What accounts for the great outburst of major inventions in early America-breakthroughs such as the telegraph, the steamboat and the weaving machine?
Among the many shaping factors, I would single out the country's excellent elementary schools; a labor force that welcomed the new technology; the practice of giving premiums to inventors; and above all the American genius for nonverbal , "spatial" thinking about things technological .
Why mention the elementary schools? Because thanks to these schools our early mechanics ,especially in the New England and Middle Atlantic states, were generally literate and at home in arithmetic and in some aspects of geometry and trigonometry.
Acute foreign observers related American adaptiveness and inventiveness to this educational advantage. As a member of a British commission visiting here in 1853 reported, "With a mind prepared by thorough school discipline, the American boy develops rapidly into the skilled workman."
A further stimulus to invention came from the "premium" system, which preceded our patent system and for years ran parallel with it. This approach, originated abroad, offered inventors medals, cash prizes and other incentives.
In the United States, multitudes of premiums for new devices were awarded at country fairs and at the industrial fairs in major cities. Americans flocked to these fairs to admire the new machines and thus to renew their faith in the beneficence of technological advance.
Given this optimistic approach to technological innovation, the American worker took readily to that special kind of nonverbal thinking required in mechanical technology. As Eugene Ferguson has pointed out , "A technologist thinks about objects that cannot be reduced to unambiguous verbal descriptions; they are dealt with in his mind by a visual, nonverbal process . . . The designer and the inventor . . . are able to assemble and manipulate in their minds devices that as yet do not exist."
This nonverbal "spatial" thinking can be just as creative as painting and writing. Robert Fulton once wrote, "The mechanic should sit down among levers, screws, wedges, wheels, etc., like a poet among the letters of the alphabet, considering them as an exhibition of his thoughts, in which a new arrangement transmits a new idea."
When all these shaping forces--schools, open attitudes, the premium system, a genius for spatial thinking--interacted with one another on the rich U. S. mainland, they produced that American characteristic, emulation. Today that word implies mere imitation. But in earlier times it meant a friendly but competitive striving for fame and excellence.
66. The best title for this passage might be__
[A]Inventive Mind
[B]Effective Schooling
[C]Ways of Thinking
[D] Outpouring of Inventions
[答案] A
[解题思路]
本文一开始首先提出问题，指出美国早期涌现了大量的创造发明，从第二段开始讨论出现这种现象的多种原因，并指出有创造力的空间思维能力是最重要的因素。文章的主要内容也是围绕这一因素展开，因此A为正确答案。B选项不是文章讨论的重点。C选项的错误在于文章没有讨论各种不同的思维方式。而D选项则是文章第一段用来引出话题的讨论，不能代表文章主要思想。
[题目译文]
本文的最佳标题可能是 。
[A] 具有创造性的头脑
[B] 有效的学校教育
[C] 思维方式
[D] 发明的涌现
1996年Passage 5
Rumor has it that more than 20 books on creationism/evolution are in the publisher's pipelines. A few have already appeared. The goal of all will be to try to explain to a confused and often unenlightened citizenry that there are not two equally valid scientific theories for the origin and evolution of universe and life. Cosmology , geology , and biology have provided a consistent , unified, and constantly improving account of what happened. "Scientific" creationism, which is being pushed by some for "equal time" in the classrooms whenever the scientific accounts of evolution are evil, is based on religion, not science. Virtually all scientists and the majority of nonfunda mentalist religious leaders have come to regard "scientific" creationism as bad science and bad religion.
The first four chapters of Kitcher's book give a very brief introduction to evolution. At appropriate places, he introduces the criticisms of the creationists and provides answers. In the last three chapters, he takes off his gloves and gives the creationists a good beating. He describes their programmes and tactics, and, for those unfamiliar with the ways of creationists, the extent of their deception and distortion may come as an unpleasant surprise. When their basic motivation is religious, one might have expected more Christian behavior.
Kitcher is a philosopher, and this may account, in part, for the clarity and effectiveness of
his arguments. The nonspecialist will be able to obtain at least a notion of the sorts of data and
argument that support evolutionary theory. The final chapter on the creationists will be extremely clear to all. On the dust jacket of this fine book, Stephen Jay Gould says: "This book stands for reason itself." And so it does-and all would be well were reason the only judge in the creationism/evolution debate.
70. This passage appears to be a digest of__
[A]a book review
[B]a scientific paper
[C]a magazine feature
[D] a newspaper editorial
[答案] A
[解题思路]
本题考察文章的来源，实际上也就是对中心思想的考查。综合全文，尤其是每段的第一句话、以及文章对Kitcher这本书的大量评论，可见文章是一篇书评，A为正确选项。
[题目译文]
这篇文章是一片 的摘要。
[A] 书评
[B] 科学论文
[C] 杂志上的特别文章
[D] 报纸社论
