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
Why do readers of New Scientist continue to get steamed up about race? After all, it can be used as an innocuous technical term
Why do readers of New Scientist continue to get steamed up about race? After all, it can be used as an innocuous technical term
admin
2023-03-07
25
问题
Why do readers of New Scientist continue to get
steamed up
about race? After all, it can be used as an innocuous technical term by anthropologists. But all too often discussions of "race" lead to "racism", and tempers begin to fray. Before the 18th century, race merely described a group of common cultural origin, not one defined by immutable characteristics. Unfortunately, this usage changed as the Western powers colonized Asia and Africa and needed a way to characterize the peoples they subjected as not only different, but inferior.
A long list of scientists helped to "classify" the races. Among them were some of the famous names of the 18th and 19th centuries: Linnaeus, Cuvier, Haeckel, Huxley and Buffon. Although their classifications rarely agreed, many accepted that the races were fundamentally different and could be arranged with Caucasians at the top.
Only after the Darwinian evolution and the emergence of genetics did the notion of a league table start to crumble. By the 1940s, UNESCO could emphatically state: "Racism falsely claims that there is a scientific basis for arranging groups hierarchically in terms of psychological and cultural characteristics that are immutable and innate."
That groups cannot be arranged hierarchically does not mean that anthropologists cannot set up classifications which divide people into different groups, or that such classifications will not be useful, as several of our latter writers point out. For example, they can provide vital tools (along with language distribution) to reconstruct the prehistoric movements of peoples. Where genetic data are available, these reconstructions can be greatly refined.
In other contexts, such classifications are misleading. Many of the differences they record (including facial features, skin and hair color) are most probably superficial adaptations to local climate. Although useful as indicators of the origin of different groups, they imply nothing fundamental about differences between them.
Attempts to assess more important differences between groups (of any number of cognitive abilities, for example) always come to the same very well-known conclusion—that the differences between individuals within one racial group are much larger than the differences between the average members of two such groups.
What this means is that it is impossible to say anything about a particular individual’s ability because of his or her race (however, defined) because the spread of variation within a race is larger than the average difference between races. Racism can thus receive no support from science, even though a classification of races can be scientifically useful.
Lay people sometimes put more faith in the concept of race than scientists do, perhaps because they believe they can quite easily identify a person’s race or even nationality. But it’s not that easy: our correspondent from Le Vesinet, for example, identified some of the people in our recent feature ("Genes in Black and White") as Australian, Sicilian, Sumatran and Brazilian. In fact, they came from Sweden, Greece, the Central African Republic and Russia.
The phrase "steamed up" underlined in Paragraph 1 means _____.
选项
A、vaporized
B、interested
C、agitated
D、scared
答案
C
解析
本题为词义题,steam up本意是“沸腾,煮沸”,这里用steamed up来形容人,表示“被激怒的”,因此C“恼怒的,生气的”符合要求。vaporized“蒸发的,汽化的”,interested“感兴趣的”,scared“恐惧的”,都不符合语境。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/TDcD777K
本试题收录于:
CATTI三级笔译综合能力题库翻译专业资格(CATTI)分类
0
CATTI三级笔译综合能力
翻译专业资格(CATTI)
相关试题推荐
AcontroversialdecisionbyLondon’smayor,SadiqKhan,toallowthedemolitionofaflagshipMarks&SpencerstoreonLondon’s
TheUnitedStatesiswidelyrecognizedtohaveaprivateeconomybecauseprivatelyownedbusinessesplay【C1】________roles.TheA
Thehappieryouare,thebetter,right?Notnecessarily.Studiesshowthatthereisadarkersidetofeelinggoodandthatthe【C
Thehappieryouare,thebetter,right?Notnecessarily.Studiesshowthatthereisadarkersidetofeelinggoodandthatthe【C
Thenewsaboutvitaminskeepsgettingworse.Manystudiespublishedinthelastfewyearsshowsthatavarietyofpopularsupple
Thenewsaboutvitaminskeepsgettingworse.Manystudiespublishedinthelastfewyearsshowsthatavarietyofpopularsupple
Universitiesareinaseeminglyself-contradictoryposition.AsStefanCollinipointsoutinhisbook,theseancient【C1】________
Ininterviews,famouspeopleoftensaythatthekeytobecomingbothhappyandsuccessfulisto"dowhatyoulove."Butmasterin
Ininterviews,famouspeopleoftensaythatthekeytobecomingbothhappyandsuccessfulisto"dowhatyoulove."Butmasterin
PreparingforCollegeInterviewsFirstwayofpracticing.Doing【T1】________.Firstste
随机试题
假设银行体系准备金为750亿元,公众持有现金500亿元,中央银行法定活期存款准备金率为10%,法定定期存款准备金率为5%,流通中通货比率为20%,定期存款比率是40%,商业银行的超额准备金率为18%,试求:[上海财经大学2016研]货币乘数是多少?
下述哪项不是主动脉夹层的体征
风险计量既需要对单笔交易承担的风险进行计量,也要对组合层面、银行整体层面承担的风险水平进行评估,也就是通常所说的()。
以下关于个人贷款的说法中,正确的有()。
专门用来查检历史年代和历史大事的工具书是()。
党的十八大首次将科学发展观确立为党必须长期坚持的指导思想。科学发展观最鲜明的精神实质是()。
甲、乙二人同在山坡上放羊,乙的羊混入甲的羊群,甲不知,赶羊回家人圈。甲的行为属于()。
下面关于数据库数据模型的说法中,哪一个是错误的?
不属于Office应用程序组件的软件是()。
—MustIfinishthisbeforeMonday?—No,you______.
最新回复
(
0
)