2. 考研
  3. If there is one thing scientists have to hear, it is that the game is over. Raised on the belief of an endless voyage of discove

If there is one thing scientists have to hear, it is that the game is over. Raised on the belief of an endless voyage of discove

admin2014-06-13  31
问题     If there is one thing scientists have to hear, it is that the game is over. Raised on the belief of an endless voyage of discovery, they recoil from the suggestion that most of the best things have already been located. If they have, today’s scientists can hope to contribute no more than a few grace notes to the symphony of science.
    A book to be published in Britain this week, The End of Science, argues persuasively that this is the case. Its author, John Horgan, is a senior writer for Scientific American magazine, who has interviewed many of today’s leading scientists and science philosophers. The shock of realizing that science might be over came to him, he says, when he was talking to Oxford mathematician and physicist Sir Roger Penrose.
    The End of Science provoked a wave of denunciation in the United States last year. "The reaction has been one of complete shock and disbelief, "Mr. Horgan says.
    The real question is whether any remaining unsolved problems, of which there are plenty, lend themselves to universal solutions. If they do not, then the focus of scientific discovery is already narrowing. Since the triumphs of the 1960s—the genetic code, plate tectonics, and the microwave background radiation that went a long way towards proving the Big Bang—genuine scientific revolutions have been scarce. More scientists are now alive, spending more money on research, that ever. Yet most of the great discoveries of the 19th and 20th centuries were made before the appearance of state sponsorship, when the scientific enterprise was a fraction of its present size.
    Were the scientists who made these discoveries brighter than today’s? That seems unlikely. A far more reasonable explanation is that fundamental science has already entered a period of diminished returns. "Look, don’t get me wrong," says Mr Horgan. "There are lots of important things still to study, and applied science and engineering can go on for ever. I hope we get a cure for cancer, and for mental disease, though there are few real signs of progress."
The sentence "most of the best things have already been located" could mean______.
选项 A、most of the best things have already been changed
B、most of the best things remain to be changed
C、there have never been so many best things waiting to be discovered
D、most secrets of the world have already been discovered
答案D
解析 “世界上大部分秘密已经被揭开”。正如文章第一段所示，科学家最不愿听到的是游戏已经结束。由于他们一直相信科学的发现是一场无尽头的旅程，他们很难接受下列这种说法，即最好的东西大都已经被找到，也就是说最伟大的发现大都已经完成。如果它们真的被找到了，那么，今天的科学家充其量也就是在科学的交响乐上再加上几个装饰音符而已了。言外之意，今天的科学家不会再有什么伟大发现了，至多会给前人的发现起到一点补充的作用。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/hsK4777K
0

考研英语一

相关试题推荐
随机试题
最新回复(0)