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  3. Science, in practice, depends far less on the experiments it prepares than o

Science, in practice, depends far less on the experiments it prepares than o

游客2025-04-02  13
问题     Science, in practice, depends far less on the experiments it prepares than on the preparedness of the minds of the men who watch the experiments. Sir Isaac Newton supposedly discovered gravity through the fall of an apple. Apples had been falling in many places for centuries and thousands of people had seen them fall. But Newton for years had been curious about the cause of the orbital motion of the moon and planets. What kept them in place? Why didn’t they fall out of the sky? The fact that the apple fell down toward the earth and not up into the tree answered the question he had been asking himself about those larger fruits of the heavens, the moon and the planets.
    How many men would have considered the possibility of an apple falling up into the tree? Newton did because he was not trying to predict anything. He was just wondering. His mind was ready for the unpredictable. Unpredictability is part of the essential nature of research. If you don’t have unpredictable things, you don’t have research. Scientists tend to forget this when writing their cut and dried reports for the technical journals, but history is filled with examples of it.
    In talking to some scientists, particularly younger ones, you might gather the impression that they find the "scientific method"—a substitute for imaginative thought. I’ve attended research conferences where a scientist has been asked what he thinks about the advisability of continuing a certain experiment. The scientist has frowned, looked at the graphs, and said "the data are still inconclusive." "We know that," the men from the budget office have said, "but what do you think? Is it worthwhile going on? What do you think we might expect?" The scientist has been shocked at having even been asked to speculate.
    What this amounts to, of course, is that the scientist has become the victim of his own writings. He has put forward unquestioned claims so consistently that he not only believes them himself, but has convinced industrial and business management that they are true. If experiments are planned and carried out according to plan as faithfully as the reports in the science journals indicate, then it is perfectly logical for management to expect research to produce results measurable in dollars and cents. It is entirely reasonable for auditors to believe that scientists who know exactly where they are going and how they will get there should not be distracted by the necessity of keeping one eye on the cash register while the other eye is on the microscope. Nor, if regularity and conformity to a standard pattern are as desirable to the scientist as the writing of his papers would appear to reflect, is management to be blamed for discriminating against the "odd balls" among researchers in favor of more conventional thinkers who "work well with the team". [br] The author implies that the results of scientific research ______.
选项 A、may not be as profitable as they are expected
B、can be measured in dollars and cents
C、rely on conformity to a standard pattern
D、are mostly underestimated by management
答案 A
解析 本题可参照文章的第4段。从中可知，假如实验完全依照科学杂志上的报告所说的那样按事先的计划去执行，那么管理部门期望研究能够带来可用美元衡量的成果是完全合理的；审计员完全有理由相信，那些确切地了解自己的目标并且知道如何实现目标的科学家没有必要分心走神——不必要一边关注经费，一边关注实验；如果正像他们的论文所反映的那样，正规和符合标准模式是那位科学家的理想的话，那么我们也不能责备管理部门区别对待研究人员中的那些“思维另类”，而青睐那些“擅长团队协作”、以更传统的方式思维的思考者。据此可知，作者认为科学研究所取得的成果并没有如预期的那样带来很大利润。A项与文章的意思相符，因此A项为正确答案。
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