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
A Pioneering Woman of Science Re-Emerges after 300 Years [A] Maria Sibylla Merian, like many European women of the 17th century,
A Pioneering Woman of Science Re-Emerges after 300 Years [A] Maria Sibylla Merian, like many European women of the 17th century,
admin
2021-01-08
52
问题
A Pioneering Woman of Science Re-Emerges after 300 Years
[A] Maria Sibylla Merian, like many European women of the 17th century, stayed busy managing a household and rearing children. But on top of that, Merian, a German-born woman who lived in the Netherlands, also managed a successful career as an artist, botanist, naturalist and entomologist (昆虫学家
[B] " She was a scientist on the level with a lot of people we spend a lot of time talking about," said Kay Etheridge, a biologist at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania who has been studying the scientific history of Merian’ s work. "She didn’ t do as much to change biology as Charles Darwin, but she was significant. "
[C] At a time when natural history was a valuable tool for discovery, Merian discovered facts about plants and insects that were not previously known. Her observations helped dismiss the popular belief that insects spontaneously emerged from mud. The knowledge she collected over decades didn’ t just satisfy those curious about nature, but also provided valuable insights into medicine and science. She was the first to bring together insects and their habitats, including food they ate, into a single ecological composition.
[D] After years of pleasing a fascinated audience across Europe with books of detailed descriptions and life-size paintings of familiar insects, in 1699 she sailed with her daughter nearly 5,000 miles from the Netherlands to South America to study insects in the jungles of what is now known as Suriname. She was 52 years old. The result was her masterpiece, Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium.
[E] In her work, she revealed a side of nature so exotic, dramatic and valuable to Europeans of the time that she received much acclaim. But a century later, her findings came under scientific criticism. Shoddy (粗糙的) reproductions of her work along with setbacks to women’ s roles in 18th- and 19th-century Europe resulted in her efforts being largely forgotten. " It was kind of stunning when she sort of dropped off into oblivion (遗忘) ," said Dr. Etheridge. "Victorians started putting women in a box, and they’ re still trying to crawl out of it. "
[F] Today, the pioneering woman of the sciences has re-emerged. In recent years, feminists, historians and artists have all praised Merian’ s tenacity (坚韧) , talent and inspirational artistic compositions. And now biologists like Dr. Etheridge are digging into the scientific texts that accompanied her art. Three hundred years after her death, Merian will be celebrated at an international symposium in Amsterdam this June.
[G] And last month, Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium was republished. It contains 60 plates(插图) and original descriptions, along with stories about Merian ’ s life and updated scientific descriptions. Before writing Metamorphosis, Merian spent decades documenting European plants and insects that she published in a series of books. She began in her 20s, making textless, decorative paintings of flowers with insects. "Then she got really serious," Dr. Etheridge said. Merian started raising insects at home, mostly butterflies and caterpillars. "She would sit up all night until they came out of the pupa (蛹) so she could draw them, " she said.
[H] The results of her decades’ worth of careful observations were detailed paintings and descriptions of European insects, followed by unconventional visuals and stories of insects and animals from a land that most at the time could only imagine. It’ s possible Merian used a magnifying glass to capture the detail of the split tongues of sphinx moths (斯芬克斯飞蛾) depicted in the painting. She wrote that the two tongues combine to form one tube for drinking nectar (花蜜). Some criticized this detail later, saying there was just one tongue, but Merian wasn’ t wrong. She may have observed the adult moth just as it emerged from its pupa. For a brief moment during that stage of its life cycle, the tongue consists of two tiny half-tubes before merging into one.
[I] It may not have been ladylike to depict a giant spider devouring a hummingbird, but when Merian did it at the turn of the 18th century, surprisingly, nobody objected. Dr. Etheridge called it revolutionary. The image, which also contained novel descriptions of ants, fascinated a European audience that was more concerned with the exotic story unfolding before them than the gender of the person who painted it.
[J] "All of these things shook up their nice, neat little view, " Dr. Etheridge said. But later, people of the Victorian era thought differently. Her work had been reproduced, sometimes incorrectly. A few observations were deemed impossible. "She’ d been called a silly woman for saying that a spider could eat a bird," Dr. Etheridge said. But Henry Walter Bates, a friend of Charles Darwin, observed it and put it in book in 1863, proving Merian was correct.
[K] In the same plate, Merian depicted and described leaf-cutter ants for the first time. "In America there are large ants which can eat whole trees bare as a broom handle in a single night," she wrote in the description. Merian noted how the ants took the leaves below ground to their young. And she wouldn’ t have known this at the time, but the ants use the leaves to farm fungi (菌类) underground to feed their developing babies.
[L] Merian was correct about the giant bird-eating spiders, ants building bridges with their bodies and other details. But in the same drawing, she incorrectly lumped together army and leaf-cutter ants. And instead of showing just the typical pair of eggs in a hummingbird nest, she painted four. She made other mistakes in Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium as well: not every caterpillar and butterfly matched.
[M] Perhaps one explanation for her mistakes is that she cut short her Suriname trip after getting sick, and completed the book at home in Amsterdam. And errors are common among some of history’ s most-celebrated scientific minds, too. " These errors no more invalidate Ms. Merian’ s work than do well-known misconceptions published by Charles Darwin or Isaac Newton," Dr. Etheridge wrote in a paper that argued that too many have wrongly focused on the mistakes of her work.
[N] Merian’ s paintings inspired artists and ecologists. In an 1801 drawing from his book, General Zoology Amphibia, George Shaw, an English botanist and zoologist, credited Merian for describing a frog in the account of her South American expedition, and named the young tree frog after her in his portrayal of it. It wouldn’t be fair to give Merian all the credit. She received assistance naming plants, making sketches and referencing the work of others. Her daughters helped her color her drawings.
[O] Merian also made note of the help she received from the natives of Suriname, as well as slaves or servants that assisted her. In some instances she wrote moving passages that included her helpers in descriptions. As she wrote in her description of the peacock flower, "The Indians, who are not treated well by their Dutch masters, use the seeds to abort their children, so that they will not become slaves like themselves. The black slaves from Guinea and Angola have demanded to be well treated, threatening to refuse to have children. In fact, they sometimes take their own lives because they are treated so badly, and because they believe they will be born again, free and living in their own land. They told me this themselves. "
[P] Londa Schiebinger, a professor of the history of science at Stanford University, called this passage rather astonishing. It’ s particularly striking centuries later when these issues are still prominent in public discussions about social justice and women’ s right. " She was ahead of her time," Dr. Etheridge said.
Merian was the first scientist to study a type of American ant.
选项
答案
K
解析
该段第一句提到,梅里安第一次画出并用文字描述了切叶蚁。接下来对切叶蚁的描述中提到了这种蚂蚁是美国的。题干中的the first和American ant分别对应原文中的for the first time和leaf-cutter ants,故答案为K。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/RpP7777K
0
大学英语六级
相关试题推荐
A、Parents.B、Children.C、Payscales.D、Managementsystems.C
Whenyouthinkaboutthegrowthofhumanpopulationoverthelastcenturyorso,itisalltooeasytoimagineitmerelyasani
Ratherthanusingcustommachinetoolstobuildearlymodelsofnewparts,Fordisnowusing3-Dprintingtechnologytodesigna
ThreeEnglishdictionariespublishedrecentlyalllayclaimtopossessinga"new"feature.TheBBCEnglishDictionarycontainsb
公益广告(publicserviceadvertisement)指为社会公众的利益和社会风尚服务的广告。它不以盈利为目的,属于非商业性广告,是社会公益事业(causeofthepublicgood)的重要组成部分。公益广告的主题一般取材于老百姓
汉字(Chinesecharacter)是世界上最古老的文字之一,其历史可以追溯到5000年前。
A、Itisatraitofagenerouscharacter.B、Itisareflectionofself-esteem.C、Itisanindicatorofhighintelligence.D、Itis
A、IthasthestrongesteconomyinAfrica.B、ItisthemostfamouscountryinAfrica.C、IthasthemoststabledemocracyinAfric
AIisprobablycomingforyourjob.Buttheremaybeawaytofuture-proofyourcareer."Humansaregoingtofindmeaningfulwor
Itisimportantthatscientistsbeseenasnormalpeopleaskingandansweringimportantquestions.Good,soundsciencedependso
随机试题
骨髓位于①___________________和②___________________的间隙中,可分为③___________________和④___________________两种。
空调降温效果不好,压缩机频繁启动断开的原因是什么?怎样排除?
A.夹气B.垂泉C.掠草D.滚蹄E.三江治疗马漏蹄宜选
对诊断小儿营养不良最有诊断价值的病史是
细辛的用量为
在建立工程项目分解结构中,识别项目主要组成部分时应从便于项目实施管理和()等方面考虑。
保管期满但未结清的债权债务原始凭证,经会计主管人员批准后可以销毁。()
梦的离奇古怪又似乎和文艺家们的离奇想象有点相似,文艺家们_________的想象,古今天地万物的无所不包,无奇不有,但是和梦相比,文艺家们似乎也要_________。在梦里,人人都是一个艺术家,白天不能实现的,梦里就能实现;白天不能见到的,梦里就能见到;白
据媒体报道,美国教育部下属机构国家教育统计中心网站2013年3月22日在“每日语录”一栏中引用毛泽东“对自己,‘学而不厌’;对人家,‘诲而不倦”’的名言,国家教育统计中心因此遭到猛烈抨击。有美国参议员出面表示,教育部必须解释为何引用“共产主义者”的话。该中
ItwasadaythatMichaelEisnerwouldundoubtedlyliketoforget.SittinginaLosAngeleswitnessboxforfourhourslastweek
最新回复
(
0
)