英语新闻｜达尔文《物种起源》手稿将被拍卖

英语新闻｜达尔文《物种起源》手稿将被拍卖

An "extremely rare" manuscript signed by English naturalist Charles Darwin is expected to fetch up to $790,000 at a Sotheby's auction next month.

一份由英国博物学家达尔文签名的“极为罕见”的手稿，预计将在下个月苏富比拍卖会上拍得79万美元。

The document contains a passage from the famous 1859 work On the Origin of Species, in which Darwin put forth his theory of evolution by natural selection.

该手稿包含1859年《物种起源》中的一段，达尔文在这部巨著中提出了生物进化的自然选择学说。

The document was once thought to be a discarded page from an earlier manuscript of the work. But experts now understand the manuscript was written in 1865 and sent to Hermann Kindt, the editor of the Autographic Mirror who had requested a signed writing sample from Darwin.

这份文稿曾经被认为是《物种起源》早期手稿中被丢弃的一页。但专家们现在了解到，这份手稿写于1865年，《自动镜像》编辑赫尔曼·金特要求他提供一份签名的样本，因此达尔文写后寄给金特。

"While some of Darwin's notes and manuscript leaves have survived over the last hundred or more years, he was known to obsessively revise his publications, often discarding pages from working drafts and treating them as scrap paper, making any autograph manuscript extremely rare," Sotheby's said in a statement.

苏富比在一份声明中说：“尽管达尔文的一些笔记和手稿已经保存了一百多年，但众所周知，他痴迷于修改自己的出版物，经常丢弃工作草稿的纸张，把它们当成废纸，这使得达尔文亲笔签名的手稿极为罕见。”

On the Origin of Species was voted the most influential academic book of all time in a public poll held during Academic Book Week in 2015, beating out other seminal works including The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Republic by Plato, and the complete works of William Shakespeare.

2015年的“学术图书周”的公开投票中，《物种起源》被评为有史以来最具影响力的学术著作，击败了卡尔·马克思和弗里德里希·恩格斯的《共产党宣言》、柏拉图的《理想国》和威廉·莎士比亚全集。

The book offers Darwin's revolutionary idea that species evolve incrementally over generations via the process of natural selection.

在书中达尔文表达了自己革命性的观点，即物种通过自然选择的过程代代相继地进化。

"I have now recapitulated the chief facts and considerations which have thoroughly convinced me that species have been modified, during a long course of descent, by the preservation or the natural selection of many successive slight favorable variations," the document reads.

“我现在重述了主要事实和考虑，这些事实和考虑让我彻底相信，在漫长的进化过程中，通过许多连续的轻微有利变异的保存或自然选择，物种已经被改变，”该文件写道。

Darwin backed up his theory with evidence collected during his 1831-1836 voyage on the HMS Beagle, during which he observed and collected specimens from a number of species. One major observation occurred on the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador. Darwin noted that the finches on the island were similar to finches on the mainland, however, the availability of different foods in each area had led to discrepancies in beak anatomy.        

1831至1836年，达尔文在小猎犬号上航行时观察并收集了一些物种的标本，他用这些收集的证据支持他的理论。达尔文的重大发现产生于厄瓜多尔海岸外的加拉帕戈斯群岛。他指出，群岛上的地雀与大陆的地雀相似，但每个地区可获得的食物种类不同，导致喙的解剖结构产生差异。

"I cannot believe that a false theory would explain, as it seems to me that the theory of natural selection does explain, the several large classes of facts above specified," the excerpt adds. "It is no valid objection that science as yet throws no light on the far higher problem of the essence or origin of life."

“我不相信一个错误的理论会做出这样解释，正如我认为自然选择理论确实解释了上述几大类事实一样，”手稿片段显示，“科学还没有对更高层次的关于生命本质或起源的问题进行阐释，这不是有效的反对意见。”

The manuscript will be placed on display at Sotheby's in New York between Nov 30 and Dec 8, and online bids will be accepted between Nov 25 and Dec 8. The auction house estimates that the document will fetch between $600,000 and $790,000.

手稿将于11月30日至12月8日在纽约苏富比展出，11月25日至12月8日期间将接受网上竞价。拍卖行估计，这份文件的售价在60万美元到79万美元之间。

The auction, which is titled Age of Wonder, will also include a first edition of On the Origin of Species and a copy of On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties, which is a scientific paper written by Darwin and Welsh naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace.

这次拍卖会名为名为“奇迹时代”，还将包括第一版《物种起源》以及“物种形成品种的趋势”的复制品，后者是达尔文和威尔士博物学家阿尔弗雷德·拉塞尔·华莱士所写的一篇科学论文。

incrementally

英[ˌɪŋkrəˈmentəli]  美[ˌɪŋkrəˈmentəli]

adv.递增地

recapitulate

英[ˌriːkəˈpɪtʃuleɪt]  美[ˌriːkəˈpɪtʃuleɪt]

v. 概括

fetch

英[fetʃ]  美[fetʃ]

v.售得，卖得