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  3. It is impossible to measure the importance of Edison by adding up the specific inventions with which his name is associated. Far

It is impossible to measure the importance of Edison by adding up the specific inventions with which his name is associated. Far

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问题     It is impossible to measure the importance of Edison by adding up the specific inventions with which his name is associated. Far-reaching as many of them have been in their effect upon modern civilization, the total effect of Edison’s career surpasses the sum of all of them.
    He did not merely mak6 the incandescent lamp and the phonograph and innumerable other devices practicable for general use; (46)it was given to him to demonstrate the power of applied science so concretely, so understandably, so convincingly that he altered the mentality of mankind. In his lifetime, largely because of his successes, there came into widest acceptance the revolutionary conception that man could by the rise of his intelligence invent a new mode of living on this planet; the human spirit, which in all previous ages had regarded the conditions of life as essentially unchanging and beyond man s control, confidently, and perhaps somewhat naively, adopted the conviction that anything could be’ changed and-everything could be controlled.
    This idea of progress is in the scale of history a very new idea. It seems first to have taken possession of a few minds in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as an accompaniment of the great advances in pure science. It gained greater currency in the first half of the nineteenth century when industrial civilization began to be transformed by the application of steam power. (47)But these changes, impressive as they were, created so much human misery by the crude and cruel manner in which they were exploited that all through the century men instinctively feared and opposed the progress of machines, and of the sciences on which they rested. It was only at the end of the century, with the perfecting of the electric light bulb, the telephone, the phonograph, and the like, that the ordinary man began to fell that science could actually benefit him. (48)Edison supplied the homely demonstrations which insured the popular acceptance of science, and clinched the popular argument, which had begun with Darwin, about the place of science in man’s outlook upon life.
    Thus he became the supreme propagandist of science and his name the great symbol of an almost blind faith in its possibilities. Thirty years ago, when I was a schoolboy, the ancient conservatism of man was still the normal inheritance of every child. We began to have electric lights, and telephones, and to se, homeless carriages, but our attitude was a mixture of wonder, fear, and doubt. Perhaps these would work Perhaps they would not explode. Perhaps it would be amusing to play with them. (49)Today every school boy not only takes all the existing inventions as much for granted as we took horses and dogs for granted, but also, he is entirely convinced that all other desirable things can and will be invented. In my youth the lonely inventor who could not obtain a hearing was still the stock figure of the imagination. Today the only people who are not absolutely sure that television is perfected are the inventors themselves. (50)No other person played so great a part as Edison in this change in human expectation, and finally, by the cumulative effect of his widely distributed inventions plus a combination of the modem publicity technique and the ancient myth-making faculty of men, he was lifted in the popular imagination to a place where he was looked upon not only as the symbol but as the creator of a new age.

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答案爱迪生通过他的发明向人们做了简单明了的展示，使人们普遍接受了科学，并使人们更加肯定了达尔文提出的论断，即科学在形成人生观中发挥着重要作用。
解析 该句是一复合句，主干为Edison supplied the homely demonstrations and clinched the popular argument．定语从句which insured the...of science修饰the homely demonstration；另一定语从句which had begun with Darwin和介词短语about the place...upon life修饰the popular argument．
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