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  3. In last week’s Tribune, there was an interesting letter from Mr. J. Stewart

In last week’s Tribune, there was an interesting letter from Mr. J. Stewart

游客2024-11-25  31
问题     In last week’s Tribune, there was an interesting letter from Mr. J. Stewart Cook, in which he suggested that the best way of avoiding the danger of a" scientific hierarchy" would be to see to it that every member of the general public was, as far as possible, scientifically educated. At the same time, scientists should be brought out of their isolation and encouraged to take a greater part in politics and administration.
    As a general statement, I think most of us would agree with this, but I notice that, as usual, Mr. Cook does not define science, and merely implies in passing that it means certain exact sciences whose experiments can be made under laboratory conditions. Thus, adult education tends "to neglect scientific studies in favor of literary, economic and social subjects", economics and sociology not being regarded as branches of science, apparently. This point is of great importance. For the word science is at present used in at least two meanings, but the whole question of scientific education is obscured by the current tendency to dodge from one meaning to the other.
    Science is generally taken as meaning either(a)the exact sciences, such as chemistry, physics, etc. ,or(b)a method of thought which obtains verifiable results by reasoning logically from observed fact.
    If you ask any scientist, or indeed almost any educated person, "What is science?" you are likely to get an answer approximating to(b). In everyday life, however, both in speaking and in writing, when people say"science"they mean(a). Science means something that happens in a laboratory: test-tubes, balances, Bunsen burners, microscopes. A biologist, an astronomer, perhaps a psychologist or a mathematician, is described as a"man of science" :no one would think of applying this term to a statesman, a poet, a journalist or even a philosopher. And those who tell us that the young must be scientifically educated mean, almost invariably, that they should be taught more about radioactivity, or the stars, or the physiology of their own bodies, rather than that they should be taught to think more exactly
    This confusion of meaning, which is partly deliberate, has in it a great danger. Implied in the demand for more scientific education is the claim that if one has been scientifically trained one’s approach to all subjects will be more intelligent than if one had had no such training. A scientist’s political opinions, it is assumed, his opinions on sociological questions, on morals, on philosophy, perhaps even on the arts, will be more valuable than those of a layman. But a" scientist", as we have just seen, means in practice a specialist in one of the exact sciences. It follows that a chemist or physicist, as such, is politically more intelligent than a poet or a lawyer. And, in fact, there are already millions of people who do believe this.
    But is it really true that a "scientist" ,in this narrower sense, is any likelier than other people to approach non-scientific problems in an objective way? There is not much reason for thinking so. Take one simple test—the ability to withstand nationalism. It is often loosely said that "Science is international", but in practice the scientific workers of all countries line up behind their own governments with fewer scruples than are felt by the writers and the artists. The German scientific community, as a whole, made no resistance to Hitler. There were plenty of gifted men to do the necessary research on such things as synthetic oil, jet planes, rocket projectiles and the atomic bomb.
    On the other hand, what happened to German literature when the Nazis came to power? I believe no exhaustive lists have been published, but I imagine that the number of German scientists—Jew apart—who voluntarily exiled themselves or were persecuted by the regime was much smaller than the number of writers and journalists. More sinister than this, a number of German scientists swallowed the monstrosity of "racial science".
    But does this mean that the general public should not be more scientifically educated? On the contrary! All it means is that scientific education for the masses will do little good, and probably a lot of harm, if it simply boils down to more physics, more chemistry, more biology, etc. to the detriment of literature and history. Its probable effect on the average human being would be to narrow the range of his thoughts and make him more than ever contemptuous of such knowledge as he did not possess; and his political reactions would probably be somewhat less intelligent than those of an illiterate peasant who retained a few historical memories and a fairly sound aesthetic sense.
    Clearly, scientific education ought to mean the implanting of a rational, skeptical, experimental habit of mind. It ought to mean acquiring a method—a method that can be used on any problem that one meets—and not simply piling up a lot of facts. Put it in those words, and the apologist of scientific education will usually agree. Press him further, ask him to particularize, and somehow it always turns out that scientific education means more attention to the exact sciences, in other words—more facts. The idea that science means a way of looking at the world, and not simply a body of knowledge, is in practice strongly resisted. I think sheer professional jealousy is part of the reason for this. [br] We know from the second paragraph that the author considers the present definition of the word "science"______.
选项 A、ambiguous
B、ambivalent
C、questionable
D、inappropriate
答案 A
解析 推断题。第二段第二至四句指出，成人教育往往会“忽视那些有利于文学、经济学和社会学科的研究”，很显然，经济学和社会学没有被看作科学的分支。这一点非常重要。“科学”这个词至少有两重意思，但是目前这种只重视一种含义而回避另一种含义的趋势使得整个科学教育的问题变得含混不清。可见，作者认为“科学”的定义含混不清，故[A]为答案。
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