考博英语阅读理解若干篇篇章与问题二

2014-03-05 19:25:46来源：网络

考博英语阅读理解若干篇篇章与问题二

　　Passage 7

　　For me, scientific knowledge is divided into mathematical sciences, natural sciences or sciences dealing with the natural world (physical and biological sciences), and sciences dealing with mankind (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 to man. What distinguishes man from animal is that he knows and needs to know. If man did not know that the world existed, and that the world was of a certain kind, that he was in the world and that he himself was of a certain kind, he wouldn’t be a man. The technical aspects or applications of knowledge are equally necessary 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.

　　But even while enjoying the results of technical progress, he must 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 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, carried on because of mere intellectual curiosity, would eventually lead to modern electrical technology, without which we can scarcely conceive of contemporary life. Pure knowledge is valuable for its own sake, be-cause the human spirit cannot resign itself to ignorance. But, in addition, the foundation for practical results would not have been reached if this knowledge had not been sought disinterestedly.

　　31. The most important advances made by mankind come from __.

　　A) technical applications

　　B) apparently useless information

　　C) the natural sciences

　　D) philosophy

　　32. The word "Utopians" in the 2nd sentence in paragraph 2 is closest in meaning to __.

　　A) idealists

　　B) Greek mathematicians

　　C) scientists

　　D) true human

　　33. In the paragraph the follows this passage, we may expect the author to discuss __.

　　A) the value of technical research

　　B) the value of pure research

　　C) philosophy

　　D) unforeseen discoveries

　　34. The word "resign" in the 6th sentence in the 2nd paragraph is closest in meaning to

　　A) dismiss

　　B) quit

　　C) remark

　　D) submit

　　35. The title that best expresses the ideas of this passage is __.

　　A) "Technical Progress"

　　B) "A Little Learning is a Dangerous Thing"

　　C) "Man’s Distinguishing Characteristics"

　　D) "The Function of Theoretical Knowledge as Compared to Its Practical Applications"

Passage 8

In most of the human civilization of which we have any proper records, youth has drawn on

either art or life for models, planning to emulate the heroes depicted in epics on the shadow play screen or the stage, or those known human beings, fathers or grandfathers, chiefs or craftsmen, whose every characteristic can be studied and imitated. As recently as 1910, this was the prevailing condition in the United States. If he came from a nonliterate background, the recent immigrant learned to speak, move, and think like an American by using his eyes and ears on the labor line and in the homes of more acculturated cousins, by watching school children, or by absorbing the standards of the teacher, the foreman, the clerk who served him in the store. For the literate and the literate children of the nouliterate, there was art--the story of the frustrated artist in the prairie town, of the second generation battling with the limitations of the first. And at a simpler level, there were the Western and Hollywood fairy tales which pointed a moral but did not, as a rule, teach table manners.

With the development of the countermovement against Hollywood, with the efflorescence (全盛)of photography, with Time-Life-Fortune types of reporting and the dead-pan New Yorker manner of describing the life of an old-clothes dealer in a forgotten street or of presenting the "accurate", "checked" details of the lives of people whose eminence gave at least a sort of license to attack them, with the passion for "human documents" in Depression days--a necessary substitute for proletarian art among middle class writers who knew nothing about proletarians, and middleclass readers who needed the shock of verisimilitude(真实)--a new era in American life was ushered in, the era in which young people imitated neither life nor art nor fairy tale, but instead were presented with models drawn from life with minimal but crucial distortions. Doctored life histories, posed carelessness, "candid" shots of people in their own homes which took hours to arrange, pictures shot from real life to scripts written months before supplemented

by national polls and surveys which assured the reader that this bobby soxer (少女)did indeed represent a national norm or a growing trend--replaced the older models.

36. This article is based on the idea that ________.

A) people today no longer follow models

B) People attach little importance to whoever they follow

C) people generally pattern their lives after models

D) People no longer respect heroes

37. Stories of the second generation battling against the limitations of the first were often re- sponsible for ______.

A) inspiring literate immigrants

B) frustrating educated immigrants

C) preventing the assimilation of immigrants

D) instilling into immigrants an antagonistic attitude toward their forebears

38. The countermovement against Hollywood was a movement ______

A) toward realism

B) toward fantasy

C) against the teaching of morals

D) away from realism

39. The author attributes the change in attitudes since 1910 to ____

A) a logical evolution of ideas

B) widespread moral decay

C) the influence of the press

D) a philosophy of plenty

40. The word "distortions" at the end of the 2nd sentence in paragraph 2 is closest in meaning

to ______.

A) presentations

B) misinterpretations

C) influences

D) limitations

Passage 9

The conflict between good and evil is a common theme running through the great literature

and drama of the world, from the time of the ancient Greeks to all the present. The principle that conflict is the heart of dramatic action when illustrated by concrete examples, almost always turns up some aspect of the struggle between good and evil.

The idea that there is neither good nor evil--in any absolute moral or religious sense—is widespread in our times. There are various relativistic and behavioristic standards of ethics. If these standards even admit the distinction between good and evil, it is as a relative matter and not as whirlwind of choices that lies at the center of living. In any such state of mind, conflict can at best, be only a petty matter, lacking true universality. The acts of the evildoer and of the virtuous man alike become dramatically neutralized. Imagine the reduced effect of Crime and Punishment or The Brothers Karamazoc, had Dostoevsky thought that good and evil, as portrayed in those books, were wholly relative, and if he had had no conviction about them.

You can’t have a vital literature if you ignore or shun evil. What you get then is the world of Pollyanna, goody-goody in place of the good. Cry, The Beloved Country is a great and dramatic novel because Alan Paton, in addition to being a skilled workman, sees with clear eyes both good and evil, differentiates them, pitches them into conflict with each other, and takes sides. He sees that the native boy Absalom Kumalo, who has murdered, cannot be judged justly without taking into account the environment that has had part in shaping him. But Paton sees, too, that Absalom the individual, not society the abstraction, committed the act and is responsible for it. Mr. Paton understands mercy. He knows that this precious thing is not evoked by sentimental impulse, but by a searching examination of the realities of human action. Mercy follows a judgment; it does not precede it.

One of the novels by the talented Paul Bowles, Let It Come Down, is full of motion, full of sensational depravities, and is a crashing bore. The book recognizes no evil, and is coldly indifferent to the moral behavior of its characters. It is a long shrug. Such a view of life is non- dramatic and negates the vital essence of drama.

41. In our age, according to the author, a standpoint often taken in the area of ethics is the _____.

A) relativistic view of morals

B) greater concern with religion

C) emphasis on evil

D) greater concern with universals

42. The author believes that in great literature, as in life, good and evil are ____

A) relative

B) unimportant

C) constantly in conflict

D) dramatically neutralized

43. When the author uses the expression "it is a long shrug" in referring to Bowles’s book, he

is commenting on the ___

A) length of the novel

B) indifference to the moral behavior of the characters

C) monotony of the story

D) sensational depravities of the book

44. In the opinion of the author, Cry, The Beloved Country is a great and dramatic novel be-

cause of Paton’s ____.

A) insight into human behavior

B) behavioristic beliefs

C) treatment of good and evil as abstractions

D) willingness to make moral judgments

45. The word "shun" in the 1st sentence in paragraph 3 is closest in meaning to ______.

A) shut

B) attend

C) show

D) avoid 来源

　　Passage 10

　　African-American filmmakers should be in an enviable position, for since the early 1990s there has been a steady wave of low budget black films which have turned a solid profit due to a very strong response in the African-American community and a larger crossover audience than anticipated. Any rational business manager would now identify this sector as a prime candidate for expansion, but if the films have done so well with limited production and marketing costs, why have they not received full scale support7

　　Many analysts feel the business is engulfed in a miasma of self-serving and self-fulfilling myths based on the unspoken assumption that Mfrican-American films can never be vehicles of prestige, glamour, or celebrity. The relationship players have convinced themselves that black films can do only a limited domestic business under any circumstance and have virtually no for- eign box office potential. As executives who now control the film industry grew up in those de- cades when there were few black images on the screen and those that did exist were produced by film-makers with limited knowledge of the black community, it is little wonder that they avoid ideological issues, and seek to continue making films that they are comfortable with by avoiding they negative imagery of films they would prefer to eschew entirely.

　　Also to blame for this deleterious phenomenon are legions of desperate and Machiavellian African-American film producers, directors, and writers who would transform The Birth of A Nation into a black musical as long as it would provide them with gainful studio employment. These filmmakers not only perpetuate negative stereotypes in their films, but they also season them with a sprinkling of African-American authenticity. This situation would be onerous enough, given the economic exploitation of the community involved; unfortunately these films also validate the pathologies they depict. The constant projection of the black community as a kind of urban Wild Kingdom, the glamorization of tragic situations, and the celebration of inner

　　city drug dealers and gangsters has a programming effect on black youth. The power of music in film is a particularly seductive and propagandistic force which in the recent crop of African- American films has rarely been used in a positive social manner.

　　What flows from this combination of factors is a policy of market exploitation rather than market development, evidenced by the fact that any number of films may open to 1,500 screens in one week, only to totally disappear in less than a month. This restricted body of film products erodes the genre’s long-term viability, particularly with the more fickle non-African-American- can audiences and foreign audiences. Furthermore, when African-American actors begin to emerge as stars, their projects are usually designed to be "more" than a black film, such that any success that follows is therefore perceived not as a reflection of the viability of African-American filmmaking but as the broader pursuit of celebrity.

　　46. According to the passage, all wise managers think that ___

　　A) the industry of black film would increase in the future

　　B) the industry of black film would decrease in the future

　　C) the industry of black film would not receive full scale support

　　D) the industry of black film is bound to win full scale support

　　47. It is suggested by the analysts that ___

　　A) black films can be very successful

　　B) black films can win prestige, glamour, or celebrity

　　C) black films are mysterious

　　D) black films can never be the road to prestige

　　48. It can be inferred from the passage that ___

　　A) the black community is wild