【61】The method of scientific investigation is nothing but the expression of the necessary mode of working of the human mind; it

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问题      【61】The method of scientific investigation is nothing but the expression of the necessary mode of working of the human mind; it is simply the mode by which all phenomena are reasoned about and given precise and exact explanation. There is no more difference, but there is just the same kind of difference, between the mental operations of a man of science and those of an ordinary person, as there is between the operations and methods of a baker or of a butcher weighing out his goods in common scales, and the operations of a chemist in performing a difficult and complex analysis by means of his balance and finely graded weights. 【62】 It is not that scales in the one ease, and the balance in the other, differ in the principles of their con struction or manner of working; but that the latter is a much finer apparatus and of course much more accurate in its measurement than the former.
     You will understand this better, perhaps, if I give you some familiar examples. 【63】You have all heard it repeated that men of science work by means of induction and deduction, that by the help of these operations, they, in a sort of sense, manage to extract from Nature certain natural laws  and that out of these, by some special skill of their own, they build up their theories. 【64】And it is imagined by many that the operations of the common mind can be by no means compared with these processes, and that they have to be acquired by a sort of special training. To hear all these large words, you would think that the mind of a man of science must be constituted differently from that of his fellow men; but if you will not be frightened by terms, you will discover that you are quite wrong, and that all these terrible apparatus ate being used by yourselves every day and every hour of your lives.
     There is a well-known incident in one of Moliere’s plays, where the author makes the hero express unbounded delight on being told that he had been talking prose during the whole of his life. In the same way, I trust that you will take comfort, and be delighted with yourselves, on the discovery that you have been acting on the principles of inductive and deductive philosophy during the same period. 【65】 Probably there is not one here who has not in the course of the day had occasion to set in motion a complex train of reasoning, of the very same kind, though differing in degree, as that which a scientific man goes through in tracing the causes of natural phenomena.
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答案这不是说面包师或卖肉者所用的秤与化学家所用的天平在构造原理或工作方式上存在差别,而是说与前者相比,后者是一种精密得多的装置,因而在计量上必然更准确。

解析 本句的结构是"It is not that...;but that...,"that引导的是两个并列的表语从句,it是物主代词,代替前文提到的观点,这个结构的意思是“不是说……,而是说……”。在翻译之前,首先必须搞清楚下列词语的意义:the former(前者);the later(后者);scales秤;balance天平。在本句中,the former(前者)指的是the scales in the one case;而the scales in the one case是上文中a baker or a butcher weighs out his goods in common scales的省略表达。the later(后者)指的是the balance in the other;而the balance in the other是上文中a chemist performs a complex analysis by means of his balance的省略表达。弄清楚这些指代关系以后,根据汉语的表达习惯,在翻译the scales in the one case和the bal ance in the other时都要运用“还原法”。
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