英汉双语阅读88：到底什么是蝴蝶效应？

摘要：The metaphor of the term “The Butterfly Effect” goes: “Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?”

高效记单词：《新概念英语1词汇专练》

英汉双语阅读87：如何才能找到石油？

The metaphor of the term “The Butterfly Effect” goes: “Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?” It isn’t meant to imply that this could happen, just that a small event, like this, at the right time and place could, in theory, trigger a set of events that will ultimately culminate in the formation of a hurricane on the other side of the world.

“蝴蝶效应”这个术语的比喻是：“巴西蝴蝶翅膀的扇动会引起德克萨斯州的龙卷风吗？”这并不是说这种情况会发生，而是指在适当的时间和地点发生的小事件，理论上可能触发一系列事件，最终导致世界另一端形成飓风。

This was coined by one Edward Lorenz almost 45 years ago during the 139th meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Science. It would prove to be very popular and has been embraced by popular culture ever since. Lorenz was a meteorology professor at MIT. He developed the concept but never intended for it to be applied the way it has all too commonly been used.

这个概念是由爱德华·洛伦兹在45年前的美国科学促进会第139次会议上提出的。它后来变得非常流行，并被大众文化所接受。洛伦兹是麻省理工学院的气象学教授。他提出了这个概念，但从未打算让它以这种常见的方式被应用。

Whilst it sounds a little ridiculous as a concept, it is not meant to be taken literally. “The Butterfly Effect” metaphor is simply meant to demonstrate that little insignificant event can lead to significant results over time. To put it another way, small variances in initial conditions can have profound and widely divergent effects on a system. Such chaotic systems are unpredictable by their very nature.

虽然这个概念听起来有点荒谬，但它并不是字面意思。“蝴蝶效应”的比喻只是旨在说明，小的无关紧要的事件可能会随着时间的推移导致重大的结果。换句话说，初始条件的小偏差可能会对系统产生深远而迥异的影响。这种混沌系统因其固有的不可预测性而无法预测。

This idea became the basis for a branch of mathematics known as Chaos Theory, which has been applied in countless scenarios since its introduction. This branch of mathematics has come to question some fundamental laws of physics. Particularly those proposed by Sir Isaac Newton about the mechanical and predictable nature of the Universe.

这种思想成为一门名为混沌理论的数学分支的基础，自引入以来，该分支已被应用于无数场景中。这门数学分支开始质疑一些物理学的基本定律，特别是艾萨克·牛顿爵士关于宇宙机械性和可预测性的主张。

Similarly, Lorenz challenged Pierre-Simon Laplace, who argued that unpredictability has no place in the universe, asserting that if we knew all the physical laws of nature, then “nothing would be uncertain and the future, as the past, would be present to our eyes.” Lorenz was quick to point out that one of our main problems is the imprecise nature of our measurement devices for things like physical phenomena. Therefore, all we can ever hope to do is make an educated best guess or approximation of events.

同样，洛伦兹挑战了皮埃尔-西蒙·拉普拉斯，后者认为宇宙中不存在不可预测性。洛伦兹指出，如果我们知道了所有自然规律，那么“一切都将是确定的，未来就像过去一样，将呈现在我们眼前”。洛伦兹迅速指出，我们的主要问题是对诸如物理现象等事物的测量设备的精度不够。因此，我们所能做的最好的猜测或近似就是尽可能地做出有根据的猜测。

This is especially true for highly complex systems like weather patterns. Whilst theories in other fields of science, like physics, try to model nature in real life, they are complex systems resulting from many interconnected, interdependent cause-and-effect relationships that are staggeringly complex and probably impossible to ever resolve adequately in practice.

尤其是对于像气象模式这样高度复杂的系统来说更是如此。其他科学领域的理论，比如物理学，试图在现实生活中模拟自然界，但它们是复杂的系统，由许多相互关联、相互依存的因果关系构成，其复杂程度令人难以置信，在实践中可能永远无法完全解决。