试题库在线考试题库-历年真题模拟试题及答案-考博英语在线试题测试中心-希赛网

苏州大学

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.”1.The author wants to prove with the example of Isaac Newton that （）.2.The author asserts that scientists （）.3.It seems that some young scientists （）.4.The author implies that the results of scientific research （）.

If ambition is to be well regarded, the rewards of ambition health, distinction, control over one’s destiny --- must be deemed worthy of the sacrifices made on ambition’s behalf. If the tradition of ambition is to have vitality, it must be widely shared; and it especially must be highly regarded by people who are themselves admired, the educated not least among them. In an odd way, however, it is the educated who have claimed to have given up on ambition as an ideal. What is odd is that they have perhaps most benefited from ambition --- if not always their own then that of their parents and grandparents. There is heavy note of hypocrisy in this, a case of closing the bam door after the horses have escaped --- with the educated themselves riding on them.Certainly people do not seem less interested in success and its signs now than formerly. Summer homes, European travel, BMWs --- the locations, place names and name brands may change, but such items do not seem less in demand today than a decade or two years ago. What has happened is that people cannot confess fully to their dreams, as easily and openly as once they could, lest they be thought pushing, acquisitive and vulgar. Instead, we are treated to fine hypocritical spectacles, which now more than ever seem in ample supply; the critic of American materialism with a Southampton summer home; the publisher of radical books who takes his meal in three-star restaurants; the journalist advocating participatory democracy in all phases of life, whose own children are enrolled in private schools. For such people and many more perhaps not so exceptional, the proper formulation is, “Succeed at all costs but avoid appearing ambitious.”The attacks on ambition are many and come from various angles; its public defenders are few and unimpressive, where they are not extremely unattractive. As a result, the support for ambition as a healthy impulse, a quality to be admired and fixed in the mind of the young, is probably lower than it has ever been in the United States. This does not mean that ambition is at an end, that people no longer feel its stirrings and promptings, but only that, no longer openly honored, it is less openly professed. Consequences follow from this, of course, some of which are that ambition is driven underground, or made sly. Such, then, is the way things stand: on the left angry critics, on the right stupid supporters, and in the middle, as usual, the majority of earnest people trying to get on in life.1. It is generally believed that ambition may be well regarded if （）_.2. The last sentence of the first paragraph most probably implies that it is （）.3. Some people do not openly admit they have ambition because （）.4. From the last paragraph the conclusion can be drawn that ambition should be maintained （）_.

Science has long had an uneasy relationship with other aspects of culture. Think of Galileo’s 17th century trial for his rebelling belief before the Catholic Church or poet William Blake’s harsh remarks against the mechanistic worldview of Isaac Newton. The schism between science and the humanities has, if anything, deepened in this century.Until recently, the scientific community was so powerful that it could afford to ignore its critics--- but no longer. As funding for science has declined, scientists have attacked “antiscience” in several books, notably Higher Superstition, by Paul R. Gross, a biologist at the University of Virginia, and Norman Levitt, a mathematician at Rutgers University; and The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan of Cornell University.Defenders of science have also voiced their concerns at meetings such as “The Flight from Science and Reason，” held in New York City in 1995, and “Science in the Age of (Mis) information,” which assembled last June near Buffalo.Antiscience clearly means different things to different people. Gross and Levitt find fault primarily with sociologists，philosophers and other academics who have questioned science’s objectivity. Sagan is more concerned with those who believe in ghosts, creationism and other phenomena that contradict the scientific worldview.A survey of news stories in 1996 reveals that the antiscience tag has been attached to many other groups as well, from authorities who advocated the elimination of the last remaining stocks of smallpox virus to Republicans who advocated decreased funding for basic research.Few would dispute that the term applies to the Unabomber, whose manifesto, published in 1995, scorns science and longs for return to a pre-technological utopia. But surely that does not mean environmentalists concerned about uncontrolled industrial growth are antiscience, as an essay in US News & Worm Report last May seemed to suggest.The environmentalists, inevitably, respond to such critics. The true enemies of science, argues Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University, a pioneer of environmental studies, are those who question the evidence supporting global warming, the depletion of the ozone layer and other consequences of industrial growth.Indeed, some observers fear that the antiscience epithet is in danger of becoming meaningless. “The term ‘antiscience’ can lump together too many, quite different things,” notes Harvard University philosopher Gerald Holton in his 1993 work Science and Anti-Science. “They have in common only one thing that they tend to annoy or threaten those who regard themselves as more enlightened?”1.The word “schism” (Line 3, Paragraph 1) in the context probably means （）.2.Paragraph 2 and 3 are written to （）.3.Which of the following is true according to the passage?4.The author’s attitude toward the issue of “science vs. antiscience’’ is （）.

Here in the US, before agricultural activities destroyed the natural balance, there were great migrations of Rocky Mountain locusts. Great migrating hordes of these insects once darkened the skies on the plains east of the Rockies where crops were often destroyed; the worst years were those from 1874 to 1877. One of these migrating swarms was estimated to contain 124 million locusts. During another migration in Nebraska it was estimated the swarm of locusts averaged half a mile high and was 100 miles wide and 300 miles long. Usually, these swarms take off from the ground against the wind, but, once airborne, they turn and fly with it. Warm convection currents help to lift them often to great heights. During the great locust plagues the situation became so serious that the original state constitution had to be rewritten to take care of the economic problems. The new document was known as “Grasshopper Constitution”. It is now believed that these locusts were a migratory form or phase of the lesser migratory locust, which is still common there. In this respect, the North American migratory locusts resemble their African relatives. In both regions the migratory forms arise as a result of crowding and climatic factors. Migratory forms are apparently natural adaptations which bring about dispersal when locust populations become too crowded. Fortunately for our farmers, the migratory form, the so-called spretus species, no longer seems to occur regularly, although there was a serious outbreak as late as 1938 in mid-western United States and Canada. Actually, there is no reason why the destructive migratory form might not again appear if circumstances should become favorable.1.Which of the following is the best title for the passage? 2.It can be inferred from the passage that the state constitution of Nebraska was rewritten in order to （）.3.According to the passage, North American and African migratory locusts are similar in that （）.4.The passage supports which of the following conclusions?

Please write an essay in no less than 300 words on the topic Mobile Instant Messaging, Today & Tomorrow. Mobile instant messaging has become one of the most popular platforms among people of different ages for interpersonal communication across time and space. Please 1) figure out the dominant factors of mobile instant messaging, 2) name its great impact on the psychological, behavioral, and social life of the youth respectively, 3) and predict the trend of its future or tomorrow. Your score will be given according to the three aspects underlined above. Please write your answer on your Answer Sheet.

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