雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第9章:退隱山林(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.

這種非線性問題，必須作爲一個整體來解，而不是電磁理論中圖靈熟悉的那種數學方法，把系統視爲很多局部之和。

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.

不過，在發育剛開始的決定性時刻，當不穩定的系統開始結晶出模式的時刻，可以視爲線性的——這是應用數學家們所熟悉的，也是圖靈找到的第一個入手點。

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.

總之，他開始研究另一個有關生命的核心問題了，這次不是關於思維，而是關於身體，但這兩個問題都與大腦有關。

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.

圖靈很輕鬆地轉到了這個問題上，因爲他走路和跑步的時候，總是喜歡觀察植物。他在柴郡鄉下認真地收集野花，在一本破舊的《英國植物誌》上找出這些花，然後把它們歸入剪貼簿，在一大張地圖上標出它們的位置，再做一些統計。

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

自然界充滿了模式，這又是一場新的解謎，上百萬的信息在等着圖靈去解。

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.

與密碼解謎一樣，這也是個無底的領域，圖靈現在有了化學模型，有了鋒利的工具，但這僅僅是個開始。

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.

圖靈給韋伯夫人講了一點科普，關於冷杉球果的斐波納契模式，這個模式也出現在向日葵的籽中，以及普通植物的葉子排列中。

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

要解釋這些現象發生的原因，這是圖靈對自己的一個嚴肅的挑戰，

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.

但是這需要進行二維分析，所以他暫時先把這放到一邊，他首先要考慮一些簡單的例子。

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《大自然的維修店》這一節中，布魯斯特講到水螅的再生，這種小小的淡水蟲，可以在任何一個截斷的部分上重新長出頭和尾。

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.

圖靈考慮了這個問題，對它簡單的管狀模型進行再次簡化，忽略其長度，只關注其中的一圈細胞。

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.

接下來他發現，如果只考慮這個圈上的兩種互相作用的化學物質，對其反應和擴散過程進行建模，就可以對生長時的所有可能性進行理論分析。