Eddington was careful to say that in some sense the theory actually worked, for it produced numbers which agreed with the outcome of experiments.

爱丁顿很小心地说，在某些情况下，这套理论是好用的，因为与实验结果相符。

Alan had grasped this point back in 1929: 'Of course he does not believe that there are really about 1070 dimensions, but that this theory will explain the behaviour of an electron.

1929年，艾伦抓住这一点：当然，尽管这个理论能解释电子的行为，但他仍不相信会有10^70个维度。

He thinks of 6 dimensions, or 9, or whatever it may be without forming any mental picture.' But it seemed no longer possible to ask what waves or particles really were, for their hard nineteenth century billiard-ball concreteness had evaporated.

他想到过6维，9维，或者随便多少维，反正是画不出来的。但是，现在似乎不该再问，波或粒子到底是什么，因为十九世纪的波粒战争已经结束了。

Physics had become a symbolic representation of the world, and nothing more, Eddington argued, edging towards a philosophical idealism (in the technical sense) in which everything was in the mind.

物理变成了世界的符号化描述，而这个世界的哲学则是一切都在意识中。

This was the background of Alan's assertion that 'We have a will which is able to determine the action of the atoms probably in a small portion of the brain, or possibly all over it.' Eddington's ideas had bridged the gap between the 'mechanism' of the body, which Alan had learnt from Natural Wonders, and the 'spirit' in which he wanted to believe.

这就是艾伦的知识背景。我们有一种意识，能够决定大脑中一部分、或者所有原子的行为。爱丁顿的想法，填补了二者之间的鸿沟：身体（艾伦从《自然奇迹》那里学到的），和灵魂（他想要相信的）。