"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department," said Wernher von Braun, the pioneer rocket

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问题     "Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department," said Wernher von Braun, the pioneer rocket scientist who worked after 1945, with equal enthusiasm, for NASA. Now a rather different mathematician, Hannah Fry, has called for a Hippocratic Oath for scientists and technologists to help them carry constantly in their minds the ethical consequences of their work. This is a proposal that deserves serious consideration: if it achieves nothing else, it will help to dispel the idea that technologies like software development are in themselves morally neutral, so that ethics, or morality, can be dealt with by someone else. Those who send the rockets up need to think carefully about where they might come down.
    There are three obvious issues with her plan. The first is "Whose ethics? Which rationality?" There is no single, universal code of ethics to which all scientists around the world subscribe and the wars of the 20th century show how quickly many could be recruited to weapons research in the name of defending civilisation. And absolute pacifism has not been a feature of earlier efforts at scientific ethics. The philosopher Karl Popper proposed in 1969 an oath for all students of science; even then, he could, and did, justify some work on nuclear weapons.
    The second problem is the extreme difficulty of foreseeing the uses to which pure research can be put. There have been a few occasions in recent times when scientists have drawn back from research until some at least of the ethical consequences of its application have become clearer: the suspension of genetic engineering in the Asilomar conference is the most celebrated. But fundamental research has uses far beyond the imagination of the people who carry it out. No one could blame Alan Turing for YouTube’s role in stirring up extremism.
    Beyond this horizon of ignorance appears what might be called a horizon of influence: any one individual can only accomplish a limited amount compared to the forces of states and huge businesses. Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the web, is horrified by some of the ways in which it has developed but he has been powerless to stop them. It’s true that collective action can have effects, but these are limited. A revulsion among the workers at Google has so far stopped the company from cooperating with the US immigration service. It has not stopped its YouTube algorithms from corrupting politics in Brazil. Any effective moral action must come from corporations as a whole, not just some of their workers.
    But for all these drawbacks, this is still a worthwhile idea. The choice between individual and collective ethics is not either-or. Both are needed. The dominant ideal of the last decades has been boundless selfishness, both individual and corporate. Whatever helps to put limits on that is not just desirable but essential.
The author begins the article with Wernher von Braun’s words to__________.

选项 A、show his pioneering development of rocket technology
B、praise his unfailing enthusiasm in the research for NASA
C、analyze his reckless calculation of the landing direction of the rockets
D、criticize his complete disregard for the moral principles of his research

答案 D

解析 根据题干关键信息Wernher von Braun定位至第一段。第一句是对沃纳.冯.布劳恩原话的直接引用,他说道:  “一旦火箭升空,谁会在意它们落向何方呢?那就不关我的事了。”这里的rockets指的是一种短程弹道导弹,作者以他的话引入话题来批判其不考虑研究成果的用途。第二句提到了与其截然不同的一位数学家(Now a rather different,mathematician…)——汉娜.弗莱,她呼吁通过一个科学和技术界的希波克拉底誓言,以帮助科学家和技术专家时时提醒自己的研究工作会带来的道德伦理结果。汉娜.弗莱和沃纳.冯.布劳恩的态度形成鲜明对比。由此可推断出,作者对布劳恩完全无视其研究道德原则的行为持批判态度,故选项[D]criticize his complete disregard for the moral principles of his research“批评他完全无视自己研究的道德原则”为正确答案。
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