新核心大学英语Unit5 science and the scientific attitude.doc

Science and the Scientific Attitudeby Paul G. Hewitt Science is the body of knowledge about nature that represents the collective efforts, insights, findings, and wisdom of the human race. Science is not something new but had its beginnings before recorded history when humans first discovered reoccurring relationships around them. Through careful observations of these relationships, they began to know nature and, because of natures dependability, found they could make predictions to enable some control over their surroundings.科学是关于自然地知识总体，它 代表了人类的共同努力、洞察力、研究成果和智慧。科学并不是什么新的东西，在有文字记载的历史以前，当人们最初发现了在他们周围反复出现的各种关系时，就有了科学的开端。通过对这些关系的仔细观察，人们开始了解了自然，而由于自然的可靠性，人们还发现他们能够作出预测，从而有可能在某种程度上控制他们的周围环境。??? Science made its greatest headway in the sixteenth century when people began asking answerable questions about nature -- when they began replacing superstition by a systematic search for order -- when experiment in addition to logic was used to test ideas. Where people once tried to influence natural events with magic and supernatural forces, they now had science to guide them. Advance was slow, however, because of the powerful opposition to scientific methods and ideas. 科学在16世纪取得了最伟大的进展，因为这时人们提出了有关自然地可以回答的问题，开始以对自然规律的系统研究代替了迷信， 而且除了运用逻辑外，还运用实验来检验各种观点。以前人们曾试图用巫术和超自然的力量来影响自然事件，而现在有了科学来指导他们。然而由于对科学方法和科学思想的强有力的反对，进展是缓慢的。??? In about 1510 Copernicus suggested that the sun was stationary and that the earth revolved about the sun. He refuted the idea that the earth was the center of the universe. After years of hesitation, he published his findings but died before his book was circulated. His book was considered heretical and dangerous and was banned by the Church for 200 years. A century after Copernicus, the mathematician Bruno was burned at the stake -- largely for supporting Copernicus, suggesting the sun to be a star, and suggesting that space was infinite. Galileo was imprisoned for popularizing the Copernican theory and for his other contributions to scientific thought. Yet a