题目内容
Scotland: a Land of Wisdom
In the 1740s, the famous French philosopher Voltaire said, "We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilization. " That's not a bad advertisement for any country when it comes to attracting people to search for a first-class education.
According to the American author Arthur Herman, the Scots invented the modern world itself. He argues that Scottish thinkers and intellectuals worked out many of the most important ideas on which modern life depends—everything from the scientific method to market economics. Their ideas did not just spread among intellectuals, but to those people in business, government and the sciences who actually shaped the Western world.
It all started during the period that historians call the Scottish Enlightenment (启蒙运动), which is usually seen as taking place between the years 1740 and 1800．Before that, philosophy was mainly concerned with religion. For the thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment, the proper study of humanity was mankind itself.
Their reasoning was practical. For the philosopher David Hume, humanity was the right subject for philosophy because we can examine human behavior. and so find real evidence of how people think and feel. And from that we can make judgments about the societies we live in and make concrete suggestions about how they can be improved, for universal benefit.
Hume's enquiry into the nature of knowledge laid the foundations for the scientific method—the pursuit of truth through experiment. His friend and fellow resident of Edinburgh, Adam Smith, famously applied the study of mankind to the ways in which mankind does business. Trade, he argued, was a form. of information. In pursuing our own interests through trading in markets, we all come to benefit each other.
Smith's idea has dominated modern views of economics. It also has wide applications. He was one of the philosophers to point out that nations can become rich, free and powerful through peace, trade and invention.
Although the Scottish Enlightenment ended a long time ago, the ideas which evolved at that time still underpin(构成……的基础) our theories of human exchange and enquiry. It also exists in Scotland itself in an educational tradition that combines academic excellence with orientation (方向).
Scotland is the right place to receive a first-class education.
查看答案
搜索结果不匹配？点我反馈
更多问题
David Hume was the first philosopher to study mankind
【37】
But we need to go further. We must ask some fundamental questions about the future of work. Should we continue to treat employment as the norm？ Should we not create conditions in which many of us can work for ourselves, rather than for an employer？ Should we not aim to revive the household and the neighbourhood, as well as the factory and the office, as centres of production and work？
The industrial age has been the only period of human history in which most people's work has taken the form. of jobs. The industrial age may now be coming to an end, and some of the changes in work patterns which it brought about may have to be reversed. This seems a discouraging thought. Bat, in fact, it could offer the prospect of a better future for work: Universal employment, as its history shows, has not meant economic freedom.
Employment became widespread when the enclosures of the 17th and 18th centuries made many people dependent on paid work by depriving them of the use of the land, and thus of the means to provide a living for themselves. Then the factory system destroyed the cottage industries and removed work from people's homes. Later, as transport improved, first by rail and then by road, people travelled longer distances to their places of employment until, eventually, many people's work lost all connection with their home lives and places in which they lived.
Meanwhile, employment put women at a disadvantage. It became customary for the husband to go out paid employment, leaving the unpaid work of the home and family to his wife.
All this may now have to change. The time has certainly come to switch some effort and resources away from the impractical goal of creating jobs for all, to the urgent practical task of helping many people to manage without full-time jobs.
What idea did the author derive from the recent opinion polls？
【38】
微信支付 
支付宝支付