Which of the following is true?______
A. Ragtime originated with the big bands in the 1930s
B. Ragtime and blues were based on African music
C. Ragtime and blues had not evolved until 1950s
D. Blues was performed by singers dressed in blue
A.a demonstrationB.an imageC.a caseD.an illustration
A. a demonstration
B. an image
C. a case
D. an illustration
Part A
Directions: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. (40 points)
Extraordinary creative activity has been characterized as revolutionary, flying in the face of what is established and producing not what is acceptable but what will become accepted. According to this formulation, highly creative activity transcends the limits of an existing form. and establishes a new principle of organization. However, the idea that extraordinary creativity transcends established limits is misleading when it is applied to the arts, even though it may be valid for the sciences. Differences between highly creative art and highly creative science arise in part from differences in their goals. For the sciences, a new theory is the goal and end result of the creative act. Innovative science produces new propositions in terms of which diverse phenomena can be related to one another in more coherent ways. Such phenomena as a brilliant diamond or a nesting bird are relegated to the r01e of data, serving as the means for formulating or testing a new theory. The goal of highly creative art is very different: the phenomenon itself becomes the direct product of the creative act. Shakespeare's Hamlet is not a tract about the behavior. of indecisive princes or the uses of political power, nor is Picasso's painting Guernica primarily a propositional statement about the Spanish Civil War or the evils of fascism. What highly creative artistic activity produces is not a new generalization theft transcends established limits, but rather an aesthetic particular. Aesthetic particulars produced by the highly creative artist extend or exploit, in an innovative way, the limits of an existing form, rather than transcend that form.
This is not to deny that a highly creative artist sometimes establishes a new principle of organization in the history of an artistic field: the composer Monteverdi, who created music of the highest aesthetic value, comes to mind. More generally, however, whether or not a composition establishes a new principle in the history of music has little bearing on its aesthetic worth. Because they embody a new principle of organization, some musical works, such as the operas of the Florentine Camerata, are of signal historical importance, but few listeners or musicologists would include these among the great works of music. On the other hand, Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro is surely among the masterpieces of music even though its modest innovations are confined to extending existing means. It has been said of Beethoven that he toppled the rules and freed music from the stifling confines of convention. But a close study of his compositions reveals that Beethoven overturned no fundamental rules. Rather, he was an incomparable strategist who exploited limits—the rules, forms, and conventions that he inherited from predecessors such as Haydn and Mozart, Handel and Bach—in strikingly original ways.
The author considers a new theory that coherently relates diverse phenomena to one another to be the______
A. basis for reaffirming a well-established scientific formulation
B. byproduct of an aesthetic experience
C. tool used by a scientist to discover a new particular
D. result of highly creative scientific activity
The carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air may enter the leaf as a gas but is dissolved in water in the leaf before it is combined with a part of the water to form. simple sugars—the base material from which the plant body is mainly built. Actively growing plant parts are generally 75 to 90 percent water. Structural parts of plants, such as woody stems no longer actively growing, may have much less water than growing tissues. The actual amount of water in the plant at any one time, however, is only a very small part of what passes through it during its development. The processes of photosynthesis, by which carbon dioxide and water are combined—in the presence of chlorophyll(叶落素) and with energy derived from light—to form. sugars, require that carbon dioxide from the air enter the plant. This occurs mainly in the leaves. The leaf surface is not solid but contains great numbers of minute openings, through which the carbon dioxide enters. The same structure that permits the one gas to enter the leaf, however, permits another gas—water vapor—to be lost from it. Since carbon dioxide is present in the air only in trace quantities (3 to 4 parts in 10,000 parts of air) and water vapor is near saturation in the air spaces within the leaf (at 80℉, saturated air would contain about 186 parts of water vapor in 10,000 parts of air), the total amount of water vapor lost is many times the carbon dioxide intake. Actually, because of wind and other factors, the loss of water in proportion to carbon dioxide intake may be even greater than the relative concentrations of the two gases. Also, not all of the carbon dioxide that enters the leaf is synthesized into carbohydrates.
A growing plant needs water for all of the following except______
A. forming sugars
B. sustaining woody stems
C. keeping green
D. producing carbon dioxide