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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  using nonscientific modes of thought. Many features and qualities of the objects that a technologist thinks about can’t be reduced to unambiguous verbal descriptions; they are dealt with in the mind by a visual, nonverbal process. In the development of Western technology, it has been nonverbal thinking, by and large, that has fixed the outlines and filled in the details, 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 non-verbal thinking on the machine by continually using an intuitive sense of rightness and fitness. What would be the shape of the combustion chamber? Where should be the valves 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 curricula. Nonverbal thinking, 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 processes and inferior to verbal or mathematical thought. But it is paradoxical that when the staff of the Historic American Engineering Record wished to have drawings made of machines and isometric views of industrial processes for its historical record of American 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 en- counter 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.
The author seems to be in agreement with which of the following?
选项 A、Mathematical thinking is essential to any design course.
B、Non-verbal thinking has its advantage over other perceptive processes.
C、Engineering design demands scientific thought.
D、Artists play a primitive role in engineering work.
答案B
解析 细节题。本题问作者似乎同意下面那一点。A对任何设计课来说，数学思维是必要的。B非语言思维相对其他思维过程来说有它的优势。C工程设计需要科学的思维。D艺术家在工程中起着简单的作用。从文章第一段第三句可以看出应选B。
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