by Mott T Greene

Introduction

导言

This is a book about the life and scientific work of Alfred Wegener, whose reputation today rests with his theory of continental displacements, better known as 'continental drift'. Wegener proposed this theory in 1912 and developed it extensively for nearly 20 years. His book on the subject, The Origin of Continents and Oceans, went through four editions and was the focus of an international controversy in his lifetime and for some years after his death.

这本书介绍了阿尔弗雷德-魏格纳的生平和科学工作，他的大陆漂移理论（即众所周知的 “大陆漂移”）在当今享有盛誉。魏格纳于 1912 年提出了这一理论，并在近 20 年的时间里对其进行了广泛的发展。他的著作《大陆和海洋的起源》一书共出版了四版，在他生前和死后的若干年里一直是国际争议的焦点。

Wegener's basic idea was that many mysteries about the Earth's history could be solved if one supposed that the continents moved laterally, rather than supposing that they remained fixed in place. Wegener showed in great detail how such continental movements were plausible and how they worked, using evidence from a large number of sciences including geology, geophysics, paleontology, and climatology. Wegener's idea – that the continents move – is at the heart of the theory that guides Earth sciences today: namely plate tectonics. Plate tectonics is in many respects quite different from Wegener's proposal, in the same way that modern evolutionary theory is very different from the ideas Charles Darwin proposed in the 1850s about biological evolution. Yet plate tectonics is a descendant of Alfred Wegener's theory of continental drift, in quite the same way that modern evolutionary theory is a descendant of Darwin's theory of natural selection.

魏格纳的基本观点是，如果假设大陆横向移动，而不是假设它们固定在原地，那么地球历史上的许多谜团就可以迎刃而解。魏格纳利用地质学、地球物理学、古生物学和气候学等大量科学证据，详细展示了这种大陆运动的合理性及其运作方式。魏格纳的观点--大陆运动--是当今地球科学指导理论的核心：即板块构造学。板块构造学在许多方面都与魏格纳的提议大相径庭，就像现代进化论与查尔斯-达尔文在 19 世纪 50 年代提出的生物进化思想大相径庭一样。然而，板块构造学是阿尔弗雷德-魏格纳的大陆漂移理论的后代，就像现代进化论是达尔文的自然选择理论的后代一样。

When I started writing about Wegener's life and work, one of the most intriguing things about him for me was that, although he came up with a theory on continental drift, he was not a geologist. He trained as an astronomer and pursued a career in atmospheric physics. When he proposed the theory of continental displacements in 1912, he was a lecturer in physics and astronomy at the University of Marburg, in southern Germany. However, he was not an 'unknown'. In 1906 he had set a world record (with his brother Kurt) for time aloft in a hot-air balloon: 52 hours. Between 1906 and 1908 he had taken part in a highly publicized and extremely dangerous expedition to the coast of northeast Greenland. He had also made a name for himself amongst a small circle of meteorologists and atmospheric physicists in Germany as the author of a textbook, Thermodynamics of the Atmosphere (1911), and of a number of interesting scientific papers.

当我开始写魏格纳的生平和工作时，他最吸引我的一点是，虽然他提出了大陆漂移理论，但他并不是地质学家。他曾接受过天文学家培训，并从事大气物理学研究。1912 年提出大陆漂移理论时，他还是德国南部马尔堡大学物理和天文学讲师。不过，他并非 “默默无闻”。1906 年，他与弟弟库尔特一起创造了乘坐热气球飞行 52 小时的世界纪录。1906 年至 1908 年间，他参加了格陵兰岛东北部海岸的探险活动，这次探险活动受到了广泛关注，而且极其危险。他还作为教科书《大气热力学》（1911 年）和许多有趣的科学论文的作者，在德国一小部分气象学家和大气物理学家中声名鹊起。

As important as Wegener's work on continental drift has turned out to be, it was largely a sideline to his interest in atmospheric physics, geophysics, and paleoclimatology, and thus I have been at great pains to put Wegener's work on continental drift in the larger context of his other scientific work, and in the even larger context of atmospheric sciences in his lifetime. This is a 'continental drift book' only to the extent that Wegener was interested in that topic and later became famous for it. My treatment of his other scientific work is no less detailed, though I certainly have devoted more attention to the reception of his ideas on continental displacement, as they were much more controversial than his other work.

尽管魏格纳在大陆漂移方面的工作非常重要，但这在很大程度上是他对大气物理学、地球物理学和古气候学兴趣的副业，因此，我不遗余力地将魏格纳在大陆漂移方面的工作放在他其他科学工作的更大背景下，以及他生前大气科学的更大背景下进行研究。这只是一本 “大陆漂移 ”的书，因为魏格纳对这一主题很感兴趣，后来还因此而出名。我对他的其他科学著作的论述也同样详尽，不过我对他关于大陆漂移的观点的接受情况给予了更多关注，因为这些观点比他的其他著作更具争议性。

Readers interested in the specific detail of Wegener's career will see that he often stopped pursuing a given line of investigation (sometimes for years on end), only to pick it up later. I have tried to provide guideposts to his rapidly shifting interests by characterizing different phases of his life as careers in different sciences, which is reflected in the titles of the chapters. Thus, the index should be a sufficient guide for those interested in a particular aspect of Wegener's life but perhaps not all of it. My own feeling, however, is that the parts do not make as much sense on their own as do all of his activities taken together. In this respect I urge readers to try to experience Wegener's life as he lived it, with all the interruptions, changes of mind, and renewed efforts this entailed.

对魏格纳职业生涯的具体细节感兴趣的读者会发现，他经常停止对某一特定领域的研究（有时一停就是好几年），但后来又重新开始。我试图通过将他人生的不同阶段描述为不同科学领域的职业生涯，来为他迅速转变的兴趣提供指引，这一点在各章节的标题中都有所体现。因此，对于那些对魏格纳生活的某个方面感兴趣的人来说，索引应该是一个足够的指南，但也许不是全部。不过，我自己的感觉是，各部分单独来看不如将他的所有活动放在一起来看更有意义。在这方面，我建议读者尝试体验魏格纳的生活，就像他在生活中所经历的那样，包括所有的中断、想法的改变和新的努力。

Wegener left behind a few published works but, as was standard practice, these reported the results of his work – not the journey he took to reach that point. Only a few hundred of the many thousands of letters he wrote and received in his lifetime have survived and he didn't keep notebooks or diaries that recorded his life and activities. He was not active (with a few exceptions) in scientific societies, and did not seek to find influence or advance his ideas through professional contacts and politics, spending most of his time at home in his study reading and writing, or in the field collecting observations.

魏格纳留下了一些已出版的著作，但按照惯例，这些著作都是报告他的工作成果，而不是他为达到这一目标所走过的历程。在他一生中写下和收到的数以千计的信件中，只有几百封流传下来，他也没有记录自己生活和活动的笔记本或日记。他并不活跃于科学社团（除少数例外），也不寻求通过专业联系和政治来寻求影响力或推进自己的想法，他的大部分时间都花在家里的书房阅读和写作，或在野外收集观测资料。

Some famous scientists, such as Newton, Darwin, and Einstein, left mountains of written material behind, hundreds of notebooks and letters numbering in the tens of thousands. Others, like Michael Faraday, left extensive journals of their thoughts and speculations, parallel to their scientific notebooks. The more such material a scientist leaves behind, the better chance a biographer has of forming an accurate picture of how a scientist's ideas took shape and evolved.

一些著名的科学家，如牛顿、达尔文和爱因斯坦，留下了堆积如山的书面材料，数以百计的笔记本和数以万计的信件。还有一些科学家，如迈克尔-法拉第，在留下科学笔记的同时，还留下了大量的思想和推测日志。科学家留下的这类材料越多，传记作者就越有可能准确地了解科学家的思想是如何形成和发展的。

I am firmly of the opinion that most of us, Wegener included, are not in any real sense the authors of our own lives. We plan, think, and act, often with apparent freedom, but most of the time our lives 'happen to us', and we only retrospectively turn this happenstance into a coherent narrative of fulfilled intentions. This book, therefore, is a story both of the life and scientific work that Alfred Wegener planned and intended and of the life and scientific work that actually 'happened to him'. These are, as I think you will soon see, not always the same thing.

我坚定地认为，我们大多数人，包括魏格纳在内，在任何真正意义上都不是自己生活的作者。我们计划、思考和行动，往往表面上自由自在，但大多数时候，我们的生活是 “发生在我们身上 ”的，我们只是在事后将这种偶然性转化为实现意图的连贯叙述。因此，本书既讲述了阿尔弗雷德-魏格纳计划并打算开展的生活和科学工作，也讲述了实际 “发生在他身上 ”的生活和科学工作。我想您很快就会明白，这两者并不总是一回事。