【研究生学术英语读写教程翻译 中国科学院大学Unit7】

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Unit 7 Why Is the Story of Materials Really the Story of Civilisation?

为什么材料的故事真的是文明的故事？

Everything is made of something. Take away concrete, glass, textiles, metal, and the other materials from our lives and we are left naked, shivering in a muddy field. The sophistication of our lives is in a large part bestowed by material wealth, we would quickly revert to animal behaviour without the stuff of our civilisation: What makes us human is our clothes, our homes, our cities, our things, which we animate through our customs and language. This becomes very apparent if you ever visit a disaster zone. Thus the material world is not just a display of our technology and culture, it is part of us, we invented it, we made it and it makes us who we are.

一切都是由某种东西构成的。从我们的生活中拿走混凝土、玻璃、纺织品、金属和其他材料，我们就赤身裸体，在一片泥泞的土地上瑟瑟发抖。我们生活的复杂性在很大程度上是由物质财富赋予的，我们很快就会回归动物行为，而没有我们文明的东西：使我们成为人类的是我们的衣服、我们的家、我们的城市、我们的东西，我们通过我们的习俗和语言赋予它们生命。如果你去过灾区，这一点就变得非常明显。因此，物质世界不仅仅是我们技术和文化的展示，它是我们的一部分，我们发明了它，我们创造了它，它使我们成为我们自己。

The fundamental importance of materials is made clear from the naming of ages of civilisations - the stone, iron and bronze ages - with each new era being brought about by a new material. Iron and steel were the defining materials of the Victorian era, allowing engineers to give full rein to their dreams of creating suspension bridges, railways, steam engines and passenger liners. Isambard Kingdom Brunel used them as a manifesto to transform the landscape and sow the seeds of modernism. The 20th century is often hailed as the age of silicon, after the breakthrough in materials science that ushered in the silicon chip and the information revolution. Yet a kaleidoscope of other new materials also revolutionised modern living. Architects took mass-produced sheet glass and combined it with structural steel to produce skyscrapers that invented a new type of city life. Plastics transformed our homes and dress. Polymers were used to produce celluloid and ushered in a new visual culture, the cinema. The development of aluminium alloys and nickel superalloys enabled us to fly cheaply and accelerated the collision of cultures. Medical and dental ceramics allowed us to rebuild ourselves and redefine disability and ageing - and as the term “plastic surgery” implies, materials are often the key to new trea