2015海大学考博英语真题阅读理解精练.pdfVIP

中国考博辅导首选学校 2015河海大学考博英语真题阅读理解精练 For me scientific knowledge is divided into mathematical sciences natural sciencesorsciencesdealingwith thenaturalworld (physicalandbiological sciences) andsciencesdealingwithmankind (psychology sociology all the sciences of cultural achievements every kind of historical knowledge). Apart from these sciences is philosophy about which we will talk later. In the first place all this is pure or theoretical knowledge that is intrinsic and consubstautial toman. What distinguishesman from animal isthathe knows and needs to know. Ifman did not know that the world existed and that the world was of a certain kind that he was in the world and thathe himself was of a certain kind he wouldn’t be a man. The technicalaspects orapplications ofknowledge are equallynecessary for man and are of the greatest importance because they also contribute to defining him as man and permit him to pursue a life increasingly more truly human. Butevenwhileenjoyingtheresultsoftechnicalprogress hemust defend the primacy and autonomy of pure knowledge. Knowledge sought directly for its practical applications will have immediate and foreseeable success but not the kind of important result whose revolutionary scope is in large part unforeseen except by the imagination of the Utopians. Let me recall a we N-known example. If the Greek mathematicians had not applied themselves to the investigation of conic sections zealously and without the least 中国考博辅导首选学校 suspicion that it might someday be useful it would not have been possible centuries later to navigate far from shore. The first men to study the nature of electricity could not imagine that their experiments carriedonbecauseofmere intellectualcuriosity would eventually leadtomodern electricaltechnology withoutwhichwe can scarcely conceive of contemporary life. Pure knowledge is