2. 外语
  3. Man’s puzzlement and preoccupation with time both derive ultimately from his unique relationship to it. All animals exist in tim

Man’s puzzlement and preoccupation with time both derive ultimately from his unique relationship to it. All animals exist in tim

admin2010-07-06  2
问题     Man’s puzzlement and preoccupation with time both derive ultimately from his unique relationship to it. All animals exist in time and are changed by it; only man can control it.
    Like Proust, the French author whose experiences became his literary capital, man can recapture the past. He can also summon up things to come, displaying imagination and foresight alone with memory. It really can be argued, that memory and foresightedness are the essence of intelligence: that man’s ability to manipulate time, to employ both past and future as guides to present action, is what makes him human.
     To be sure, many animals can react to time after a fashion A rat can learn to press a lever that will, after a delay of some 25 seconds, reward it with a bit of food. But if the delay stretches beyond 30 seconds, the animal is stumped. It can no longer associate the reward so "far" in the future with the present lever-pressing.
     Monkeys, more smart than rats, are better able to deal with time. If one of them is allowed to see food being hidden under one of two cups, it can pick out the right cup even after 90 seconds have passed. But after that time interval, the monkey’s hunt for the food is no Better than chance predicts.
    With the apes, man’s nearest cousins, "time sense" takes a big step forward. Even under laboratory conditions, quite different from those they encounter in the wild, apes somemnes show remarkable ability to manipulate the present to obtain a future goal. A chimpanzee, for example, can learn to stack two boxes, one on the other, as a platform from which it can reach a hanging banana. Chimpanzees, indeed, carry their ability to deal with the future to the threshold of human capacity: they can make tools. And it is by the making of tools— physical tools as crude as a stone chopper, mental tools as subtle as a mathematical equation—that man characteristically prepares for future contingencies.
     Chimpanzees in the wild have been seen to strip a twig of its leaves to make a probe for extracting termites from their hole. Significantly, however, the ape does not make his tool before setting out on a termite hunt, but only when it actually sees the insects or their nest. Here, as with the banana and the crates, the ape can cope only with a future that is immediate and visible — and thus halfway into the present  
According to the article, which of the following statements ts TRUE?
选项 A、Chimpanzees’ sense of time is as good as man’s.
B、Man developed from apes.
C、Memory and foresight contribute to intelligence.
D、Monkeys and apes are almost as intelligent as man
答案C
解析 细节题。本题为细节比对题。A 与第一段后一句的意思及第五段描述的内容不符，B 与第五段第一句的意思不符，该句只是说大猩猩是人类的近亲，并没有说人类由它们进化而来；C 与第二段最后一句的意思相符；D 根据常识即可判定为错误。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/oFDd777K
本试题收录于： 公共英语四级笔试题库公共英语（PETS）分类
0

公共英语四级笔试

公共英语（PETS）

相关试题推荐
随机试题
最新回复(0)