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  3. Many objects in daily use have clearly been influenced by science, but their form and function, their dimensions and appearance,

Many objects in daily use have clearly been influenced by science, but their form and function, their dimensions and appearance,

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问题     Many objects in daily use have clearly been influenced by science, but their form and function, their dimensions and appearance, were determined by technologists, artisans, designers, inventors, and engineers—use nonscientific modes of thought. This kind of thinking way is different from science. Many features and qualities of the objects that a technologist thinks about cannot be reduced to unambiguous verbal descriptions; they are dealt with the mind by a visual, nonverbal process. In the development of Western technology, it has been non-verbal thinking, by and large, that has fixed the outlines and filled in the details of our material surroundings. Pyramids, cathedrals, and rockets exist not because of geometry or thermodynamics, but because they were first a picture in the minds of those who built them.
    The creative shaping process of a technologist’ s mind can be seen in nearly every artifact that exists. For example, in designing a diesel engine, a technologist might impress individual ways of nonverbal thinking on the machine by continually using an intuitive sense of lightness and fitness. What would be the shape of the combustion chamber? Where should valves be placed? Should it have a long or short piston? Such questions have a range of answers that are supplied by experience, by physical requirements, by limitations of available space, and not least by a sense of form. Some decisions such as wall thickness and pin diameter, may depend on scientific calculations, but the nonscientific component of design remains primary.
    Design courses, then, should be an essential element in engineering curriculum. Nonverbal thinking of a central mechanism in engineering design, involves perceptions, the stock-in-trade of the artist, not the scientist. Because perceptive processes are not assumed to entail "hard thinking", nonverbal thought is sometimes seen as a primitive stage in the development of cognitive Process and inferior to verbal or mathematical thought. But it is paradoxical that when the staff began the Historic American. Engineering Record wished to have drawing made of machines and isometric views of industrial processes for its historical record of America engineering, the only college students with the requisite abilities were not engineering students, but rather students attending architectural schools.
    If courses in design, which in a strongly analytical engineering curriculum provide the background required for practical problem-solving, are not provided, we can expect to encounter silly but costly errors occurring in advanced engineering systems. For example, early models of high-speed railroad cars loaded with sophisticated controls were unable to operate in a snowstorm because a fan sucked snow into the electrical system. Absurd random failures that plague automatic control systems are not merely trivial aberrations: they are a reflection of the chaos that results when design is assumed to be primarily a problem in mathematics.
What can we conclude from the last paragraph?
选项 A、Design course can help solve practical problems.
B、Design courses are necessary to open.
C、Design is strongly analytical.
D、People don’t pay attention to Design courses.
答案B
解析 段落主旨题。文章最后一段讲到，设计课有利于解决实际问题，如果不开设设计课，人类将会遭遇愚蠢而又代价高昂的错误，然后举例说明这一观点。由此可见，作者认为很有必要开设设计课，B项符合。
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