原文摘自《The Selfish Gene》第12页。前文提供语境：
Darwin’s ‘survival of the fittest’ is really a special case of a more general law of survival of the stable. The universe is populated by stable things. A stable thing is a collection of atoms that is permanent enough or common enough to deserve a name. It may be a unique collection of atoms, such as the Matterhorn, that lasts long enough to be worth naming. Or it may be a class of entities, such as rain drops, that come into existence at a sufficiently high rate to deserve a collective name, even if any one of them is short-lived. The things that we see around us, and which we think of as needing explanation — rocks, galaxies, ocean waves — are all, to a greater or lesser extent, stable patterns of atoms. Soap bubbles tend to be spherical because this is a stable configuration for thin films filled with gas.
In a spacecraft, water is also stable in spherical globules, but on earth, where there is gravity, the stable surface for standing water is flat and horizontal.
在太空里，静止的水面是球面，但是在地球上，因为有重力，静止的水面是水平的镜面。
where这个单词，虽然从第一节英语课就跟“地点”绑定在一起，但是根据不同的上下文，可以“脱壳”，有不同的译法。
比如上面这句话的上下文提供了两个逻辑线索，第一个线索是“but”，引出“球面”与“镜面”的前后对比。第二个逻辑线索，是“重力”与“镜面”之间的因果关系。其实在英文原句里，把“where”替换成“because”，对句意不会造成任何改变。在这种情况下，“where”翻译成“因为”就完全不是问题。
摆脱原文的捆绑和束缚，脱壳，翻译才好玩。
全文翻译：
Darwin’s ‘survival of the fittest’ is really a special case of a more general law of survival of the stable. The universe is populated by stable things.
达尔文的“适者生存论”其实是狭义的，广义上讲，应该叫稳定体生存法则。宇宙里到处都是稳定体。
A stable thing is a collection of atoms that is permanent enough or common enough to deserve a name.
稳定体是什么？如果大量原子聚合在一起，能维持一段时间，或者比较常见，有指代自己的名称，就构成稳定体。
It may be a unique collection of atoms, such as the Matterhorn, that lasts long enough to be worth naming. Or it may be a class of entities, such as rain drops, that come into existence at a sufficiently high rate to deserve a collective name, even if any one of them is short-lived.
有一些原子聚合体很独特，存在了很长时间，就有了自己的名字，比如经年累月矗立在欧洲的马特峰。有一些原子聚合体很常见，隔三差五就会结群出现，虽然个体存在不了太长时间，可是所属的群类有一个统称，比如偶尔倾泻的雨滴。
The things that we see around us, and which we think of as needing explanation — rocks, galaxies, ocean waves — are all, to a greater or lesser extent, stable patterns of atoms.
从我们身边熟知的事物到未知的事物——从岩石到星系到海浪——都是原子组成的稳定结构，只是规模迥异、稳定状态也不一而足。
Soap bubbles tend to be spherical because this is a stable configuration for thin films filled with gas.
肥皂泡之所以是球状，是因为这种形状是薄膜装满气体后的稳定形状。
In a spacecraft, water is also stable in spherical globules, but on earth, where there is gravity, the stable surface for standing water is flat and horizontal.
在太空里，静止的水面是球面，但是在地球上，因为有重力，静止的水面是水平的镜面。