首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
Any student setting out on academic career in science is likely to become increasingly separated from humanities and society. Ev
Any student setting out on academic career in science is likely to become increasingly separated from humanities and society. Ev
admin
2012-12-01
78
问题
Any student setting out on academic career in science is likely to become increasingly separated from humanities and society. Even educators who advocate that scientists should be given a rounded education seem to think of these"soft"subjects as sugar-coating for the bitter pill of technical training. But this is not good enough. Now more than ever, scientists need to know a lot more about the political, economic and cultural dimensions of the world if they are to tackle its problem, even if this means they learn a little less science.
There is something fundamentally incoherent about Britain’s science education policy. Last December The Times Higher Education Supplement reported that 20 percent of all science graduates from Britain’s "old" universities were jobless, up from 10 percent five years ago. Yet the science minister and the other champions of the recent national science week, alias SET 95, claim that not enough students are pursuing scientific degrees.
From this standpoint, the UN Population Conference, held in Cairo last September, was a godsend. "Overpopulation" is clearly a problem that is unlikely to disappear overnight, and so there should be plenty of work for scientists.
The consensus of learned opinion tends to diagnose the problem of "overpopulation" in a way that reinforces the division of labor between the arts and the sciences. On the one hand, there is the long-term problem of poverty in most of Africa and much of Asia and Latin America, which stems from a history of exploitation by the developed world. This is portrayed as a problem of geopolitics, not science. On the other hand, there is the more immediate problem of Third World population growing at ecologically unsustainable rates. This is portrayed primarily as a technical problem of devising and acquainting people with the techniques of birth control, while at the same time finding more scientific ways of producing food.
The politically correct thing to say about all this is that we need to move on both fronts at once. The arts-trained people should be tackling the long-term geopolitical issues, while the scientists deal with the more pressing life-and-death matters through their technology transfers.
Few political planners seem to entertain the possibility that the short-term and long-term strategies may work at cross-proposes, given the kind of education that scientists receive. In particular, scientists are trained to think that any problem can be solved if only they can find the appropriate "magic bullet" — some invention that, when widely distributed, will make the problem disappear without leaving more problems in its wake.
The magic bullet mentality is fallacious. Every new bullet eventually becomes a bargaining chip strengthening the hand of one or another party in local Third World power struggles. And each time, the scientific community is horrified that something as well-intended as contraceptives can be converted into a tool of domination. While scientists cannot be expected to become politicians or even political economists, they should have enough understanding of the ways of the world not always to be so surprised when short-term fixes turn into long-term messes.
But the fallacious magic bullet mentality is all too pervasive. Scientific projects designed with the long term in mind are often framed as aiming for a "magic target", an underlying causal mechanism — some gene or bacillus — that, once found, can be treated, cured or eliminated at a stroke.
Why do scientists fall so easily into the trap of thinking in terms of magic bullets shooting at magic targets? The problem here is that students are consistently taught to think about science as quite different — and perhaps even independent — from the rest of society. Among the worst offenders are the potted histories of science that are supposed to inspire students to pursue scientific careers. In elementary school, they tell of the ability of one genius — an Edison or an Einstein — to change the world simply by developing a Good Thing. By the time students reach university, a slightly more complex story is told, whereby the "giants" stand upon one another’s shoulders in fixed sequence: Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Faraday, Maxwell, Einstein, and so on. In neither cases are students told about the individual and institutional "middlemen" who were involved in translating the original idea into a variety of applications that reached far beyond what the original scientist had in mind. A classic example is the wireless, which required the shipping interests of a Marconi, although James Clerk Maxwell and Heinrich Hertz often receive credit for its "theoretical basis".
Bringing this sense of history into play requires that students learn about the larger social dimensions of the scientific enterprise — that science is, indeed, an "enterprise" in the full sense of the word.
The incoherence in Britain’s science education policy reveals that
选项
A、science graduates are oversupplied in job market.
B、old universities are producing more graduates than new ones.
C、students are not interested in pursuing scientific degrees.
D、science graduates are not favorably received by the society.
答案
D
解析
事实细节题。根据题干可将答案定位于第二段。第二段第二句提到英国很多历史悠久的学校理科毕业生失业率高达20%,高于五年前的10%.而科学技术部技术部部长和其他一些媒体声称,攻读理科学位的学生数量远远不够;一方面理科生人数少,另一方面就业率低,可见理科毕业生不受社会欢迎,故答案为[D]。[A]“人才市场上理科毕业生供过于求”和原文不符,可排除。[B]、[C]两项文章没有提及,可排除。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/1LaO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
AboutWetlandsintheU.S.A.Peopleenjoyafamoussoup(SHE-CRABSOUP)inNorthCarolinabecausethedaysoftheregionalsoup
ThroughhisfamouscharacterHamletShakespearesaid,"Tobeornottobe,thatisaquestion."Forhundredsofyears,peopleha
Chaucerwasthefirstimportantpoetofaroyalcourttowritein______aftertheNormanConquest.
WhichofthefollowingisNOTanIrishwriter?
Anniversariesaretheopiumofmuseums,publishers,theatersandoperahouses.Fixingtheireyesonsomeround-numberbirthord
Ifyouwanttoseewhatittakestosetupanentirelynewfinancialcenter(andwhatisbestavoided),headforDubai.Thisfla
Ittakesawhile,asyouwalkaroundthestreetsofNantes,acityofhaftamillionpeopleonthebanksoftheLoireRiver,to
LastmonthHansonTransmissionsInternational,amakerofgearboxesforwindturbines,waslistedontheLondonStockExchange.
A、Becauseofattractivesalariesandaseriesofincentives.B、Becauseofstartingsalariesandrecruitmentactivity.C、Because
Andspeakingoffreedom,isnottheauthorfree,asfewmenarefree?Ishenotsecure,asfewmenaresecure?Thetoolsofhis
随机试题
除了使用按钮进行软件的退出之外,还有其他3种方法同样可以将软件关闭,分别是___________、___________、___________。
口呼吸的原因为
某病人皮肤黏膜均有散在性小红点,不高出皮肤表面,直径约1~2mm,加压时不褪色,称之为()。
A、在细胞培养中使细胞融合形成多核巨细胞B、细胞培养出现空斑C、在培养细胞胞质内形成嗜酸性包涵体D、培养细胞变肿大E、细胞培养不出现细胞病变乙型肝炎病毒
A、雌二醇B、壬苯醇醚栓C、甲羟孕酮D、司坦唑醇E、复方左炔诺孕酮片属于雌激素的是
最低结算备付金限额计算公式为()。
根据下面材料,回答问题。金属历来都是通过采矿、冶金制取的,可是80年代初期,科学家发现在聚乙炔中加入强氧化剂或还原剂后,它的导电性能大大提高。因为这种塑料具有金属的一般特性,所以人们称它为“人造金属”。近年来,它的发展极为神速,人们又先后研制成功
“控制话题”属于()上的阻抗。
下列属于声卡中主音频处理芯片功能的是______。 Ⅰ) 实现三维音效处理的运算和加速 Ⅱ) MIDI波表合成引擎 Ⅲ) 完成数字声音的编码、解码和编辑操作 Ⅳ) 放大声音信号
Thisisoneofthebooksthat______onthissubject.
最新回复
(
0
)