博士研究生英语精读

Lesson 1 THE PARADOX OF KNOWLEDGE Lee Loevinger PRE-READING QUESTIONS 1.In what way does humanity obtain knowledge? 2.What is the general process of scientific research to acquire knowledge? 3.Is the accumulation of knowledge reducing ignorance about ourselves，the world and the universe? 4.Is human cognitive capacity finite or infinite? Is it possible for mankind to discover a final “theory of everything”? Reader’s Notes The greatest achievement of humankind in its long evolution from ancient hominoid1 ancestors to its present status is the acquisition and accumulation of a vast body of knowledge about itself，the world， and the universe. The products of this knowledge are all those things that，in the aggregate， we call “civilization，” including 5 language， science，literature， art， all the physical mechanisms， instruments， and structures we use， and the physical infrastructures on which society relies. Most of us assume that in modem society knowledge of all kinds is continually increasing and the aggregation of new information into the corpus of our social or 10 collective knowledge is steadily reducing the area of ignorance about ourselves， the world， and the universe. But continuing reminders of the numerous areas of our present ignorance invite a critical analysis of this assumption. In the popular view， intellectual evolution is similar to，15 although much more rapid than，somatic2 evolution. Biological evolution is often described by the statement that “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny4”一meaning that the individual embryo，in its development from a fertilized ovum5 into a human ba*y， passes through successive stages in which it resembles ancestra