2015年同等学力英语专项练习(13)

　　The study of social science is more than the study of the individual social sciences. Although it is true that to be a good social scientist you must know each of those components, you must also know how they interrelate. By specializing too early, many social scientists can lose sight of the interrelationships that are so essential to understanding modern problems. That's why it is necessary to have a course covering all the social sciences. In fact, it would not surprise me if one day a news story such as the one above should appear.

　　The preceding passage placed you in the future. To understand how and when social science broke up, you must go into the past. Imagine for a moment that you're a student in 1062, in the Italian city of Bologna, site of one of the first major universities in the western world. The university has no buildings. It consists merely of a few professors and students. There is no tuition fee. At the end of a professor's lecture, if you like it, you pay. And if you don't like it, the professor finds himself without students and without money. If we go back still earlier, say to Greece in the sixth century B. C., we can see the philosopher Socrates walking around the streets of Athens, arguing with his companions. He asks them questions, and then other questions, leading these people to reason the way he wants them to reason(this became known as the Socratic method).

　　Times have changed since then; universities sprang up throughout the world and created colleges within the universities. Oxford, one of the first universities, now has thirty colleges associated with it, and the development and formalization of educational institutions has changed the roles of both students and faculty. As knowledge accumulated, it became more and more difficult for one person to learn, let alone retain, it all. In the sixteenth century one could still aspire to know all there was to know, and the definition of the renaissance man(people were even more sexist then than they are now)was of one who was expected to know about everything.

　　Unfortunately, at least for someone who wants to know everything, the amount of information continues to grow exponentially while the size of the brain has grown only slightly. The way to deal with the problem is not to try to know everything about everything. Today we must specialize. That is why social science separated from the natural sciences and why it, in turn, has been broken down into various subfields, such as anthropology and sociology.

　　1.What is the main idea of this text?

　　a.social science is unified.

　　b.social science is a newborn science.

　　c.what is social science.

　　d.specialization in social science is not good.

　　2.What can we learn from the second paragraph?

　　a.Socrates can be regarded as the first social scientist in the western world.

　　b.the universities in Italy have no buildings.

　　c.Socrates created the"Socratic method".

　　d.Greece is not as civilized as Italy.

　　3.Why does the author say"people were even more sexist then than they are now"?

　　a.because they are so covetous that they want to know all there was to know.

　　b.because it is the Renaissance"man", not Renaissance"woman"or"human".

　　c.because no woman was formally educated at that time.

　　d.because all renaissance men were men.

　　4.What does the underlined word "exponentially" mean in the first sentence of the last paragraph?

　　a. promisingly 　　b. continuously　　 c. drastically　　 d. raidly

　　5.We can infer from the text that .

　　a.social science is a united science, and cannot be divided into subfields

　　b.social science may be further divided into smaller parts as the amount of knowledge and information expanding

　　c.there may be a renaissance man in the future

　　d.the best way to deal with the expansion of information is to know everything

　　参考答案：

　　1.A 文章第一句即为题旨所在：“The study of social science is more than the study of the individual social sciences.”

　　2.C “Socratic method”以苏格拉底的名字命名，并且为他所第一个使用。他是“Socratic method”无可争议的创始人。

　　3.B 这个答案可能有些出乎意料，但这是有据可依的。西方女奴主义兴起之时，类似这种名词都受到过挑战。最为大家熟知的，就是“Ms.”这一称谓的诞生。且从作者在括号中说到这句话，可看出这句话与文意本无甚大关系。

　　4.D “exponentially”的本意是“指数地”。大家都知道“呈指数倍增长”是指极快速的增长，这里的“exponentially”也就是“rapidly快速地”的意思。

　　5.B 人的精力是有限的，随着知识与信息的爆炸，社会科学的分科必然会越来越细，越来越专。A认为“Social science cannot be divided into subfields”，事实恰恰相反。笔者个人认为未来实在不可能出现“Renaissance Man”了。知识爆炸的速度远非人脑力可及。

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