaurs.
• And we human beings are part of that creative evolutionary pulse that began 65 million years ago with the landing of an asteroid.

peninsula /p??n?ns?l?/ n. 半島
wipe out 消滅，徹底摧毀，使滅絕
mammalian adj. 哺乳類的
niche n. 合適的位置；壁龕 (kān)，(尤指山體的) 天然凹陷處 niche market 有利可圖的市場

• 此處第二條中的 Yucatan Peninsula (尤卡坦半島) 位于墨西哥灣與加勒比海之間，周圍地帶有眾多瑪雅文化的遺跡。
• 此處需要注意，雖然演講者沒有展開說明，但是其闡述的恐龍滅絕的因果鏈 “隕石撞擊→惡劣環(huán)境→恐龍滅絕→哺乳類繁榮” 中每一條因果關(guān)系都不是唯一對應(yīng)或強(qiáng)對應(yīng)的，例如惡劣環(huán)境可能是加速恐龍滅絕的條件，但不一定是唯一的或主要的原因，而恐龍滅絕除了使哺乳類繁榮外，也可能使得其他物種得到發(fā)展。

Video 4

本節(jié)共 2 小節(jié)，時(shí)長 04:55。

• Humans appeared about 200,000 years ago.
• And I believe we count as a threshold in this great story. Let me explain why.
• We've seen that DNA learns in a sense, it accumulates information. But it is so slow.
• DNA accumulates information through random errors that just -- some of which just happen to work.
• But DNA had actually generated a faster way of learning: it had produced organisms with brains, and those organisms can learn in real time.
• They accumulate information, they learn.
• The sad thing is, when they die, the information dies with them.

in real time 實(shí)時(shí)地，即時(shí)地

• Now what makes humans different is human language.
• We are blessed with a language, a system of communication, so powerful and so precise
• that we can share what we've learned with such precision that it can accumulate in the collective memory.
• And that means it can outlast the individuals who learned that information, and it can accumulate from generation to generation.
• And that's why, as a species, we're so creative and so powerful, and that's why we have a history.
• We seem to be the only species in four billion years to have this gift.

be blessed with sth. 幸運(yùn)地享有某物 bless v. 祝福，降福于；祈求祝福，祈求保佑
outlast v. 比 ... 活得更長久，比 ... 更持久

• I call this ability collective learning. It's what makes us different.
• We can see it at work in the earliest stages of human history.
• We evolved as a species in the savanna lands of Africa,
• but then you see humans migrating into new environments,
• into desert lands, into jungles, into the Ice Age tundra of Siberia -- tough, tough environment -- into the Americas, into Australasia.
• Each migration involved learning -- learning new ways of exploiting the environment, new ways of dealing with their surroundings.

savanna /s?'v?n?/ n. (通常指非洲的) 熱帶稀樹草原
tundra n. 凍土帶，凍原，苔原 (樹木不生、底土常年冰凍)
Australasia /???str??le???/ n. (地區(qū)名) 澳大拉西亞
exploit /?k?spl??t/ v. 充分利用，剝削；開發(fā)，開拓；開采 n. 英勇事跡 explore /?k?spl??r/ v. 探索，摸索；探測，考察，勘探；探險(xiǎn)；探討

• 此處第五條中的 Siberia (西伯利亞) 是指北亞地區(qū)的一片廣闊地帶，在石器時(shí)代以前就有人居住在這里。在末次冰期時(shí)代 (the last Ice Age)，由于氣候寒冷，全球水位較低，如今的白令海峽在當(dāng)時(shí)是一片陸地，西伯利亞和阿拉斯加由此連接，對于如今的美洲原住民來說，他們的祖先大部分都是從西伯利亞通過此處到達(dá)美洲的。
• 此處第五條中的 Australasia 在地理上有多種定義，一般指大洋洲的部分地區(qū)，包含澳大利亞、新西蘭等國和附近的太平洋島嶼。

• Then 10,000 years ago, exploiting a sudden change in global climate with the end of the last ice age, humans learned to farm.
• Farming was an energy bonanza.
• And exploiting that energy, human populations multiplied. Human societies got larger, denser, more interconnected.
• And then from about 500 years ago, humans began to link up globally through shipping, through trains, through telegraph, through the Internet,
• until now we seem to form a single global brain of almost seven billion individuals.
• And that brain is learning at warp speed.
• And in the last 200 years, something else has happened. We've stumbled on another energy bonanza in fossil fuels.
• So fossil fuels and collective learning together explain the staggering complexity we see around us.

bonanza /b??n?nz?/ n. 鴻運(yùn)，幸運(yùn)，帶來好運(yùn)之事；富礦帶
warp speed 最快的速度 warp /w??rp/ v. (使) 翹曲，(使) 彎曲；使 (事情等) 變得不合情理；使 (性格) 變得乖戾 wrap /r?p/ v. 用 ... 包裹，用 ... 纏繞
stumble v. 躊躇，蹣跚而行；說話結(jié)巴，說錯 tumble v. 摔倒；翻滾而下；暴跌，驟降 tremble v. 發(fā)抖，戰(zhàn)栗；焦慮

• So -- here we are, back at the convention center.
• We've been on a journey, a return journey, of 13.7 billion years.
• I hope you agree this is a powerful story.
• And it's a story in which humans play an astonishing and creative role.

• But it also contains warnings.
• Collective learning is a very, very powerful force, and it's not clear that we humans are in charge of it.
• I remember very vividly as a child growing up in England, living through the Cuban Missile Crisis.
• For a few days, the entire biosphere seemed to be on the verge of destruction.
• And the same weapons are still here, and they are still armed.
• If we avoid that trap, others are waiting for us.
• We're burning fossil fuels at such a rate
• that we seem to be undermining the Goldilocks conditions that made it possible for human civilizations to flourish over the last 10,000 years.
• So what big history can do is show us the nature of our complexity and fragility and the dangers that face us,
• but it can also show us our power with collective learning.

biosphere n. 生物圈，地球上受到生命活動影響的所有地區(qū) (同義: ecosphere)
be on the verge/brink of sth. 處于某事即將發(fā)生的邊緣 verge n. 事物的邊緣 v. 瀕臨，接近 brink n. (尤指懸崖峭壁的) 邊緣

• 此處第三條中的 the Cuban Missile Crisis (古巴導(dǎo)彈危機(jī)) 指 1962 年 (美蘇冷戰(zhàn)期間) 美國與蘇聯(lián)就蘇聯(lián)在古巴部署導(dǎo)彈一事進(jìn)行的政治博弈，當(dāng)時(shí)美蘇兩方都在古巴周圍嘗試使用核武器威懾對方，那時(shí)人類文明空前地接近毀滅的邊緣，最終以雙方妥協(xié)并撤除核武器結(jié)束。

• And now, finally -- this is what I want.
• I want my grandson, Daniel, and his friends and his generation, throughout the world, to know the story of big history,
• and to know it so well that they understand both the challenges that face us and the opportunities that face us.
• And that's why a group of us are building a free, online syllabus in big history for high-school students throughout the world.
• We believe that big history will be a vital intellectual tool for them,
• as Daniel and his generation face the huge challenges and also the huge opportunities ahead of them
• at this threshold moment in the history of our beautiful planet.
• I thank you for your attention.

Grammar & Speaking

灑灑水啦～