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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 non-scientific modes of thought. Many features and qualities of the objects that a technologist thinks about cannot 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 non-verbal thinking, by and large, that has fixed the outlines and filled in the details of our material surroundings.
Pyramids, cathedrals, 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 nonverbal 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 the valves be 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, bat 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.
Its 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 encounter 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. (447)
In the passage, the author is primarily concerned with ______.
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To address such concerns, an experimental version of the traditional scholarly methods course was designed to raise students' consciousness about the usefulness of traditional learning for any modern critic or theorist. To minimize the artificial aspects of the conventional course, the usual procedure of assigning a large number of small problems drawn from the entire range of historical periods was abandoned, though this procedure has the obvious advantage of at least superficially familiarizing students with a wide range of reference sources. Instead students were engaged in a collective effort to do original work on a neglected eighteenth-century writer, Elizabeth Griffith, to give them an authentic experience of literary scholarship and to inspire them to take responsibility for the quality of their own work.
Griffith's work presented a number of advantages for this particular pedagogical purpose. First, the body of extant scholarship on Griffith was so tiny that it could all be read in a day; thus students spent little time and effort mastering the literature and had a clear field for their own discoveries. Griffith's play The Platonic Wife exists in three versions, enough to provide illustrations of editorial issues but not too many for beginning students to manage. In addition, because Griffith was successful in the eighteenth century, as her continued productivity and favorable reviews demonstrate, her exclusion from the canon and virtual disappearance from literary history also helped raise issues concerning the current canon.
The range of Griffith's work meant that each student could become the world's leading authority on a particular Griffith text. For example, a student studying Griffith's Wife in the Right obtained a first edition of the play and studied it for some weeks. This student was suitably shocked and outraged to find its title transformed into A Wife in the Night in Watt's Bibliotheca Britannica. Such experiences, inevitable and common in working on a writer to whom so little attention has been paid, serve to vaccinate the student--I hope for a lifetime against credulous use of reference sources. (433)
The author of the passage is primarily concerned with ______.
They're diamonds!
For hundreds of years men have risked their lives searching for diamonds. To many the discovery of this glittering treasure has seemed more important than the discovery of new lands. Fairy stories tell of brave knights who battled fierce dragons and evil wizards to win kingdom rich with diamonds. In the Tower of Lon- don in England, there is a very special room protected by guards. There, inside a thick glass ease, are jeweled crowns once worn by kings and queens. People from all over the world come to see the shimmering diamonds and other precious stones that shine from behind the glass.
Most diamonds seem to flash with a kind of white fire. But there are diamonds that sparkle in other colors, too. Sometimes diamonds are discovered in gravel at the bottom of rivers and streams. (To get these diamonds, the gravel is sucked up through giant hoses that act like vacuum cleaners.) Diamonds are found in rivers, on land, and in great stretches of hot desert sand. A few small ones are even found or near meteorites that strike the ground from outer space.
But most diamonds are found in rocks deep inside the diamond mines of Africa. The diamonds were made millions and millions of years ago when flaming volcanoes melted a mineral called carbon which was a part of these rocks. Gigantic earthquakes shook the rock and pressed them tightly, together. The hot melted carbon in the rock squeezed at the same time--squee2ed so tightly that by the time it cooled, it had changed into the lovely hard gems called diamonds,
To get at these valuable diamond rocks, workers ride in an elevator that goes down and down into the blackness far below the ground. Tunnels connect this deep shaft with the openings--called pipes--inside the ancient volcanoes.
When they are first dug from the mines, diamonds don't glitter or sparkle as they do when we see them in tings or other jewelry. They look more like dull bits of glass. A man who knows all about diamonds--a diamond cutter--must cut them just right. Diamonds are so hard that nothing can cut them except the edge of another diamond.
Using his diamond-edged tools, the diamond cutter carefully removes tiny pieces so that the diamond will have many sharp edges and smooth surfaces--like little windows. It is because of these shaft edges and smooth surfaces that the diamond reflects light, sparkles and flashes with tiny bursts of color, and seems almost ablaze with fire. Diamond cutters often use diamond saws. The fine powder--diamond dust--that is left after the sawing is done can be used in a kind of sandpaper to polish the sparking gems.
Not all diamonds are clear enough or pretty enough or large enough to be made into jewelry. But because they are so hard, they can be used for other things, such as points for drills and needles for record player. These diamonds are called industrial diamonds. Some of them are man made. Carbon is heated until it is hot and then squeezed. If men ever learn how to make it hot enough and to squeeze it tightly enough, they will probably be able to make big diamonds. Then maybe diamonds will be cheap enough to use as buttons on your shirt or coat! (610)
The following are the characters of diamonds EXCEPT ______.
听力原文： Russian President Vladimir Putin says Russia will support any option of reforming the UN's Security Council approved by consensus.
Russian President Vladimir Pntin says debate on the United Nations reform. would not split the organization. Putin made the remarks after talks with French President jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. Putin said that Russia will support any option of reforming the United Nations' Security Council approved by consensus. Pntin said Russia will continue supporting Germany as candidate to the seat of permanent member of the UN Security Council. Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder came to Kaliningrad at Putin's invitation to mark the 750th anniversary of the exclave's founding.
According to the passage, which statement is NOT true？
根据《商业银行个人理财业务风险管理指引》的要求:保证收益型理财计划的起点金额,人民币应在5万元以上,外币应在5000美元(或等值外币)以上。()
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