托福 新托福 37 - Thales And The Milesians
题目
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
4.The phrase “elaborated upon” in the passage is closest in meaning to
  • A. proved wrong
  • B.misunderstood
  • C.repeated
  • D.further developed
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    While many other observers and thinkers had laid the groundwork for science, Thales (circa 624 B.C.E-ca 547 B.C.E.), the best known of the earliest Greek philosophers, made the first steps toward a new, more objective approach to finding out about the world. He posed a very basic question: "What is the world made of? " Many others had asked the same question before him, but Thales based his answer strictly on what he had observed and what he could reason out-not on imaginative stories about the gods or the supernatural. He proposed water as the single substance from which everything in the world was made and developed a model of the universe with Earth as a flat disk floating in water.

    Like most of the great Greek philosophers, Thales had an influence on others around him. His two best-known followers, though there were undoubtedly others who attained less renown, were Anaximander and Anaximenes. Both were also from Miletus (located on the southern coast of present-day Turkey) and so, like Thales, were members of the Milesian School. Much more is known about Anaximander than about Anaximenes, probably because Anaximander, who was born sometime around 610 B.C.E, ambitiously attempted to write a comprehensive history of the universe. As would later happen between another teacher-student pair of philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, Anaximander disagreed with his teacher despite his respect for him. He doubted that the world and all its contents could be made of water and proposed instead a formless and unobservable substance he called "apeiron" that was the source of all matter.

    Anaximander's most important contributions, though, were in other areas. Although he did not accept that water was the prime element, he did believe that all life originated in the sea, and he was thus one of the first to conceive of this important idea. Anaximander is credited with drawing up the first world map of the Greeks and also with recognizing that Earth's surface was curved.He believed, though, that the shape of Earth was that of a cylinder rather than the sphere that later Greek philosophers would conjecture. Anaximander, observing the motions of the heavens around the polestar, was probably the first of the Greek philosophers to picture the sky as sphere completely surrounding Earth-an idea that, elaborated upon later, would prevail until the advent of the Scientific Revolution in the seventeenth century.

    Unfortunately, most of Anaximander's written history of the universe was lost, and only a few fragments survive today. Little is known about his other ideas. Unfortunately, too, most of the written work for Anaximenes, who may have been Anaximander's pupil, has also been lost. All we can say for certain about Anaximenes, who was probably born around 560 BCE, is that following in the tradition of Anaximander, he also disagreed with his mentor. The world, according to Anaximenes, was not composed of either water or apeiron, but air itself was the fundamental element of the universe. Compressed, it became water and earth, and when rarefied or thinned out, it heated up to become fire. Anaximenes may have also been the first to study rainbows and speculate upon their natural rather than supernatural cause.

    With the door opened by Thales and the other early philosophers of Milestus, Greek thinkers began to speculate about the nature of the universe. This exciting burst of intellectual activity was for the most part purely creative. The Greeks, from Thales to Plato and Aristotle, were philosophers and not scientists in today's sense. It is possible for anyone to create "ideas" about the nature and structure of the universe, for instance, and many times these ideas can be so consistent and elaborately structured, or just so apparently obvious, that they can be persuasive to many people. A scientific theory about the universe, however, demands much more than the various observations and analogies that were woven together to form systems of reasoning, carefully constructed as they were, that would eventually culminate in Aristotle's model of the world and the universe. Without experimentation and objective, critical testing of their theories, the best these thinkers could hope to achieve was some internally consistent speculation that covered all the bases and satisfied the demands of reason.

    虽然有很多观察家和思想家已经为科学研究打下了基础,但泰利斯(大约公元前624年至大约公元前547年),早期希腊哲学家中最著名的哲学家,第一次使用一种更加客观的新方法来认识世界。他提出了一个非常基础的问题:世界是由什么组成的?在他之前,有很多人问过同样的问题,但是泰利斯的答案完全根基于他所观察到的以及他能推理出的东西,并不是那些凭空想象出来的有关神或超自然力量的故事。他认为水是创造出世间万事万物的唯一物质,并且他还建立了一个宇宙模型,其中地球是一个扁平的圆盘,漂浮在水中。 与大部分伟大的希腊哲学家一样,泰利斯影响着他周围的人。毫无疑问,大部分追随者都没那么有名,但最著名的两位是阿那克西曼德和阿那克西米尼。两人都来自米利都(位于现在土耳其南部海岸),因此就和泰利斯一样是米利都学派的成员。阿那克西曼德比阿那克西米尼更出名,可能是因为大约生于公元前610年某一天的阿那克西曼德雄心勃勃地尝试描述宇宙浩瀚的通史。正如后来发生在另一对哲学家师生(柏拉图和亚里士多德)身上的事情一样,阿那克西曼德不同意他老师的观点,尽管他非常尊重老师。他不相信“整个世界以及它所包含的所有东西都是由水构成的”,反而认为是一种没有形状的看不见的物质(他称之为“阿派朗”)构成了世间万物。 但是阿那克西曼德最重要的贡献是在别的领域。虽然他不承认水是最基本元素,但他的确相信所有生命都源自于海洋,因此他也是第一批持有这一重要概念的人之一。阿那克西曼德被誉为是第一个画出世界地图的希腊人,还发觉了地球表面是弯曲的。不过他认为地球的形状是圆柱形,并不是后来希腊哲学家们推测的那样。阿那克西曼德观察发现了北极星周围天体运动的轨迹,他极有可能是希腊哲学家中描绘出宇宙中的天体完全围绕着地球这样画面的第一人,这一观点随后不断发展盛行,直到17世纪科学革命的到来。 不幸的是,阿那克西曼德所书写的宇宙历史大部分译遗失,如今也只有一些碎片幸存下来。他别的观点也已无法知晓。同样不幸的是,阿那克西米尼的大部分作品也已经遗失了,他也可能是阿那克西曼德的学生。关于阿那克西米尼,我们能确定的就是他可能出生于约公元前560年,追寻着阿那克西曼德的传统,同样也与自己导师的观念不一致。按照阿那克西米尼的说法,世界既不是由水构成,也不是由阿派朗构成,空气本身才是宇宙中的的基础元素。空气被压缩就变成了水和土;如果被稀释,它就加热变成火。阿那克西米尼可能也是第一个研究彩虹的人,而且研究的是导致彩虹形成的自然因素而不是超自然原因。 随着泰利斯和其他早期米利都学派的哲学家打开新世界的大门,希腊思想家开始思考世界的本质。这些智力活动激烈涌现,在大多数情况下是绝对具有创造性的。这些希腊人,从泰利斯到柏拉图和亚里士多德,都是哲学家,并不是今天意义上的科学家。比如,任何人创造了关于自然和宇宙结构的观点,多次表述这些观点,它们始终如一并且结构精巧,或者仅仅是看上去很有道理,那么它们就能说服大部分人,这是很有可能发生的。但是,关于宇宙的科学理论,设置相关论证体系的要求远多于各种各样被我们编织在一起的观察和类比,论证体系的设置必须非常谨慎,最终可能以亚里士多德的世界和宇宙模型告终。理论如果没有进行实验和客观严谨的测试,那么这些思想家有可能获得的最多就是内部一致的猜想,它们不仅包含一切理论基础,还可以满足逻辑要求。

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    最新提问
    • wx_6697
      觉得B C 意思一样,不知道选哪个
    • wx_5576
      这道题C为什么对,E为什么不对?
    • wx_5576
      B为什么不能选啊?
    • wx_6697
      TPO30 passage 2 Q5我选的 D,不明白为啥不对?
    • wx_6697
      鑫哥,TPO6passage3Q5 答案是给错了吗?好多人都选A
    • wx_6697
      这题也很容易选错选成了D
    • wx_6697
      这道题A为什么错了
    • 芊儿
      为什么这道题不选c??a中的variety不是应该对应文中的differentiating 吗??求解!
    • wx_1000
      这道题不选E是因为太细节了吗
    • 王金阁
      这个题为什么不选C啊。。。
    • 芊儿
      这道题的D选项不是和文中的better able to reproduce in open settings相对应么??
    • 风荨火
      有大佬解释一下这个为啥选D嘛?
    • 以沫
      请问这个D 在哪里提现?为什么D错?
    • 芊儿
      第六题 的C选择为什么不对,感觉A是明显驳斥啊...
    • wx_6697
      鑫哥,这道题D是从哪里看出来的
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      这题选的A,根据是Joly’s calculations clearly supported those geologists who insisted on an age for Earth far in excess of a few million years.想问鑫哥为啥不选A
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      这题我选的是C依据是into a new habitat outside of its natural range, it may adapt to the new environment and leave its enemies behind.C为啥错了呢?鑫哥
    • wx_8861
      F选项的weather-related destruction在哪里体现了呢?原文最后一段的开头Among the costs里的costs是不是打错了?应该是coast?
    • wx_6697
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    • 与托福的斗争史
      与托福的斗争史 去解答 去解答
      这题为什么选C?
    • 小雨淅沥哗啦的下
      小雨淅沥哗啦的下 去解答 去解答
      B哪里错了
    • 小雨淅沥哗啦的下
      小雨淅沥哗啦的下 去解答 去解答
      B为啥不对
    • 李浩然
      B选项错误,是因为残缺么?
    • wx_100
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    • wx xxxxx
      请问鑫哥,这段开头有写As one pesticide replaces another为什么不是对应a new pesticide is developed?
    • wx_7695
      鑫哥,从哪里看出来这个masks 不是use呀,原文说了wear呀
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      @鑫哥,这题the damage will continue 不应该对应前面的 the target species evolves resistance to it,然后As one pesticide replaces another,不应该是结束了time cycle 吗
    • wx_2065
      鑫哥,想知道E错在哪里?
    • wx_7695
      鑫哥,B选项 cannot extended to earlier geological periods. 原文说的意思是后来的进化无法估计吧
    • wx_2163
      B为什么不选
    • wx_7780
      鑫哥,这个哪里看不use了。BD是修饰错,C是无中生有,怎么能直接选出A?
    • 100
      看到第一句话,以为是中心句就选了A... 为什么不能选A呢
    • 100
      为什么选b?
    • gu33
      请问下 这里选D的原因是 因为 evolutionary approach 对应着 原文的 Rates of evolution 嘛? 这里我选了C。。不是很懂 插入句和 D的关系 求解答
    • 我是啦啦啦
      我是啦啦啦 去解答 去解答
      这个题A哪里错了?是因为主语不对吗?这个C比A多一步推理啊
    • haiyuqiao
      鑫哥,D选项里的19世纪出现了很多假设,原文中并没有提到啊
    • wx_7060
      为什么选a 呢。我觉得a是细节。F哪错了?
    • wx_1105
      我想问一下,这道题为什么不能选A呢?
    • wx_8122
      D为什么不选
    • wx_1655
      f选项哪里说了
    • chaulaw
      鑫哥,原文是below经济损害水平,D是一触发经济损害就用,这也对吗?
    • chaulaw
      interclan婚姻是对的吗?不是只在自己的family结婚扩大家族吗?
    • wx_6697
      鑫哥,这道题答案是不是错了,好多人选D 我也选的D求解答
    • wx_6697
      这道题应该是一道易错题,每个选项的都有,然而我选的A错了,求解
    • wx_6697
      鑫哥,这题的C是怎么得到的?B也没有找到啊?难道不是应该选B
    • wx_6697
      鑫哥,还有这个,好多人选A答案是不是错了
    • wx_6697
      求问D是从哪里得出来的,我选的B呀哎呀
    • wx_4185
      it is difficult to say how far they were intended to be portraits rather than generalized images 这句话怎么理解呢
    • 此楠楠
      请问下这个插入题怎么选的呢?
    • 此楠楠
      求鑫哥讲解下A选项。。。 Even though in error, Joly’s calculations clearly supported those geologists who insisted on an age for Earth far in excess of a few million years.