2007考研英语强化班授课讲义(九)

thought, is that the human brain’s roughly one hundred billion nerve cells are much more talented – and human perception far more complicated – than previously imagined. They have built robots that can recognize the error of a machine panel by a fraction of millimeter in a controlled factory environment. But the human mind can glimpse a rapidly changing scene and immediately disregard the 98 percent that is irrelevant, instantaneously focusing on the monkey at the side of winding forest road or the single suspicious face in a big crowd. The most advanced computer system on Earth can’t approach that kind of ability, and neuroscientists still don’t know quite how we do it. (418 words) 

    Notes: ingenuity 心灵手巧，发明创造。plain adv. (=simply)简直是。teller 出纳员。confer… on…把…赋予…。for themselves 独立地。a spell of 一阵。panel控制板；论坛。panel discussion 论坛讨论会。                                                                                  

1. Human ingenuity was initially demonstrated in ____________.

   A. the use of machines to produce science fiction        B. the wide use of machines in manufacturing industry
   C. the invention of tools for difficult and dangerous work  D. the elite’s cunning tackling of dangerous and boring work

2. The word “gizmos” (line 1, paragraph 2) most probably means ____________.

   A. programs                B. experts              C. devices          D. creatures

3. According to the text, what is beyond man’s ability now is to design a robot that can ____________.

   A. fulfil delicate tasks like performing brain surgery      B. interact with human beings verbally
   C. have a little common sense                        D. respond independently to a changing world

4. Besides reducing human labor, robots can also ____________.

   A. make a few decisions for themselves                B. deal with some errors with human intervention
   C. improve factory environment                      D. cultivate human creativity

5. The author uses the example of a monkey to argue that robots are ____________.

    A. expected to copy human brain in internal structure
    B. able to perceive abnormalities immediately
    C. far less able than human brain in focusing on relevant information
    D.  best used in a controlled environment 转贴于：博学在线_考研

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Text  4 (课外阅读) 
                                                                 
    Science has long had an uneasy relationship with other aspects of culture. Think of Galileo’s 17th-century trial for his rebelling belief before the Catholic church or poet William Blake’s harsh remarks against the mechanistic worldview of Isaac Newton. The schism between science and the humanities has, if anything, deepened in this century.

    Until recently the scientific community was so powerful that it could afford to ignore its critics--but no longer. As funding for science has declined, scientists have attacked “anti-science” in several books, notably Higher Superstition, by Paul R. Gross, a biologist at the University of Virginia, and Norman Levitt, a mathematician at Rutgers University; and The Demon-Haunted World, by Carl Sagan of Cornell University.

    Defenders of science have also voiced their concerns at meetings such as “The Flight from Science and Reason,” held in New York City in 1995, and “Science in the Age of (Mis) information,” which assembled last June near Buffalo.

    Anti-science clearly means different things to different people. Gross and Levitt find fault primarily with sociologists, philosophers and other academics who have questioned science’s objectivity. Sagan is more concerned with those who believe in ghosts, creationism and other phenomena that contradict the scientific worldview.

    A survey of news stories in 1996 reveals that the anti-science tag has been attached to many other groups as well, from authorities who advocated the elimination of the last remaining stocks of smallpox virus to Republicans who advocated decreased funding for basic research.

    Few would dispute that the term applies to the Unabomber, whose manifesto, published in 1995, scorns science and longs for return to a pre-technological utopia. *But surely that does not mean environmentalists concerned about uncontrolled industrial growth are anti-science, as an essay in US News & World Report last May seemed to suggest.

    The environmentalists, inevitably, respond to such critics. The true enemies of science, argues Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University, a pioneer of environmental studies, are those who question the evidence supporting global warming, the depletion of the ozone layer and other consequences of industrial growth.

    Indeed, some observers fear that the anti-science epithet is in danger of becoming meaningless. “The term ‘anti-science’ can lump together too many, quite different things,” notes Harvard University philosopher Gerald Holton in his 1993 work Science and Anti-Science. “They have in common only one thing that they tend to annoy or threaten those who regard themselves as more enlightened.”                                                            (399 words)

    Notes: schism分裂。if anything 甚至于还可能。find fault with 批评，挑剔。creationism 上帝创世说。long for 渴望。utopia 乌托邦，理想主义。epit