(完整word版)專業(yè)學(xué)位碩士研究生英語教程14

1、1SciencePreviewOur huma ns have bee n always con fused by some questio ns since we are throw n into the world byGod. Those are what is our place in the uni verse? and where did it and we come from? To try to an swerthese questi ons, people have created differe nt world pictures. Some are scie ntific

2、, some are mythic, someare hypothetical and some are just imagi nary. There is ano ther effort to stir the readers imaginations aboutthe same questions. The exploration will never stop its steps until our huma n can get the truth one day.Text Reading Warm-up,.1) Match the words in Column A for the p

3、roper day in Column B.A world-k nown Christia n story, Gen esis, has expla ined who created the world and why it should be. Inthis famous story, God spent 7 days in creating the world. Now your task is to match the proper day for eachitem.AA. beast, cattle and in sectB. fishes and birdsC. light and

4、dark nessD. grass and treeE. day and ni ghtF. arch and waterG. sun and moonH. la nd and seaI.huma nJ. star and seas onK. restII.Mythology and scienceMythology and scie nee can n ever be isolated from each other. They are closely related to each other.There are differe nt ways to know the n ature of

5、the world. Now please choose the n ames here from the table.Some are scientists and the other are mythological figures. Please put the names in the proper circles.BrahmaNewt onEin stei nGalileoPoseid onHalleyPtolemyOdi nLaplaceJesus ChristCurie MarieI RaKeplerZeusHubbleAllahCupidSakyam uniCoper ni c

6、usGaiaunit 14B1.the first day2. the sec ond day3. the third day4. the forth day5. the fifth day6. the sixth day7. the seve nth day2III. Discussi ons.1. There are hun dreds of versi ons about how the world comes into being. And can you tell one?2. Ein ste in once has said, Imag in ati on is more impo

7、rta nt tha n kno wledge. For kno wledge is limitedto all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be toknow and un dersta nd. How do you think about it?3. What do your think about the relati on ship betwee n religi on and scie nee?4. We have al

8、ready en tered the the space era, and as you know, how far can we go in this doma in?TextSpace and Time Stephen Hawking 1 We find ourselves in a bewildering (confusing) world. We want to make sense of (understand) what wesee around us and to ask: What is the nature (the basic qualities of a thing) o

9、f the uni verse? What is our placein it and where did it and we come from? Why is it the way it ?)2 To try to answer these questions we adopt (use) some world picture. Just as an infinite tower oftortoises supporting the flat earth is such a picture, so is the theory of superstrings(5). Both are the

10、ories ofthe uni verse, though the latter is much more mathematical and precise tha n the former. Both theories lackobservational (noticeable) evidenee: no one has ever seen a giant (huge) tortoise with the earth on its back, butthen, no one has seen a superstring either. However, the tortoise theory

11、 fails to be a good scie ntific theorybecause it predicts that people should be able to fall off (fall to the ground) the edge of the world. This has notbeen found to agree with (to be the same as sth) experie nee, uni ess that tur ns out to be the expla natio n forthe people who are supposed to hav

12、e disappeared in the Bermuda Trian g)!3 The earliest theoretical attempts to describe and explai n the uni verse invo lved the idea that eve ntsand n atural phe nomena were con trolled by spirits with huma n emotio ns who acted in a very huma nlike andun predictable manner (way). These spirits in ha

13、bited (lived in a particular place) natural objects, like rivers andmountains, including celestial (heavenly) bodies, like the sun and moon. They had to be placated (to be madesb feel less angry about sth) and their favor (seek-) sought in order to ensure (to make sure that sth happensor is definite

14、) the fertility (the state of being fertile) of the soil and the rotation of the seasons. Gradually,however, it must have been noticed that there were certain regularities (patterns or rules): the sun always rosein the east and set in the west, whether or not a sacrifice (n ani mal, etc. that is off

15、ered to gods) had bee n madeto the sun god. Further, the sun, the moon, and the pla nets followed precise paths across the sky that could bepredicted in advanee (beforehand) with considerable (great) accuracy (correctness). The sun and the moonmight still be gods, but they were gods who obeyed stric

16、t laws, apparently (obviously) without any exceptions,if one discounts (dismiss) stories like that of the sun stopping_for. (waiting for) Joshua(7).4At first, these regularities and laws were obvious only in astronomy (the scientific study of the sun,moon, stars, planets, etc.) and a few other situa

17、tions. However, as civilization developed, and particularly in thelast 300 years, more and more regularities and laws were discovered. The success of these laws led Laplac (法國哲學(xué)家 Pierre-Simon Laplace 皮埃爾 西蒙 拉普拉斯) at the beginning of the nineteenth century toMythological FiguresScientists3postulate (

18、to suggest or accept that sth is true so that it can be used as the basis for a theory, etc.) scientificdeterminism (the belief that people are not free to choose what they are like or how they behave, becausethese things are decided by their surro undings and other things over which they have no co

19、n trol); that is, hesuggestedthat there would be a set of laws that would determ ine the evoluti on of the uni verse precisely, given its configuration (an arrangement of the parts of sth or a group of things; the form or shape that thisarrangement produces 構(gòu)造，配置)at one time.5 Laplaces determi nism

20、was in complete in two ways. It did not say how the laws should be chosen andit did not specify (to state sth, especially by giving an exact measurement, time, exact in structi ons, etc) the initial (happe ning at the beg inning; first) con figurati on of the uni verse. These were left to God. God w

21、ouldchoose how the uni verse bega n and what laws it obeyed, but he would not in terve ne (in terrupt) in the universe once it had started. In effect, God was confined to (limited to) the areas that nin etee nth-ce ntury scie needid not un dersta nd.6 In effect (In fact), we have redefi ned the task

22、 of scie nee to be the discovery of laws that will en able usto predict eve nts up to the limits set by the un certa in ty prin cipte(9). The questio n rema ins, however: how orwhy were the laws and the in itial state of the uni verse chose n?7 Ein ste in once asked the questi on: How much choice di

23、d God have in con struct ing the uni verse? Ifthe no boun dary proposal is correct, he had no freedom at all to choose in itial con diti ons. He would, of course,still have had the freedom to choose the laws that the uni verse obeyed. This, however, may not really havebee n all that (so) much of a c

24、hoice; there may well be only one, or a small number, of complete unified (統(tǒng)一的,)theories, such as the heterotic string theory,that are self-consistent and allow the existenee of structuresas complicated as human beings who can in vestigate the laws of the uni verse and ask about the n ature ofGod.8

25、Up to now (So far), most scientists have been too occupied with (busy with) the developme nt of newtheories that describe what the uni verse is to ask the questi on wh.y(ll) On the other hand, the people whosebus in ess it is to ask why, the philosophers, have not bee n able to keep up with the adva

26、nce (progress,development) of scientific theories. In the eighteenth century, philosophers con sidered the whole of huma nkno wledge, in clud ing scie nce, to be their field and discussedquestio ns such as: did the uni verse have a beginning? However, i n the nin etee nth and twentieth centuries, sc

27、ience became too technical and mathematicalfor the philosophers, or anyone else except a few specialists (experts). Philosophers reduced (n arrowed) thescope of their inq uiries so much that Wittgenstein(12), the most famous philosopher of this century, said, Thesole (only) remaining task for philos

28、ophy is the analysis of Ianguage. What a comedown (failure) from thegreat tradition of philosophy from Aristotl e(13) to Kant (14)!9 However, if we do discover a complete theory, it should in time (fin ally) be un dersta ndable (comprehensive) in broad prin ciple by every one, not just a few scie nt

29、ists. The n we shall all, philosophers, scientists, andjust ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the questi on of why it is that we and the uni verseexist. If we find the an swer to that, it would be the ultimate (fin al) triumph (victory) of huma n reas on for then we would kn

30、ow the mi nd of God.Notes This text comes from A Brief History of Time. It attempts to explain a range of subjects in cosmology,including the Big Bang, black holes, light cones and superstring theory, to the non-specialist reader.(2)Stephen Hawking: Stephen William Hawking, (born 8 January 1942) is

31、a British theoretical physicist.He is known for his contributions to the fields of cosmology and quantum gravity, especially in the con text ofblack holes.4(3) Why is it the way it is it means The reas on that the uni verse is like the way that it is.為 何它就應(yīng)該是這個(gè)樣子的?) Here the first it is a formal sub

32、ject, and the seco nd it is used to refer to the word universe. an infinite tower of tortoises it is uni versally accepted in the early time that the world is really a flatplate supported on the back of a gia nt tortoise.(5)superstringtheory:超弦理論屬于弦理論的一種，也指狹義的弦理論。這里的超”有 超對(duì)稱性的意思。為了將玻色子(bosons 和費(fèi)米子(fe

33、rmions)統(tǒng)一，科學(xué)家預(yù)言了這種粒子，由于實(shí)驗(yàn)條件的限制，人們很難找到這種能夠證明弦理論的粒子。(6) the Bermuda Triangle also known as the Devils Triangle, it is a region in the western part of the NorthAtlantic Ocean in which a number of aircraft and surface vessels are alleged to have disappeared in mysteriouscircumsta nces 百慕大三角(7) .that of

34、the sun stopping for Joshuahis is a story in the Old Testament, Joshua 10 Laplace: Pierre-Sim on, marquis de Laplace (23 March 1749-5 March 1827) was a Fren chmathematician and astronomer whose work was pivotal to the development of mathematical astr onomy andstatistics.(9)the uncertainty principle

35、測(cè)不準(zhǔn)(不定性)原理:the Heisenberg (海森堡 Werner, 1910-, 德國物理學(xué)家)uncertainty principle, in quantum (量子論)mechanics, states that certain pairs of physical properties, likeposition and momentum (動(dòng)力,要素),cannot both be known to arbitrary precisi on.(10)the heterotic string theory in physics, a heterotic string is a

36、peculiar mixture (or hybrid) of the bosonic(玻色子的)string and the superstring (the adjective heterotic comes from the Greek word heterosis (雜種優(yōu)勢(shì)),hybrid vigour). In string theory, the left-moving and the right-moving excitati ons almost do not talk to eachother, and it is possible to con struct a stri

37、 ng theory whose left-moving (counter-clockwise) excitations thinkthat they live on a bosonic string propagating in D = 26 dimensions, while the right-moving (clock-wise)excitations think that they belong to a superstri ng in D = 10 dime nsions.弦論和 M 理論導(dǎo)論：String theory is one of the most exciting an

38、d challenging areas of modern theoreticalphysics. It was developed in the late 1960s for the purpose of de-scribing the strong nu clear force. Problemswere encoun tered that preve nted this program from attai ning complete success .In particular, it was realizedthat the dpectrum of a fun dame ntal s

39、tri ng contains an un desired massless spin-two particle. Quan tumchromod yn amics eve ntually proved to be the correct theory for describing the strong force and the propertiesof hadrons, New doors opened for string theory when in 1974 it was proposed to identify the masslessspin-two particle in th

40、e strings spectrum with the graviton, the quantum of gravitation. String theory becamethen the mostpromising can-didate for a quantum theory of gravity unified with the other forces and has developed into one ofthe most fascin ati ng the6ries of high-e nergy physics (世界圖書出版公司 2011-01-01,(美)貝克爾 著)(11

41、)Up to now, most scientists have been too occupied with the development of new theoriesthat describe what the uni verse is to ask the questi on why.迄今為止，大部分科學(xué)家過分注重于 發(fā)展描述宇宙為何物的理論，以至于沒工夫去過問類似于為什么這樣的問題。這里使用了特 殊結(jié)構(gòu)“tootc 表達(dá)太以至于不能”的含義。(12)Wittgenstein Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (26 April 1889-29 Apr

42、il 1951) was an Austrian-Britishphilosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and thephilosophy of Ian guage.5(13)Aristotle: he (384 BC-322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexa nderthe Great.(14)Kant: Immanuel Kant (

43、22 April 1724-12 February 1804) was an 18th-century German philosopher fromthe Prussian city of Kaliningrad, Russia. He is regarded as one of the most in flue ntial thi nkers of moder nEurope and of the late En lighte nment.Word Bankastronomy the branch of science that deals with celestial objects,

44、space, and the physical uni verse as awhole 天 文學(xué)bewildering: confusing, especially because there are too many choices or things happe ning at the sametime 讓人困惑的，令人費(fèi)解的comedow n n. a feeli ng of disappo in tme nt or depression 失 望，沮喪complicated con sisti ng of many in terc onn ect ing parts or eleme n

45、t 復(fù)雜的，混亂的configuration: an arran geme nt of parts or eleme nts in a particular form, figure, or comb in ati on 構(gòu)造，配置confine to keep or restrict some one or someth ing within certa in limits of 限制，使局限determinism: the doctrine that all events, including human action, are ultimately determined by cause

46、sregarded as exter nal to the will 哲】 宿命論，決定論discount to regard (a possibility, fact, or person) as being unworthy of consideration because it lackscredibility 對(duì)(可能性、事實(shí)、人)不全信，對(duì).不予考慮fertility: producing or capability of producing abundant vegetation or crops 豐產(chǎn)，多產(chǎn)infinite: limitless or en dless in sp

47、ace, exte n 無 限的，無邊無際的initial: existing or occurring at the beginning 最初的，開始的inquiry: an act of asking for information 詢問，打聽investigate to carry out a systematic or formal in quiry to discover and exam ine the fact 調(diào)查， 研究observational being closely and constantly watched or monitored 觀察的，觀測(cè)的placate

48、to make sb. less angry or hostile 安撫，撫慰postulate to suggest or assume the existence, fact, or truth of sth. as a basis for reasoning, discussion, orbelief 假定，假設(shè)precise marked by exact ness and accuracy of expressi on or detOlW 確的，準(zhǔn)確的rotation: the acti on of rotati ng around an axis or cen te 循環(huán)，交替sa

49、crifice: an act of slaughteri ng an ani mal or pers on or surre nderi ng a possessi on as an offeri ng togod or to a divi ne or super natural figure 獻(xiàn) 祭，供奉scope the extent of the area or subject matter that something deals with or to which it is releva nt 范圍，領(lǐng)域self-consistent not having parts or asp

50、ects which are in conflict or contradiction with each other 自相一致的，一貫的string: a len gth of catgut or wire on a musical in strume nt, produci ng a n ote by vibrati on（ 樂器 的）弦triumph: a great victory or achieveme nt 勝禾 U, 成功6ultimate: being or happening at the end of a proces 最后的，最終的unified: become un

51、ited, uniform, or whole 統(tǒng)一的，一元化的Phrases and Expressionsa set of a group of similar things that belong together or are related in some wa 一套，一伙in advance ahead in time 預(yù)先，事先in effect in fact, in practice 實(shí)質(zhì)上，實(shí)際上make sense afto find meaning or cohere nee in 理解，弄懂Reading ComprehensionI. Choose the best

52、 for each of the followin g1. According to the author, which theory has been well accepted by all?A. The tortoise theory.B. The theory of superstri ngs.C. Laplaces determ ini sm.D. Not men ti on ed.2. Based on the earliest theoretical attempts, what is the n ature of the uni verse?A. There is a worl

53、d picture.B. The whole world was con trolled by spirits with huma n emoti ons who acted in a very huma nlike and unpredictable manner.C. An infinite tower of tortoises supported the flat earth.D. Gods obeyed strict laws, appare ntly without any excepti ons.3. Who did people believe con trol the worl

54、d in the early time?A. Spirits with human emotions. B. The sun god.C. The river and mou ntai n.D. Celestial bodies.4. The authors aim by quoting Einsteins question is to show that_ .A. God can create the world by differe nt choicesB. the world is always con trolled by spirits with huma n emoti ons w

55、ho acted in a very huma nlike and unpredictable mannerC. Even the God has no power to create the initial lawsD. Huma n can can in vestigate the laws of the uni verse and ask about the n ature of God5. What a comedown from the great tradition of philosophy from Aristotle to Kant! in Para. 8.Here the

56、word comedow n means_.A. in effect, God was confined to the areas that nin etee nth-ce ntury scie nee did not un dersta ndB. the sole rema ining task for philosophy is the an alysis of Ian guageC. philosophers have not been able to keep up with the advance of scientific theoriesD. most scie ntists h

57、ave bee n too occupied with the developme nt of new theories that describe what the universe is to ask the questi on whyII. Complete the following summary of the text by filling in the blanks with words. The initialletter of each word has been given to yo uSpace and Time is just one part of the book

58、, A Brief History of Time. In it, the author has(1) displayed some well-k nown theories of uni verse to stir our imag in atio n to thi nk about the an swers to the(2) permanent questi ons about how the world comes into being. They are the (3) infinite tower of tortoises, the7(4) superstring theory a

59、nd Laplace s (5) determinism. Although the first one is obviously ridiculous, the lattertwo are also (6) incomplete. They all lack (7) observational evidences. Einstein even once asked the question:How much (8) choice did God have in con struct ing the uni verse? because eve n his theory of uni vers

60、e isjust a hypothesis.On the one hand, the author has criticized the present scientists for paying too much atte nti on tofinding what the uni verse is and ignoring the reas on why it is like that. On the other hand, he has also indicated that philosophers have not bee n able to keep up with the adv