托福听力文本-Test 3(下)

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　　Literature Class

　　Professor:

　　$ Today we’ll discuss Transcendentalism . . Transcendentalism . . .which is a philosophical and literary movement that developed in New England in the early nineteenth century. Transcendentalism began with the formation in 1836 of the Transcendental Club in Boston, Massachusetts, by a group of artists and writers. There’s evidence that the group was involved in somewhat of a protest against the intellectual climate of Harvard. Interestingly enough, many of the Transcendentalists were actually Harvard educated, but they never met in Cambridge. Remember, at this time Harvard had only eleven professors, and at least eleven members could be expected to attend a meeting of the Transcendental Club. So their intellectual community was large enough to rival the Harvard faculty.

　　All right then. Their criticism of Harvard was that the professors were too conservative and old fashioned. Which, come to think of it, isn’t an unusual attitude for students when they talk about their professors. But, in fairness, the classroom method of recitation that was popular at Harvard required the repetition of a lesson without any operational understanding of it. In contrast, the Transcendentalists considered themselves modern and liberal because they preferred a more operational approach to education. Bronson Alcott translated Transcendentalism into pedagogy by encouraging the students to think, using dialogues and journals to develop and record their ideas. Language was viewed as the connection between the individual and society. In 1834, Alcott established the Temple School near Boston Commons and later founded a form of adult education, which he referred to as Conversation. This was really a process whereby the give and take in a conversation became more important than the doctrine that a teacher might have been inclined to pass on to students, an approach that stood in diametric opposition to the tradition at Harvard that encouraged students to memorize their lessons.

　　The Transcendental group also advanced a reaction against the rigid Puritanism of the period, especially insofar as it emphasized society at the expense of the individual—the Puritans, I mean. According to the Transcendentalists, the justification of all social organizations is the improvement of the individual. So, in the literature of the time, the Transcendentalists insisted that it was basic human nature to engage in self-expression, and many interpreted this as encouragement for them to write essays and other opinion pieces. One of the most distinguished members of the club was Ralph Waldo Emerson, who served as editor of the Transcendentalist’s literary magazine, the Dial. His writing stressed the importance of the individual. In one of his best-known essays, “Self-Reliance,” he appealed to intuition as a source of ethics, asserting that people should be the judge of their own actions, without the rigid restrictions of society. You can imagine the reaction of the church, in particular, the Unitarian Church, in which many of the intellectuals held membership. If individuals were responsible for their own code of ethics, then the clergy, and the entire church organization was threatened.

　　Perhaps because they were encouraged to think for themselves, the Transcendentalists came up with several options for living out their philosophies. Many were devoted to the idea of a Utopian society or at least to a pastoral retreat without class distinctions, where everyone would be responsible for tending the gardens and maintaining the buildings, preparing the food, and so forth. And quite a few were involved in some sort of communal living. Brook Farm was probably the most successful of these cooperatives, although it lasted only six years. Brook Farm and some of the other experimental communities brought to the surface the problem that the Transcendentalists faced when they tried to reconcile a cooperative society and individual freedom. Both Emerson and Thoreau declined to participate in Brook Farm because they maintained that improvement had to begin with an individual, not a group.

　　From 1841 to 1843, Emerson and Thoreau lived and worked together in Emerson’s home, exchanging ideas, developing their philosophies, and writing. Upon leaving Emerson’s home, Thoreau built a small cabin along the shores of Walden Pond near Concord, Massachusetts, where he lived alone for two years. Devoting himself to the study of nature and to writing, he published an account of his experiences in Walden, a book that’s generally acknowledged as the most original and sincere contribution to literature by the Transcendentalists.

　　But I’m getting ahead of myself.

　　$ Transcendentalism didn’t change the educational system, and it certainly didn’t reform the church in any significant way, but it did, in a sense, change the direction of American social and political culture because Transcendentalism evolved from its initial literary roots into a force that shaped the way a democratic society was interpreted on the North American continent.

　　General Science Class

　　Professor:

　　$ Okay. This is a general science course, and as such, the first thing I want you to understand is the scientific method. In your book, the definition of the scientific method is “an organized approach to explaining observed facts, with a model of nature that must be tested, and then modified or discarded if it fails to pass the tests.” So let’s take that apart and talk about it. What are observed facts? Anyone?

　　$ Student 1: I’ll try.

　　$ Professor: Okay.

　　$ Student 1: Isn’t a fact supposed to be a statement that everyone agrees on?

　　$ Professor: So you would say that a fact is objectively true.

　　$ Student 1: Yeah. That’s what I mean.

　　$ Professor: Okay. That sounds good, but what about this . . . we consider it a fact that the Sun rises each morning and the Earth rotates. But facts like that are not always agreed upon. Look, when we say that the Sun rises each morning, we assume that it is the same Sun day after day—an idea that might not have been accepted by ancient Egyptians, whose mythology taught them that the Sun died with every sunset and was reborn with every sunrise. Now, let’s consider the case of the Earth’s rotation. Well, for most of human history, the Earth was assumed to be stationary at the center of the universe. So, as you can see, our interpretations of facts often are based on beliefs about the world that others might not share. Still, facts are the raw material that scientific models seek to explain, so it’s important that scientists agree on the facts. How can we do that?

　　$ Student 2: How about this . . . a fact has to be verified, I mean, that’s where the testing comes in, so we have to be able to test a model, but we have to be able to test a fact, too, right?

　　$ Professor:

　　$ Now you’re on the right track. In the context of science, a fact must therefore be something that anyone can verify for himself or herself, at least in principle. So, even though the interpretation may be different, some interpretation of the Sun is there every morning, and that can be verified. Then, a model is proposed to explain the facts. And a model is…

　　$ Student 3: . . . an explanation of the facts.

　　$ Professor:

　　$ Right. Once the facts have been observed, a model can be proposed to explain them and not only explain what is obvious but also make predictions that can be tested through further observations or experiments. Let’s go back to Ptolemy’s model of the universe, which assumed that the Earth was the center of everything. Okay, that was a useful model because it predicted future locations of the Sun, Moon, and planets in the sky. However, although the Ptolemaic model remained in use for nearly 1500 years, eventually it became clear that its predictions didn’t quite match actual observations—a key reason why the Earth-centered model of the universe finally was discarded.

　　$ Student 2: So models are discarded when they don’t match the observations.

　　$ Professor:

　　$ Exactly. And new models are proposed to explain the facts in a better or more inclusive way. Okay, how does a model achieve the status of a theory?

　　$ Student 1:

　　$ Well, I guess sometimes the model doesn’t fail, you know, it gets repeated by many experiments and the, uh, the uh . . . pre- um, predictions are verified.

　　$ Professor:

　　$ So, when a prediction is verified . . . repeated, then we start to assume that the model is a valid representation of nature, and when that happens with many experiments and a number of different researchers, then the model achieves the status of a scientific theory.

　　$ Student 2: But . . .

　　$ Professor: Yes? Jerry?

　　$ Student 2: Well, the problem is that theories get discarded, too, don’t they?

　　$ Professor:

　　$ Absolutely. Because it isn’t really possible to prove that a theory is true beyond all shadow of a doubt. And that’s good because doubt is a cornerstone of science. Even a well-researched and presented theory should undergo continuous challenges from the scientific community, with further observations and experiments.

　　$ Student 3:

　　$ I’m sorry. Did we mention the term hypothesis? Does that fit in with a model or a theory?

　　$ Professor:

　　$ Glad you brought that up. A proposed model is often called a hypothesis, and that just means that the scientist is making an educated guess that the model’s predictions will bear up under testing.

　　$ Student 3: So a hypothesis is a proposed model.

　　$ Professor:

　　$ Right. But let’s put this all together, shall we? Step 1 is observation, the collection of data, that is, observations.

　　$ Step 2 is hypothesis or a model to explain the facts and to make predictions. Step 3 is additional observations and experiments. And here’s the important part, when the predictions fail, then we recognize that the model is flawed, and we have to revise or discard it, but when the predictions are verified on a consistent basis, then we consider the possibility that we have a true representation of nature and we elevate the model to the status of a theory.

　　$ Student: So step 4 is the theory?

　　$ Professor:

　　$ Right. But, even then, the theory must undergo step 5 . . . that’s further observations, experiments, and challenges. Okay so far? . . . Okay. Now for a reality check. In the real world of science, discoveries are rarely made by a process as . . . as mechanical as the idealized scientific method outlined in your textbook . . . the one that we just summarized. For example, anyone recognize the name Johannes Kepler?

　　$ Student 2: Sure. Didn’t he propose the laws of planetary motion?

　　$ Professor:

　　$ He did, in about 1600. But instead of verifying new predictions on the basis of his model, he tested themodel against observations that had been made previously. And . . . and . . . like most scientific discoveries, Kepler’s work involved intuition, collaboration with others, moments of insight, and luck. And eventually, other scientists made a lot of observations to, uh . . . verify the planetary positions predicted by his model.

　　$ Student 1: Student 2:

　　$ So the . . . . . . Then

　　$ Student 2: Go ahead.

　　$ Student 1: So the scientific method in the book . . . that’s not really the way it happens a lot of the time?

　　$ Professor:

　　$ Okay, let’s put it this way . . . the scientific method is a process that we need to keep in mind as we do the work of scientists, but we should also understand that it’s an idealized process for making objective judgments about whether a proposed model of nature is close to the truth. And we should also keep in mind that in the work of scientists, other factors are also brought to bear on those ideal steps in the process.

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