考研英语阅读理解模拟试题及解析6..pdfVIP

Many objects in daily use have clearly been influenced by science,but their form and function,their dimensions and appearance,were determined by technologists,artisans,designers,inventors,and engineers— using nonscientific modes of thought. Many features and qualities of the objects that a technologist thinks about cannot be reduced to unambiguous verbal descriptions;they are dealt with in the mind by a visual,nonverbal process. In the development of Western technology,it has been nonverbal thinking,by and large,that has fixed the outlines and filled in the details of our material surroundings. Pyramids,cathedrals,and rockets exist not because of geometry or thermodynamics,but because they were first a picture in the minds of those who built them. The creative shaping process of a technologists mind can be seen in nearly every artifact that exists. For example,in designing a diesel engine,a technologist might impress individual ways of nonverbal thinking on the machine by continually using an intuitive sense of rightness and fitness. What would be the shape of the combustion chamber? Where should be valves be placed? Should it have a long or short piston? Such questions have a range of answers that are supplied by experience,by physical requirements,by limitations of available space,and not least by a sense of form. Some decisions such as wall thickness and pin diameter,may depend on scientific calculations,but the nonscientific component of design remains primary. Design courses,then,should be an essential element in engineering curricula. Nonverbal thinking,a central mechanism in engineering design,involves perceptions,the stock-in-trade of the artist,not the scientist. Because perceptive processes are not assumed to entail hard thinking, nonverbal thought is sometimes seen as a primitive stage in the development of cognitive processes and inferior to verbal or mathematical thought. But it is paradoxical that when the staff