高考完形填空模拟题.docxVIP

完形填空（一） Chemistry did not emerge as a science until after the scientific revolution in the seventeenth century and then only rather slowly and laboriously. But chemical knowledge is as ___16___ as history, being almost entirely concerned with the practical arts of living. Cooking is essentially a chemical process; so is the ___17___ of metals and the administration of drugs and poisons. This basic chemical knowledge, which was applied in most cases as a rule of thumb, was nevertheless dependent on the ___18___ experiment. It also ___19___ to stimulate a fundamental curiosity about the processes themselves. New information was always being ___20___ as artisans improved techniques to gain better results. The development of a scientific approach to chemistry was, ___21___, hampered by several factors. The most serious problem was the vast range of material available and the consequent difficulty of organizing it into some system. ___22___, there were social and intellectual ___23___. Chemistry is nothing if not practical; those who practice it must use their hands and they must have a certain practical flair. Yet in many ___24___ civilizations, ___25___ tasks were primarily the province of a slave population. The thinker or philosopher stood apart from this mundane world, where the practical arts appeared to ___26___ intellectual content or interest. The final problem for early chemical science was the element of ___27___. Experts in specific ___28___ had developed their own techniques and guarded their knowledge to prevent others from stealing their livelihood. Another factor that also ___29___ to secrecy was the esoteric ___30___ of the knowledge of alchemists, who ___31___ to transform metals into gold or were ___32___ with the hunt for the elixir that would bestow the blessing of eternal life. In one sense, the second of these was the more serious impediment ___33___the records of the chemical processes that early alchemists had ___34___ were often written down in