双语畅销书《艾伦图灵传》第9章:退隐山林(87)

Such 'non-linear' problems had to be solved as a whole, and not by the mathematicAl methods familiar in electromagnetic theory, those of describing the system as the sum of many little bits.

这种非线性问题，必须作为一个整体来解，而不是电磁理论中图灵熟悉的那种数学方法，把系统视为很多局部之和。

However, that critical moment of budding, at the instant when the unstable system crystallised into a pattern, could be treated as if it were a 'linear' process—a fact familiar to applied mathematicians, and one which gave him a first handle upon the problem of growth.

不过，在发育刚开始的决定性时刻，当不稳定的系统开始结晶出模式的时刻，可以视为线性的——这是应用数学家们所熟悉的，也是图灵找到的第一个入手点。

So he had his hands on another central problem of life, this time not of the mind, but of the body, although both questions were related to the brain.

总之，他开始研究另一个有关生命的核心问题了，这次不是关于思维，而是关于身体，但这两个问题都与大脑有关。

He quite literally had his hands upon it, for he had always enjoyed examining plants when on his walks and runs, and now he began a more serious collection of wild flowers from the Cheshire countryside, looking them up in his battered British Flora,48 pressing them into scrapbooks, marking their locations in large scale maps, and making measurements.

图灵很轻松地转到了这个问题上，因为他走路和跑步的时候，总是喜欢观察植物。他在柴郡乡下认真地收集野花，在一本破旧的《英国植物志》上找出这些花，然后把它们归入剪贴簿，在一大张地图上标出它们的位置，再做一些统计。

The natural world was overflowing with examples of pattern; it was like codebreaking, with millions of messages waiting to be decrypted.

自然界充满了模式，这又是一场新的解谜，上百万的信息在等着图灵去解。

Like codebreaking, the field was open-ended; with his chemical model he had one sharp tool to apply to it, but that was only the beginning.

与密码解谜一样，这也是个无底的领域，图灵现在有了化学模型，有了锋利的工具，但这仅仅是个开始。

Mrs Webb was just the latest person to be given a talk on the Fibonacci spiral pattern of the fir cone, the pattern which showed itself also in the seeds in sunflower heads, and the leaf arrangements of the common plants.

图灵给韦伯夫人讲了一点科普，关于冷杉球果的斐波纳契模式，这个模式也出现在向日葵的籽中，以及普通植物的叶子排列中。

It was the problem of explaining its occurrence in nature that he set himself as a serious challenge.

要解释这些现象发生的原因，这是图灵对自己的一个严肃的挑战，

But this required the analysis of a two-dimensional surface, and he chose to leave it while he first considered in detail some rather simpler cases.

但是这需要进行二维分析，所以他暂时先把这放到一边，他首先要考虑一些简单的例子。

In a chapter called 'Nature's Repair Shop', Brewster had dwelt upon the regeneration of the Hydra, the small fresh water worm, which could grow a new head or new tail from any chopped-off section.

在《大自然的维修店》这一节中，布鲁斯特讲到水螅的再生，这种小小的淡水虫，可以在任何一个截断的部分上重新长出头和尾。

Alan took the hydra, with its simple tubular form, and simplified it yet again, by neglecting its length, and concentrating upon the idea of a ring of cells.

图灵考虑了这个问题，对它简单的管状模型进行再次简化，忽略其长度，只关注其中的一圈细胞。

Then, he found, taking a model of just two interacting chemicals reacting and diffusing around this ring, that he was able to give a theoretical analysis of all the different possibilities for the moment of budding.

接下来他发现，如果只考虑这个圈上的两种互相作用的化学物质，对其反应和扩散过程进行建模，就可以对生长时的所有可能性进行理论分析。