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
59
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
"Juststicktoscience."ThisisacommonadmonitionthatSciencereceiveswhenwepublishcommentariesandnewsstoriesonpoli
Turtleshaveanunfortunatehabitofeatingplasticobjectsfloatinginthesea.Thesethengettrappedintheiralimentarycana
MartezaHasanifledAfghanistanin2005whenhewassixyearsold.Duringthewarthere,hefoundhisfather’sbody,infrontof
"Universalhistory,thehistoryofwhatmanhasaccomplishedinthisworld,isatbottomtheHistoryoftheGreatMenwhohavew
[A]Bepresent[B]Justsayit[C]Askforanopinion[D]Findthe"metoo"s[E]Name,places,things[F]S
Justsevenyearsago,theTexasLegislatureprescribedthatallhighschoolersmustpasstwomathcoursesandgeometrytogradua
Thehappieryouare,thebetter,right?Notnecessarily.Studiesshowthatthereisadarkersidetofeelinggoodandthatthe【C
Whohasn’teverfeltasongpullingattheirheartstrings?【B16】_______________Butthereasonsforthisarefarfromobvious.
Jonny:Hey!I’mjustpracticingTaiChi(太极).Wouldyouliketojoinme?Peter:Iknownothingaboutit.Isitdifficult?
Wemaylookattheworldaroundus,butsomehowwemanagenottoseeituntilwhateverwe’vebecomeusedtosuddenlydisappears.
随机试题
献血队伍中的中坚力量是
背景某机场原有跑道长3400m,宽45m,飞行区等级4E,面层长期使用出现大面积破损,需要加铺沥青混凝土面层。施工单位提交了施工方案,并购置了大量砂,碎石,沥青,矿粉;并对原材料进行了抽检。粗集料除了检测级配外,还需要检测哪些指标?
2017年4月,甲企业(增值税一般纳税人)销售白酒,开具的增值税专用发票上注明的价款6000元,同时收取包装物押金1404元;当月销售黄酒,开具的增值税专用发票上注明的价款3500元,同时收取包装物押金585元;合同约定包装物押金均在2个月后归还;购
在贷款五级分类中,下列()属于不良资产。
请认真阅读下文,并按要求作答。日月潭日月潭是我国台湾省最大的一个湖。它在台中附近的高山上。那里群山环绕,树木茂盛,周围有许多名胜古迹。日月潭很深,湖水碧绿。湖中央有个美丽的小岛,叫光华岛。小岛把湖水分成两半,北边像圆圆的太阳,
垄断是自由竞争的对立面,但其并不能彻底消灭竞争。()
根据以下资料回答下列题。相对于2001年,10年的销售份额增长率最大的车型是()。
嵌入式系统___________【71】的时候,所有的微处理器通常都从某个由CPU制造商预先安排的地址上取指令。例如,基于ARM920T核的微处理器从地址0x00000000取得它的第一条指令。CPU执行的第一条指令就是___________【72】程序中
以下程序运行后的输出结果是()。intf(inta[],intn){if(n>=1)returnf(a,n-1)+a[n-1];elsereturn0;}main(){intaa[5
某二叉树共有845个结点,其中叶子结点有45个,则度为1的结点数为
最新回复
(
0
)