2018考博英语阅读经济学人文章每日精析：你对时间了解多少

　　考博英语阅读大部分博士研究生招生院校都使用《经济学人》杂志文章作为题源，新东方在线考博频道为考博生们将其中的文章进行深度分析，希望能提高大家的考博英语阅读水平，读懂长难句。   

　　导读

　　时间是物理学中的七个基本物理量之一，符号t。在国际单位制(SI)中，时间的基本单位是秒，符号s。

　　哲学家对于时间有两派不同的观点：一派认为时间是宇宙的基本结构，是一个会依序列方式出现的维度，像艾萨克·牛顿就对时间有这様的观点。包括戈特弗里德·莱布尼茨及伊曼努尔·康德在内的另一派认为时间不是任何一种已经存在的维度，也不是任何会“流动”的实存物，时间只是一种心智的概念，配合空间和数可以让人类对事件排先后顺序及进行比较。有介定为：时间不过是人为便于思考宇宙，而对物质运动划分，是人定规则，爱因斯坦将相对论概念用在比喻心理时钟不是绝对。

　　Thoughts on time

　　关于时间的思考

　　Clock-watching

　　看表

　　A sweeping look at mankind’s relationship with time

　　人类和时间的关系的全面观察

　　Feb 11th 2017

　　Why Time Flies: A Mostly Scientific Investigation. By Alan Burdick. Simon & Schuster; 320 pages; $28.

　　为什么时间会飞逝：一个广泛的科学调查。艾伦•伯迪克，西蒙&舒斯特编写;320页;28美元

　　TIME is such a slippery thing. It ticks away, neutrally, yet it also flies and collapses, and is more often lost than found. Days can feel eternal but a month can gallop past. So, is time ever perceived objectively? Is this experience innate or is it learned? And how long is “now”, anyway? Such questions have puzzled philosophers and scientists for over 2,000 years. They also began to haunt Alan Burdick of the New Yorker. Keen for answers, he set out “on a journey through the world of time”, a lengthy trip that spans everything from Zeno’s paradoxes to the latest neuroscience.(读者试译) Alas, he arrives at a somewhat dispiriting conclusion: “If scientists agree on anything, it’s that nobody knows enough about time.”

　　时间就是这么一种狡猾的东西。它会在嘀嗒中消逝，也会不断地飞逝或是崩然离去。通常浪费的时间总是要比比我们所珍视的时间要多。岁月可以是永恒的，但有时候整整一个月的时间却也可以稍纵即逝。所以，我们是否能够客观的去感知时间呢?而这种对时间的体验是我们与生俱来的还是可以后天习得的呢?“现在”又到底是多长时间呢?诸如此类的问题已经困扰了哲学家和科学家2000多年了。(期待您的翻译，明天会有针对这句话的长难句解析哟~)在阿拉斯，他得出了一个让人有点沮丧的结论：如果科学家们都认定了一件事，那么就没有人会对时间有更多的认识。

　　Humans are apparently poor judges of the duration of time. Minutes seem to drag when one is bored, tired or sad, yet they flit by for those who are busy, happy or socialising (particularly if alcohol or cocaine is involved). Eventful periods seem, in retrospect, to have passed slowly, whereas humdrum stretches will have sped by. Although humans (and many animals) have an internal mechanism to keep time, this turns out to be as reliable as a vintage cuckoo clock. “It’s a mystery to me that we function as well as we do,” observes Dan Lloyd, a philosopher and time scholar at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.

　　很显然，人们对时间流逝的的概念并不是很准确。当一个人无聊，劳累，难过的时候，就觉得度日如年，然而当一个人忙碌，开心，或是处于交际之中(特别是有酒精，可卡因陪伴的时候)时，会觉得时间转瞬即逝。在回顾过去的时候，多事之秋，时间过得很慢;反而在乏味时期，时间眨眼就过去了。然而人们(和许多动物)有天生的机制去达到准时的标准，这被证明是和老式布谷鸟时钟一样可靠。“我们做的事情和我们的功能是一样的好，这对我来说一直都是一个迷”丹•劳埃德观察到，他是康涅狄格州的哈特福德的三一学院的哲学家和时间研究者。

　　St Augustine, a fourth-century philosopher and theologian, was the first to recognise time as a property of the mind, an experience of perception and far from absolute. His insight turned what had been a subject of physics into one of psychology, and it informs much of the work of later scientists. In the mid-1800s William James, a philosopher and psychologist, noted that the brain does not perceive time itself but its passage, and only because it is filled in some way. He grew baffled by efforts to quantify the present, observing that any instant melts in one’s grasp, “gone in the instant of becoming”.

　　四世纪的哲学家及神学家圣奥古斯丁是第一位将时间定义为一种无形的资产的人，他认为这是一种无形的感知而不是一种实际绝对的东西。他对时间的认识从一种物理实体转变成了一个心理主题，这一点为之后的科学家的研究内容打下了基础。十九世纪中叶的哲学家及心理学家威廉ž詹姆斯提出大脑本身并不能感受到时间，只是大脑的运作并且是以某种方式充满了(内容物的工作)才能体会到时间的流逝。在不断尝试想要将现在的事物数值化的过程中，他观察到当人们想要抓住它的时候，它就已经消逝了”真的是昙花一现”。

　　Perception n.(u) 观念，感知

　　Inform vt.预示，告知

　　Baffle vt.使受挫，使迷惑

　　Grasp n.(u)&vt.&vi. 控制，抓住，攫取

　　Of all interior clocks, the circadian is perhaps best understood. Nearly every organism has a molecular rhythm cycle that roughly tracks a 24-hour period. In humans all bodily functions oscillate depending on the time of day. Blood pressure peaks around noon; physical co-ordination crests in midafternoon; and muscles are strongest at around 5pm. Night-shift workers are not as productive as they think they are. Cataclysms of human error, including accidents at Chernobyl and aboard the Exxon Valdez, all took place in the small hours, when workers are measurably slowest to respond to warning signals. Long-distance travel often makes a hash of the body’s “synchronised confederacy of clocks”, disrupting not only sleep but metabolism. The jet-lagged body recovers at a rate of about one time zone per day.

　　就所有的内部时间来看，生物钟应该是最好理解的了。几乎每个器官都有一个以24小时为长度的分子节奏周期。人体所有的身体功能都是根据一天的长度来周期性运动的。午间人体血压会达到峰值;身体协调能力在下午茶时间表现到极致;而在下午五点的时候肌肉是最强壮的。上晚班的工作者们的工作效率并没有想象中那么高。人为的灾难，比如切尔诺贝利大爆炸以及Exxon Valdez原油泄漏案都发生在凌晨，而这个时间刚好是工作人员对危险征兆反应最慢的时候。长时间的旅行会把“同步生物钟”变成一团糟，不仅会使睡眠混乱而且会影响新陈代谢。人体倒时差的速度大概是一天一个时区。

　　Interior adj.&n.(c) 内部(的)，内政(的)，内心(的)

　　Circadian adj. <生理>昼夜节奏的，生理节奏的(即大约每天一次的)

　　Molecular adj. 分子的，由分子组成的;

　　Oscillate vt. 使振荡，使振动，使动摇;

　　vi. 持续周期性地摆动; 动摇，犹豫：犹豫不决; 动摇，犹豫：犹豫不决;

　　Cataclysm n.(c) (突然降临的)大灾难

　　small hours午夜，凌晨

　　Metabolism n. 新陈代谢; 代谢作用

　　jet-lagged adj. 有时差反应的

　　Mr Burdick spent quite a lot of time on this book, beginning it just before his twin sons were born and finishing it when they were old enough to suggest titles. It reads like a discursive journey through a vague and slippery subject, a thoughtful ramble across decades and disciplines. Although the study of time has yielded few firm conclusions, one lesson is poignantly certain: most people complain that time seems to speed up as they get older, in part because they feel more pressed for it. “Time”, writes Mr Burdick, “matters precisely because it ends.”

　　伯迪克先生在这本书上花了相当多的时间，从他的双胞胎儿子出生前就开始着手，到他们都长到能够为起标题提供建议时才完成。该书读起来像一段在模糊和不确定的主题里穿梭的散漫的旅程，一段透过年代和纪律的思想漫步。尽管关于时间的研究没有产生一个固定的结论，一件事时深刻地确定的：大多数人抱怨时间随着他们长大而好像过得更快了，部分地因为他们感觉到更缺少它。“时间，”伯迪克先生写道，“重要是因为它要结束了。”

　　Discursive 散漫的，离题的

　　Ramble 漫步，漫游，随笔

　　Poignantly 深刻地