It has become an obvious truth by now that scientists are not mere knowledge-acquisition machines; they are guided by emotion an

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问题    It has become an obvious truth by now that scientists are not mere knowledge-acquisition machines; they are guided by emotion and intuition as well as by cold reason and calculation. 【F1】Scientiste are rarely so human. I have found, so at the mercy of their fears and desires, as when they are confronting the limits of knowledge. The greatest scientists want, above all, to discover truths about nature (in addition to acquiring glory, grants, and tenure and improving the lot of humankind); they want to know. They hope, and trust, that the truth is attainable, not merely an ideal, which they eternally approach.
   Scientists who harbor this belief are often accused of arrogance. Some are arrogant, supremely so. But many others, I have found, are less arrogant than anxious. These are trying times for truth seekers. Moreover, science itself, as it advances, keeps imposing limits on its own power.
   For the most part, strong scientists have only one option: to pursue science in a speculative, post empirical mode that I call ironic science. 【F2】Ironic science resembles literary criticism in that it offers points of view, opinions, which are, at best, interesting, which provoke further comment. But it does not converge on the truth. It cannot achieve empirically verifiable surprises that force scientists to make substantial revisions in their basic description of reality.
   【F3】As empirical science become stereotyped, journalists such as myself, who feed society’s hunger, will come under more pressure to promote theories that supposedly transcend the big bang theory or natural selection. Journalists are, after all, largely responsible for the popular impression that fields such as chaos and complexity represent genuinely new sciences superior to the dull old reductionist methods of Newton, Einstein and Darwin. 【F4】Journalists, myself included, have also helped quantum (量子) theories of consciousness win an audience much larger than they deserve given their poor standing among professional neuroscientists.
   I do not mean to imply that ironic science has no value. Far from it. At its best ironic science, induces wonder in us; it keeps us in awe before the mystery of the universe. But it cannot achieve its goal of transcending the truth we already have. 【F5】And it certainly cannot give us—in fact, it protects us from—The Answer, a truth so potent that it quenches our curiosity once and for all time. After all, science itself decides that we humans must always be content with partial truths.
【F5】

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答案因此它当然无法给予我们——事实上甚至妨碍我们——得到答案,即一个极有说服力能彻底满足我们好奇心的真理。

解析 ①本句是相对简单的复合句。破折号之间的内容为插入成分,结构相对独立,可起补充说明的作用。②a truth是The Answer的同位语,解释说明The Answer在此的具体所指;其后的so...that...为修饰a truth的后置定语,其中包含结果状语从句。③once and for all time是结果状语从句中的状语,意为“彻底地,一劳永逸地”。
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