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
2019-09-17
61
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 classifications of races by anthropologists are useful in that they______.
选项
A、divide people into different groups
B、help to define prehistoric human movements
C、contribute to language distribution
D、provide tools for the study of prehistoric human movements
答案
D
解析
细节识别。本题的答案出现在第四段。本段首先提到人类学家的分类并非一无是处,然后举例说明这些分类可以提供关键的工具, (与语言分布一起)重塑史前人们的活动,即选项D表述的内容。【知识拓展】细节识别的要诀是利用关键词快速定位原句,如本题的anthropologists,然后根据题干对比原句与选项,即可准确选出答案。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/WvwO777K
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
GlobalDevelopmentsSociologiststellusthereisalinkbetweenprivatelivesandsocialforces.Anoutstandingexampleofsuch
GlobalDevelopmentsSociologiststellusthereisalinkbetweenprivatelivesandsocialforces.Anoutstandingexampleofsuch
Themaintopicofthepassageis"researchanddevelopment".Thelecturerwantstotellushowtheinterrelationshipofscience,
Thenewsstatesthatnowadays,theInternethasbeenanimportantpartofourmodernlife,especiallyforyoungpeople.Because
Scientistsareactivelyinvestigatingthefeedbackmechanismwithinthephysical,chemical,andbiologicalcomponentsofEarth’s
GeologyTheprofessormentionsanexperimentdonefivetotenyearsagoonthewindspeednecessarytomoverocks.Whatopinio
Imaginethatyouhavereceivedsomelandtouseasyouwish.Howwouldyouusethisland?Usespecificdetailstoexplainyouran
EventhosewhodonotconcurwithRobinson’sviewsrecognizehimasacandidatewhohascourageouslyrefusedtocompromisehisc
A、正确B、错误B事实细节的找寻和判断。根据原文AndthesalaryI’mgettinghereisn’tenough.Icanbarelycovermyexpenses可知讲话者认为薪水不够,无法满足日常开支。但题干却错把
随机试题
()配水间所用的阀门都是高压的,以闸板阀为主。
与采用权益集合法相比,采用购买法编制合并会计报表的特点是
下列哪项不是积证的特征
为确诊,下列哪项检查最有价值在该患者进行结核菌试验,预计可能出现下列不同情况,哪一项解释是错误的
下列选项中,不属于瘢痕性类天疱疮的临床表现的是
下列选项中,在开户单位支付给个人的款项超过使用现金限额的部分,可以不用支票或者银行本票支付的是()。
下列证据中属于物证的是哪一项?()
下列对素质教育的理解,存在片面性的是()。(2013年下半年真题)
给定资料1乡村振兴迫切需要凝聚力量,群建共治,发挥农民主体作用,让农民群众唱主角。但目前不少地方是政府单方面地主抓、主推一些需要共同努力的乡村事项,农民群众反而缺席、失语,漠然旁观。在江西某县,当地一个迁村并居项目由政府投资,在集镇附近建
计算基于无红利支付股票的欧式看跌期权的价格,其中执行价格为50美元,现价为50美元,有效期三个月,无风险年收益率为10%,年波动率为30%。若在两个月后预期支付红利为1.5美元,又如何计算?
最新回复
(
0
)