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  3. What does a scientist do when he or she "explains" something? Scientific explanation comes in two forms: generalization and redu

What does a scientist do when he or she "explains" something? Scientific explanation comes in two forms: generalization and redu

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问题     What does a scientist do when he or she "explains" something? Scientific explanation comes in two forms: generalization and reduction. Most psychologists deal with generalization. They explain particular instances of behavior as examples of general laws. For instance most psychologists would explain a pathologically strong fear of dogs as an example of classical conditioning. Presumably, the person was frightened earlier in life by a dog. An unpleasant stimulus was paired with the sight of the animal (perhaps the person was knocked down by an exuberant dog) and the subsequent sight of dogs evokes the earlier response--fear.
    Most physiologists deal with reduction. Phenomena are explained in terms of simpler phenomena. For example, the movement of a muscle is explained in terms of changes in the membrane of muscle cells, entry of particular chemicals, and interactions between protein molecules within these cells. A molecular biologist would "explain" these events in terms of forces that bind various molecules together and cause various parts of these molecules to be attracted to one another.
    Like other scientists, physiological psychologists believe that all natural phenomena--including human behavior---are subject to the laws of physics. Thus, the laws of behavior can be reduced to descriptions of physiological processes.
    How does one study the physiology of behavior? Physiological psychologists cannot simply be reductionists. It is not enough to observe behaviors and correlate them with physiological events that occur at the same time. Identical behaviors, under different conditions, may occur for different reasons, and thus be initiated by different physiological mechanisms. This means that we must understand "psychologically" why a particular behavior occurs before we can understand what physiological events made it occur.
What does the passage mainly discuss?
选项 A、The difference between "scientific" and "unscientific" explanations.
B、The difference between human and animal behavior.
C、How fear would be explained by the psychologist, physiologist, and molecular biologist.
D、How scientists differ in their approaches to explaining natural phenomena.
答案D
解析 本题为主旨归纳题。本文主要介绍了科学家们解释事物现象的两种常用方法，一是归纳概括，一是简化分解。作者还举例说明，心理学家常用前一种方法，生理学家常用后一种方法，而生理心理学家则不能简单地只应用一种方法。因此，本文主要内容是不同的科学家解释自然现象时所采用的方法不同。
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