海天考研网

Passage 3

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 “anti-science” 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 Lemon-Haunted World, by Car 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 world-view.

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 anti-science, as an essay in US News &World 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.”

59.  The word “schism” (Line 3, Para. 1) in the context probably means__.

       [A] confrontation          [B] dissatisfaction         [C] separation          [D] contempt

60.  Paragraphs 2 and 3 are written to

[A]   discuss the cause of the decline of science’s power

[B]  show the author’s sympathy with scientists

[C]  explain the way in which science develops

[D]  exemplify the division of science and the humanities

61.  Which of the following is true according to the passage?

[A]   Environmentalists were blamed for anti-science in an essay.

[B]  Politicians are not subject to the labeling of anti-science.

[C]  The “more enlightened” tend to tag others as anti-science.

[D] Tagging environmentalists as “anti-science” is justifiable.

62.  The author’s attitude toward the issue of “science vs. anti-science” is

       [A]  impartial             [B] subjective             [C] biased              [D] puzzling