為了方便同學(xué)們的學(xué)習(xí)，為大家整理了新概念英語第四冊學(xué)習(xí)手冊，新概念英語作為一套世界聞名的英語教程，以其全新的教學(xué)理念，有趣的課文內(nèi)容和全面的技能訓(xùn)練，深受廣大英語學(xué)習(xí)者的歡迎和喜愛。希望以下內(nèi)容能夠為大家的新概念英語學(xué)習(xí)提供幫助!
新概念英語4 Lesson 43
Are there strangers in space?
宇宙中有外星人嗎?
First listen and then answer the following question.
聽錄音，然后回答以下問題。
What does the 'uniquely rational way' for us to communicate with other intelligent beings in space depend on?
We must conclude from the work of those who have studied the origin of life, that given a planet only approximately like our own, life is almost certain to start. Of all the planets in our solar system, we ware now pretty certain the Earth is the only one on which life can survive. Mars is too dry and poor in oxygen, Venus far too hot, and so is Mercury, and the outer planets have temperatures near absolute zero and hydrogen-dominated atmospheres. But other suns, start as the astronomers call them, are bound to have planets like our own, and as is the number of stars in the universe is so vast, this possibility becomes virtual certainty. There are one hundred thousand million starts in our own Milky Way alone, and then there are exist is now estimated at about 300 million million.
Although perhaps only 1 per cent of the life that has started somewhere will develop into highly complex and intelligent patterns, so vast is the number of planets, that intelligent life is bound to be a natural part of the universe.
If then we are so certain that other intelligent life exists in the universe, why have we had no visitors from outer space yet? First of all, they may have come to this planet of ours thousands or millions of years ago, and found our then prevailing primitive state completely uninteresting to their own advanced knowledge. Professor Ronald Bracewell, a leading American radio astronomer, argued in Nature that such a superior civilization, on a visit to our own solar system, may have left an automatic messenger behind to await the possible awakening of an advanced civilization. Such a messenger, receiving our radio and television signals, might well re-transmit them back to its home-planet, although what impression any other civilization would thus get from us is best left unsaid.
But here we come up against the most difficult of all obstacles to contact with people on other planets -- the astronomical distances which separate us. As a reasonable guess, they might, on an average, be 100 light years away. (A light year is the distance which light travels at 186,000 miles per second in one year, namely 6 million million miles.) Radio waves also travel at the speed of light, and assuming such an automatic messenger picked up our first broadcasts of the 1920's, the message to its home planet is barely halfway there. Similarly, our own present primitive chemical rockets, though good enough to orbit men, have no chance of transporting us to the nearest other star, four light years away, let alone distances of tens or hundreds of light years.
Fortunately, there is a 'uniquely rational way' for us to communicate with other intelligent beings, as Walter Sullivan has put it in his excellent book, We Are not Alone. This depends on the precise radio frequency of the 21-cm wavelength, or 1420 megacycles per second. It is the natural frequency of emission of the hydrogen atoms in space and was discovered by us in 1951; it must be known to any kind of radio astronomer in the universe.
Once the existence of this wave-length had been discovered, it was not long before its use as the uniquely recognizable broadcasting frequency for interstellar communication was suggested. Without something of this kind, searching for intelligences on other planets would be like trying to meet a friend in London without a pre-arranged rendezvous and absurdly wandering the streets in the hope of a chance encounter.
ANTHONY MICHAELIS Are There Strangers in Space? from The Weekend Telegraph
New words and expressions 生詞和短語
Mercury
n. 水星
hydrogen
n. 氫氣
prevailing
adj. 普遍的
radio astronomer
射電天方學(xué)家
uniquely
adv. 地
rational
adj. 合理的
radio frequency
無線電頻率
cm
n. 厘米
megacycle
n. 兆周
emission
n. 散發(fā)
intersteller
adj.星際的
rendezvous
n. 約會地點
參考譯文
根據(jù)研究生命起源的人們所作的工作，我們必然會得出這樣的結(jié)論：如果設(shè)想有一顆行星和我們地球的情況基本相似，那幾乎肯定會產(chǎn)生生命。我們目前可以肯定的是，在我們太陽系的所有行星中，地球是生命能存在的行星?；鹦翘稍镉秩毖?，金星太熱，水星也一樣。除此之外，太陽系的其他行星的溫度都接近絕對零度，并圍繞著以氫氣為主的大氣層。但是，其他的太陽，既天文學(xué)家所說的恒星，肯定會有像我們地球一樣的行星。因為宇宙中恒星的數(shù)目極其龐大，所以存在著產(chǎn)生生命星球的這種可能性是肯定無疑的。僅我們的銀河系就有1000億顆星，況且在宇宙中還有30億個天河，即銀河系。因此，我們所知道的現(xiàn)有恒星數(shù)目估計約有30億X1000億顆。
雖然在已經(jīng)產(chǎn)生生命的某個地方，可能只有1%會發(fā)展成高度復(fù)雜有智力的生命形態(tài)，但是行星的數(shù)目是那么龐大，有智力的生命必然是宇宙的自然組成道聽部分。
既然我們?nèi)绱藞孕庞钪嬷写嬖谥渌兄橇Φ纳?，那么我們?yōu)槭裁催€未見到外層空間來訪的客人呢?首先，他們可能在幾千年前或幾百年前已來過我們地球，并且發(fā)現(xiàn)我們地球漢時普遍存在著的原始狀態(tài)同他們的先進的知識相比是索然無味的。美國一位重要的射電天文學(xué)家羅納德.布雷斯韋爾教授在《自然》雜志上提出了這樣的觀點：假如有如此高級文明生命訪問了我們的太陽系，很可能會在離開太陽系時留下自動化信號裝置，等待先進文明的覺醒。這種自動化信息裝置，在接收到我們的無線電和電視信號后，完全有可能把這些信號發(fā)回到原來的行星。至于其他文明行星對我們地球會有什么印象，還是不說為好。
然而，在和外星人聯(lián)系中我們遇到的大困難是分隔我們的天文距離。據(jù)合理推算，外星人離我們平均距離也有100光年之遠(1光年是光以每秒186，000英里的速度在一年內(nèi)走的距離即6萬億英里)。無線電波也是以光速傳播的。假定外星人的這種自動化信息裝置接收了我們二十世紀二十年代的第廣播信號，那么這個信號在發(fā)回到原來的行星途中剛剛走了一半路程。同樣，我們目前使用的原始化學(xué)火箭，雖然把人送入軌道，但尚不能把我們送到離我們近、相距4光年的其他星球上去，更不用說幾十光年或幾百光年遠的地方了。
幸運的是，有一種我們可以和其他智力生命通迅聯(lián)系的“合理的方法”，正如活爾特.沙利方在其杰作《我們并不孤獨》中闡述的。這種通迅聯(lián)系要靠21厘料波段，即每秒1420兆周的精確無線電頻率。這個頻率是空間氫原子釋放的自然頻率，是在1951年被人類發(fā)現(xiàn)的。這個頻率是宇宙中任何射電天文學(xué)家都應(yīng)該熟悉的。
一旦這種波長的實際存在被發(fā)現(xiàn)，提出把它作為星際間可辨認的廣播頻率就為期不遠了。沒有這手段，要想尋覓其他星球上的智力生命，就如同去倫敦見一位朋友，事先未約定地點，而荒唐地在街上游逛，以期待碰巧遇上一樣。
新概念英語4 Lesson 44
Patterns of culture
文化的模式
First listen and then answer the following question.
聽錄音，然后回答以下問題。
What influences us from the moment of birth?
Custom has not commonly been regarded as a subject of great moment. The inner workings of our won brains we feel to be uniquely worthy of investigation, but custom, we have a way of thinking, is behaviour at its most commonplace. As a matter of fact, it is the other way around. Traditional custom, taken the world over, is a mass of detailed behaviour more astonishing than what any one person can ever evolve in individual actions, no matter how aberrant. Yet that is a rather trivial aspect of the matter. The fact of first-rate importance is the predominant role that custom plays in experience and in belief, and the very great varieties it may manifest.
No man ever looks at the world with pristine eyes. He sees it edited by a definite set of customs and institutions and ways of thinking. Even in his philosophical probing he cannot go behind these stereotypes; his very concepts of the true and the false will still have reference to his particular traditional customs. John Dewey has said in all seriousness that the part played by custom in shaping the behaviour of the individual, as against any way in which he can affect traditional custom, is as the proportion of the total vocabulary of his mother tongue against those words of his own baby talk that are taken up into the vernacular of his family. When one seriously studies the social orders that have had the opportunity to develop autonomously, the figure becomes no more than an exact and matter-of-fact observation. The life history handed down in his community. From the moment of his birth, the customs into which he is born shape his experience and behaviour. By the time he can talk, he is the little creature of his culture, and by the time he is grown and able to take part in its activities, its habits are his habits, its beliefs his beliefs, its impossibilities his impossibilities. Every child that is born into his group will share them with him, and no child born into one on the opposite side of the globe can ever achieve the thousandth part. There is no social problem it is more incumbent upon us to understand than this of the role of custom. Until we are intelligent as to its laws and varieties, the main complicating facts of human life must remain unintelligible.
The study of custom can be profitable only after certain preliminary propositions have been accepted, and some of these propositions have been violently opposed. In the first place, any scientific study requires that there be no preferential weighting of one or another of the items in the series it selects for its consideration. In all the less controversial fields, like the study of cacti or termites or the mature of nebulae, the necessary method of study is to group the relevant material and to take note of all possible variant forms and conditions. In this way, we have learned all that we know of the laws of astronomy, or of the habits of the social insects, let us say. It is only in the relevant material and to take note of all possible variant forms and conditions. In this way, we have learned all that we know of the laws of astronomy, or of the habits of the social insects, let us say. It is only in the study of man himself that the major social sciences have substituted the study of one local variation, that of Western civilization.
Anthropology was by definition impossible, as long as these distinctions between ourselves and the primitive, ourselves and the barbarian, ourselves and the pagan, held sway over people's minds. It was necessary first to arrive at that degree of sophistication where we no longer set our own belief against our neighbour's superstition. It was necessary to recognize that these institutions which are based on the same premises, let us say the supernatural, must be considered together, our own among the rest.
RUTH BENEDICT Patterns of Culture
New words and expressions 生詞和短語
commonplace
adj. 平凡的
aberrant
adj. 脫離常軌的，異常的
trivial
adj. 微不足道的，瑣細的
predominant
adj. 占優(yōu)勢的，起支配作用的
manifest
v. 表明
pristine
adj. 純潔的，質(zhì)樸的
stereotype
n. 陳規(guī)
vernacular
n. 方言
accommodation
n. 適應(yīng)
incumbent
adj. 義不容辭的，有責(zé)任的
preliminary
adj. 初步的
proposition
n. 主張
preferrential
adj. 優(yōu)先的
controversial
adj. 引起爭論的
cactus
n. 仙人掌
termite
n. 白蟻
nebula
adj. 星云
variant
n. 不同的
barbarian
n. 野蠻人
pagan
n. 異教徒
sophistication
n. 老練
premise
n. 前提
supernatural
adj. 超自然的
參考譯文
風(fēng)俗一般未被認為是什么重要的課題。我們覺得，只有我們大腦內(nèi)部的活動情況才值得研究，至于風(fēng)俗呢，只是些司空見慣的行為而已。事實小，情況正好相反。從世界范圍來看，傳統(tǒng)風(fēng)俗是由許多細節(jié)性的習(xí)慣行為組成，它比任何一個養(yǎng)成的行為都更加引人注目，不管個人行為多么異常。這只是問題的一個次要的側(cè)面。重要的是，風(fēng)俗在實踐中和信仰上所起的舉足輕重的作用，以及它所表現(xiàn)出來的極其豐富多采的形式。
沒有一個人是用純潔而無偏見的眼光看待世界。人們所看到的是一個受特定風(fēng)俗習(xí)慣、制度和思想方式剪輯過的世界。甚至在哲學(xué)領(lǐng)域的探索中，人們也無法超越這此定型的框框。人們關(guān)于真與偽的概念依然和特定的傳統(tǒng)風(fēng)俗有關(guān)。約翰.杜威曾經(jīng)非常嚴肅地指出：風(fēng)俗在形成個人行為方面所起的作用和一個對風(fēng)俗的任何影響相比，就好像他本國語言的總詞匯量和自己咿呀學(xué)語時他家庭所接納的他的詞匯量之比。當(dāng)一個人認真地研究自發(fā)形成的社會秩序時，杜威的比喻就是他實事求是觀察得來的形象化的說法。個人的生活史首先是適應(yīng)他的社團世代相傳形成的生活方式和準則。從他呱呱墜地的時刻起，他所生于其中的風(fēng)俗就開始塑造他的經(jīng)歷和行為規(guī)范。到會說話時，他就是傳統(tǒng)文化塑造的一個小孩子;等他長大了，能做各種事了，他的社團的習(xí)慣就是他的習(xí)慣，他的社團的信仰就是他的信仰，他的社團不能做的事就是他不能做的事。每一個和他誕生在同一個社團中的孩子和他一樣具有相同的風(fēng)俗;而在地球的另一邊。誕生在另一個社團的孩子與他就是少有相同的風(fēng)俗。沒有任何一個社會問題比得上風(fēng)俗的作用問題更要求我們對它理解。直到我們理解了風(fēng)俗的規(guī)律性和多樣性，我們才能明白人為生活中主要的復(fù)雜現(xiàn)象。
只有在某些基本的主張被接受下來、同時有些主張被激烈反對時，對風(fēng)俗的研究才是全面的，才會有收獲。首先，任何科學(xué)研究都要求人們對可供考慮的諸多因素不能厚此薄彼，偏向某一方面。在一切爭議較小的領(lǐng)域里，如對仙人掌、白議或星云性質(zhì)的研究，應(yīng)采取的研究方法是。把有關(guān)各方面的材料匯集起來，同時注意任何可能出現(xiàn)的異常情況和條件。例如，用這種方法，我們完全掌握了天文學(xué)的規(guī)律和昆蟲群居的習(xí)性。只是在對人類自身的研究。只要我們同原始人，我們同野蠻人，我們同異教徒之間存有的區(qū)別在人的思想中占主工導(dǎo)地位，那么人類學(xué)按其定義來說就無法存在。我們首先需要達到這樣一種成熟的程度：不用自己的信仰去反對我們鄰居的迷信。必須認識到，這些建立在相同前提基礎(chǔ)上的風(fēng)俗，暫且可以說是超自然的東西，必須放在一起加以考慮，我們自己的風(fēng)俗和其他民族的風(fēng)俗都在其中。
新概念英語4 Lesson 45
Of men and galaxies
人和星系
First listen and then answer the following question.
聽錄音，然后回答以下問題。
What is the most influential factor in any human society?
In man's early days. competition with other creatures must have been critical. But this phase of our development is now finished. Indeed, we lack practice and experience nowadays in dealing with primitive conditions. I am sure that, without modern weapons, I would make a very poor show of disputing the ownership of a cave with a bear, and in this I do not think that I stand alone. The last creature to compete with man was the mosquito. But even the mosquito has been subdued by attention to drainage and by chemical sprays.
Competition between our selves, person against person, community against community, still persists, however; and it is as fierce as it ever was.
But the competition of man against man is not the simple process envisioned in biology. It is not a simple competition for a fixed amount of food determined by the physical environment, because the environment that determines our evolution is no longer essentially physical. Our environment is chiefly conditoned by the things we believe. Morocco and California are bits of the Earth in very similar latitudes, both on the west coasts of continents with similar climates, and probably with rather similar natural resources. Yet their present development is wholly different, not so much because of different people wish to emphasize. The most important factor in our environment is the state of our own minds.
It is well known that where the white man has invaded a primitive culture, the most destructive effects have come not from physical weapons but from ideas. Ideas are dangerous. The Holy Office knew this full well when it caused heretics to be burned in days gone by. Indeed, the concept of free speech only exists in our modern society because when you are inside a community, you are conditioned by the conventions of the community to such a degree that it is very difficult to conceive of anything really destructive. It is only someone looking on from outside that can inject the dangerous thoughts. I do not doubt that it would be possible to inject ideas into the modern world that would utterly destroy us. I would like to give you an example, but fortunately I cannot do so. Perhaps it will suffice to mention the unclear bomb. Of making the effect on a reasonably advanced technological society, one that still does not possess the bomb, of making it aware of the possibility, of supplying sufficient details to enable the thing to be constructed. Twenty or thirty pages of information handed to any of the major world powers around the year 1925 would have been sufficient to change the course of world history. It is a strange thought, but I believe a correct one, that twenty or thirty pages of ideas and information would be capable of turning the present-day world upside down, or even destroying it. I have often tried to conceive of what those pages might contain, but of course outside the particular patterns that our brains are conditioned to, or, to be more accurate, we can think only a very little way outside, and then only if we are very original.
FRED HOYLE Of Men and Galaxies
New words and expressions 生詞和短語
dispute
v. 爭奪
mosquito
n. 蚊子
subdue
v. 征服
drainage
n. 下水系統(tǒng)
envision
n. 預(yù)想
Morocco
n. 摩洛哥
latitude
n. 緯度
heretic
n. 異教徒，異端邪說
conceive
v. 想像
suffice
v. 足夠
nuclear
adj. 原子彈的
original
adj.有獨到見解的
參考譯文
在人類早期，人類與其他生物的競爭一定是必不可少的。但這個發(fā)展階段已經(jīng)結(jié)束。確實，我們今天缺乏對付原始環(huán)境的實踐和經(jīng)驗。我斷定，如果沒有現(xiàn)代化的武器，要我和一只熊去爭洞穴，我會出洋相的;我也相信，出洋相者并非我一人。能與競爭的生物后只有蚊子，然而即使蚊子，也由于我們注意清理污水和噴灑化學(xué)藥品就被制服了。
然而人類之間的戰(zhàn)爭，人與人，團體與團體，依然在進行著，而且和以前一樣激烈。
但是，人與人的競爭并不像生物生物學(xué)中想像的那樣是一個簡單過程。它已不是為爭得物質(zhì)環(huán)境所決定的東西所決定。摩洛哥和加利福尼亞是地球上緯度極其相似的兩個地方，都在各自大陸的西海岸，氣候相似，自然資源也可能相似。但是，這兩個地方目前的發(fā)展程度完全不一樣。這倒不是因為人民不同，而是由于居民頭腦中的思想不同。 這是我要強調(diào)的論點。我們環(huán)境中重要的因素就是我們的思想狀況。
眾所周知，凡是白人侵入原始文化的地方，破壞作用大的不是殺人的武器，而是思想。思想是危險的。宗教法庭對此是非常清楚的，因此從前它總是把異教徒燒死。的確，言論自由的概念只存在于我們現(xiàn)代社會中，因為當(dāng)你生活在一個社團中時，社團的風(fēng)俗習(xí)慣會嚴格地制約你，使你很難有破壞性的想法。只有外部的旁觀者才能灌輸危險的思想。向現(xiàn)代世界灌輸一種思想以便摧毀我們?nèi)祟愂强赡艿氖?，對此我并不懷疑。我愿為你舉個例子，但幸虧我舉不出。也許提一下核彈就足以證明了。對一個沿未擁有核彈、但科技相當(dāng)發(fā)達的社會，如果告訴它制造核彈的可能性，而且向它提供制造核彈的細節(jié)，那么可以設(shè)想，這將對這個社會產(chǎn)生何等的影響。如果把二三十頁的情報交給1952年前后的任何一個世界強國，就足以改變世界歷史的進程。二三十頁材料中的思想和情報會便當(dāng)今的世界翻天覆地，甚至毀滅這個世界。這是個離奇的想法。不過我認為這個想法是正確的。我常常試圖想像這些紙上所寫的東西，不過我是做不到的，因為我和你們大家一樣，是當(dāng)今世界上的凡人。我閃不能脫離我們大腦所限定的模式去問題，我們只能稍微離開一點兒，就這也需要我們獨創(chuàng)的思想。
新概念英語4 Lesson 43
Are there strangers in space?
宇宙中有外星人嗎?
First listen and then answer the following question.
聽錄音，然后回答以下問題。
What does the 'uniquely rational way' for us to communicate with other intelligent beings in space depend on?
We must conclude from the work of those who have studied the origin of life, that given a planet only approximately like our own, life is almost certain to start. Of all the planets in our solar system, we ware now pretty certain the Earth is the only one on which life can survive. Mars is too dry and poor in oxygen, Venus far too hot, and so is Mercury, and the outer planets have temperatures near absolute zero and hydrogen-dominated atmospheres. But other suns, start as the astronomers call them, are bound to have planets like our own, and as is the number of stars in the universe is so vast, this possibility becomes virtual certainty. There are one hundred thousand million starts in our own Milky Way alone, and then there are exist is now estimated at about 300 million million.
Although perhaps only 1 per cent of the life that has started somewhere will develop into highly complex and intelligent patterns, so vast is the number of planets, that intelligent life is bound to be a natural part of the universe.
If then we are so certain that other intelligent life exists in the universe, why have we had no visitors from outer space yet? First of all, they may have come to this planet of ours thousands or millions of years ago, and found our then prevailing primitive state completely uninteresting to their own advanced knowledge. Professor Ronald Bracewell, a leading American radio astronomer, argued in Nature that such a superior civilization, on a visit to our own solar system, may have left an automatic messenger behind to await the possible awakening of an advanced civilization. Such a messenger, receiving our radio and television signals, might well re-transmit them back to its home-planet, although what impression any other civilization would thus get from us is best left unsaid.
But here we come up against the most difficult of all obstacles to contact with people on other planets -- the astronomical distances which separate us. As a reasonable guess, they might, on an average, be 100 light years away. (A light year is the distance which light travels at 186,000 miles per second in one year, namely 6 million million miles.) Radio waves also travel at the speed of light, and assuming such an automatic messenger picked up our first broadcasts of the 1920's, the message to its home planet is barely halfway there. Similarly, our own present primitive chemical rockets, though good enough to orbit men, have no chance of transporting us to the nearest other star, four light years away, let alone distances of tens or hundreds of light years.
Fortunately, there is a 'uniquely rational way' for us to communicate with other intelligent beings, as Walter Sullivan has put it in his excellent book, We Are not Alone. This depends on the precise radio frequency of the 21-cm wavelength, or 1420 megacycles per second. It is the natural frequency of emission of the hydrogen atoms in space and was discovered by us in 1951; it must be known to any kind of radio astronomer in the universe.
Once the existence of this wave-length had been discovered, it was not long before its use as the uniquely recognizable broadcasting frequency for interstellar communication was suggested. Without something of this kind, searching for intelligences on other planets would be like trying to meet a friend in London without a pre-arranged rendezvous and absurdly wandering the streets in the hope of a chance encounter.
ANTHONY MICHAELIS Are There Strangers in Space? from The Weekend Telegraph
New words and expressions 生詞和短語
Mercury
n. 水星
hydrogen
n. 氫氣
prevailing
adj. 普遍的
radio astronomer
射電天方學(xué)家
uniquely
adv. 地
rational
adj. 合理的
radio frequency
無線電頻率
cm
n. 厘米
megacycle
n. 兆周
emission
n. 散發(fā)
intersteller
adj.星際的
rendezvous
n. 約會地點
參考譯文
根據(jù)研究生命起源的人們所作的工作，我們必然會得出這樣的結(jié)論：如果設(shè)想有一顆行星和我們地球的情況基本相似，那幾乎肯定會產(chǎn)生生命。我們目前可以肯定的是，在我們太陽系的所有行星中，地球是生命能存在的行星?；鹦翘稍镉秩毖?，金星太熱，水星也一樣。除此之外，太陽系的其他行星的溫度都接近絕對零度，并圍繞著以氫氣為主的大氣層。但是，其他的太陽，既天文學(xué)家所說的恒星，肯定會有像我們地球一樣的行星。因為宇宙中恒星的數(shù)目極其龐大，所以存在著產(chǎn)生生命星球的這種可能性是肯定無疑的。僅我們的銀河系就有1000億顆星，況且在宇宙中還有30億個天河，即銀河系。因此，我們所知道的現(xiàn)有恒星數(shù)目估計約有30億X1000億顆。
雖然在已經(jīng)產(chǎn)生生命的某個地方，可能只有1%會發(fā)展成高度復(fù)雜有智力的生命形態(tài)，但是行星的數(shù)目是那么龐大，有智力的生命必然是宇宙的自然組成道聽部分。
既然我們?nèi)绱藞孕庞钪嬷写嬖谥渌兄橇Φ纳?，那么我們?yōu)槭裁催€未見到外層空間來訪的客人呢?首先，他們可能在幾千年前或幾百年前已來過我們地球，并且發(fā)現(xiàn)我們地球漢時普遍存在著的原始狀態(tài)同他們的先進的知識相比是索然無味的。美國一位重要的射電天文學(xué)家羅納德.布雷斯韋爾教授在《自然》雜志上提出了這樣的觀點：假如有如此高級文明生命訪問了我們的太陽系，很可能會在離開太陽系時留下自動化信號裝置，等待先進文明的覺醒。這種自動化信息裝置，在接收到我們的無線電和電視信號后，完全有可能把這些信號發(fā)回到原來的行星。至于其他文明行星對我們地球會有什么印象，還是不說為好。
然而，在和外星人聯(lián)系中我們遇到的大困難是分隔我們的天文距離。據(jù)合理推算，外星人離我們平均距離也有100光年之遠(1光年是光以每秒186，000英里的速度在一年內(nèi)走的距離即6萬億英里)。無線電波也是以光速傳播的。假定外星人的這種自動化信息裝置接收了我們二十世紀二十年代的第廣播信號，那么這個信號在發(fā)回到原來的行星途中剛剛走了一半路程。同樣，我們目前使用的原始化學(xué)火箭，雖然把人送入軌道，但尚不能把我們送到離我們近、相距4光年的其他星球上去，更不用說幾十光年或幾百光年遠的地方了。
幸運的是，有一種我們可以和其他智力生命通迅聯(lián)系的“合理的方法”，正如活爾特.沙利方在其杰作《我們并不孤獨》中闡述的。這種通迅聯(lián)系要靠21厘料波段，即每秒1420兆周的精確無線電頻率。這個頻率是空間氫原子釋放的自然頻率，是在1951年被人類發(fā)現(xiàn)的。這個頻率是宇宙中任何射電天文學(xué)家都應(yīng)該熟悉的。
一旦這種波長的實際存在被發(fā)現(xiàn)，提出把它作為星際間可辨認的廣播頻率就為期不遠了。沒有這手段，要想尋覓其他星球上的智力生命，就如同去倫敦見一位朋友，事先未約定地點，而荒唐地在街上游逛，以期待碰巧遇上一樣。
新概念英語4 Lesson 44
Patterns of culture
文化的模式
First listen and then answer the following question.
聽錄音，然后回答以下問題。
What influences us from the moment of birth?
Custom has not commonly been regarded as a subject of great moment. The inner workings of our won brains we feel to be uniquely worthy of investigation, but custom, we have a way of thinking, is behaviour at its most commonplace. As a matter of fact, it is the other way around. Traditional custom, taken the world over, is a mass of detailed behaviour more astonishing than what any one person can ever evolve in individual actions, no matter how aberrant. Yet that is a rather trivial aspect of the matter. The fact of first-rate importance is the predominant role that custom plays in experience and in belief, and the very great varieties it may manifest.
No man ever looks at the world with pristine eyes. He sees it edited by a definite set of customs and institutions and ways of thinking. Even in his philosophical probing he cannot go behind these stereotypes; his very concepts of the true and the false will still have reference to his particular traditional customs. John Dewey has said in all seriousness that the part played by custom in shaping the behaviour of the individual, as against any way in which he can affect traditional custom, is as the proportion of the total vocabulary of his mother tongue against those words of his own baby talk that are taken up into the vernacular of his family. When one seriously studies the social orders that have had the opportunity to develop autonomously, the figure becomes no more than an exact and matter-of-fact observation. The life history handed down in his community. From the moment of his birth, the customs into which he is born shape his experience and behaviour. By the time he can talk, he is the little creature of his culture, and by the time he is grown and able to take part in its activities, its habits are his habits, its beliefs his beliefs, its impossibilities his impossibilities. Every child that is born into his group will share them with him, and no child born into one on the opposite side of the globe can ever achieve the thousandth part. There is no social problem it is more incumbent upon us to understand than this of the role of custom. Until we are intelligent as to its laws and varieties, the main complicating facts of human life must remain unintelligible.
The study of custom can be profitable only after certain preliminary propositions have been accepted, and some of these propositions have been violently opposed. In the first place, any scientific study requires that there be no preferential weighting of one or another of the items in the series it selects for its consideration. In all the less controversial fields, like the study of cacti or termites or the mature of nebulae, the necessary method of study is to group the relevant material and to take note of all possible variant forms and conditions. In this way, we have learned all that we know of the laws of astronomy, or of the habits of the social insects, let us say. It is only in the relevant material and to take note of all possible variant forms and conditions. In this way, we have learned all that we know of the laws of astronomy, or of the habits of the social insects, let us say. It is only in the study of man himself that the major social sciences have substituted the study of one local variation, that of Western civilization.
Anthropology was by definition impossible, as long as these distinctions between ourselves and the primitive, ourselves and the barbarian, ourselves and the pagan, held sway over people's minds. It was necessary first to arrive at that degree of sophistication where we no longer set our own belief against our neighbour's superstition. It was necessary to recognize that these institutions which are based on the same premises, let us say the supernatural, must be considered together, our own among the rest.
RUTH BENEDICT Patterns of Culture
New words and expressions 生詞和短語
commonplace
adj. 平凡的
aberrant
adj. 脫離常軌的，異常的
trivial
adj. 微不足道的，瑣細的
predominant
adj. 占優(yōu)勢的，起支配作用的
manifest
v. 表明
pristine
adj. 純潔的，質(zhì)樸的
stereotype
n. 陳規(guī)
vernacular
n. 方言
accommodation
n. 適應(yīng)
incumbent
adj. 義不容辭的，有責(zé)任的
preliminary
adj. 初步的
proposition
n. 主張
preferrential
adj. 優(yōu)先的
controversial
adj. 引起爭論的
cactus
n. 仙人掌
termite
n. 白蟻
nebula
adj. 星云
variant
n. 不同的
barbarian
n. 野蠻人
pagan
n. 異教徒
sophistication
n. 老練
premise
n. 前提
supernatural
adj. 超自然的
參考譯文
風(fēng)俗一般未被認為是什么重要的課題。我們覺得，只有我們大腦內(nèi)部的活動情況才值得研究，至于風(fēng)俗呢，只是些司空見慣的行為而已。事實小，情況正好相反。從世界范圍來看，傳統(tǒng)風(fēng)俗是由許多細節(jié)性的習(xí)慣行為組成，它比任何一個養(yǎng)成的行為都更加引人注目，不管個人行為多么異常。這只是問題的一個次要的側(cè)面。重要的是，風(fēng)俗在實踐中和信仰上所起的舉足輕重的作用，以及它所表現(xiàn)出來的極其豐富多采的形式。
沒有一個人是用純潔而無偏見的眼光看待世界。人們所看到的是一個受特定風(fēng)俗習(xí)慣、制度和思想方式剪輯過的世界。甚至在哲學(xué)領(lǐng)域的探索中，人們也無法超越這此定型的框框。人們關(guān)于真與偽的概念依然和特定的傳統(tǒng)風(fēng)俗有關(guān)。約翰.杜威曾經(jīng)非常嚴肅地指出：風(fēng)俗在形成個人行為方面所起的作用和一個對風(fēng)俗的任何影響相比，就好像他本國語言的總詞匯量和自己咿呀學(xué)語時他家庭所接納的他的詞匯量之比。當(dāng)一個人認真地研究自發(fā)形成的社會秩序時，杜威的比喻就是他實事求是觀察得來的形象化的說法。個人的生活史首先是適應(yīng)他的社團世代相傳形成的生活方式和準則。從他呱呱墜地的時刻起，他所生于其中的風(fēng)俗就開始塑造他的經(jīng)歷和行為規(guī)范。到會說話時，他就是傳統(tǒng)文化塑造的一個小孩子;等他長大了，能做各種事了，他的社團的習(xí)慣就是他的習(xí)慣，他的社團的信仰就是他的信仰，他的社團不能做的事就是他不能做的事。每一個和他誕生在同一個社團中的孩子和他一樣具有相同的風(fēng)俗;而在地球的另一邊。誕生在另一個社團的孩子與他就是少有相同的風(fēng)俗。沒有任何一個社會問題比得上風(fēng)俗的作用問題更要求我們對它理解。直到我們理解了風(fēng)俗的規(guī)律性和多樣性，我們才能明白人為生活中主要的復(fù)雜現(xiàn)象。
只有在某些基本的主張被接受下來、同時有些主張被激烈反對時，對風(fēng)俗的研究才是全面的，才會有收獲。首先，任何科學(xué)研究都要求人們對可供考慮的諸多因素不能厚此薄彼，偏向某一方面。在一切爭議較小的領(lǐng)域里，如對仙人掌、白議或星云性質(zhì)的研究，應(yīng)采取的研究方法是。把有關(guān)各方面的材料匯集起來，同時注意任何可能出現(xiàn)的異常情況和條件。例如，用這種方法，我們完全掌握了天文學(xué)的規(guī)律和昆蟲群居的習(xí)性。只是在對人類自身的研究。只要我們同原始人，我們同野蠻人，我們同異教徒之間存有的區(qū)別在人的思想中占主工導(dǎo)地位，那么人類學(xué)按其定義來說就無法存在。我們首先需要達到這樣一種成熟的程度：不用自己的信仰去反對我們鄰居的迷信。必須認識到，這些建立在相同前提基礎(chǔ)上的風(fēng)俗，暫且可以說是超自然的東西，必須放在一起加以考慮，我們自己的風(fēng)俗和其他民族的風(fēng)俗都在其中。
新概念英語4 Lesson 45
Of men and galaxies
人和星系
First listen and then answer the following question.
聽錄音，然后回答以下問題。
What is the most influential factor in any human society?
In man's early days. competition with other creatures must have been critical. But this phase of our development is now finished. Indeed, we lack practice and experience nowadays in dealing with primitive conditions. I am sure that, without modern weapons, I would make a very poor show of disputing the ownership of a cave with a bear, and in this I do not think that I stand alone. The last creature to compete with man was the mosquito. But even the mosquito has been subdued by attention to drainage and by chemical sprays.
Competition between our selves, person against person, community against community, still persists, however; and it is as fierce as it ever was.
But the competition of man against man is not the simple process envisioned in biology. It is not a simple competition for a fixed amount of food determined by the physical environment, because the environment that determines our evolution is no longer essentially physical. Our environment is chiefly conditoned by the things we believe. Morocco and California are bits of the Earth in very similar latitudes, both on the west coasts of continents with similar climates, and probably with rather similar natural resources. Yet their present development is wholly different, not so much because of different people wish to emphasize. The most important factor in our environment is the state of our own minds.
It is well known that where the white man has invaded a primitive culture, the most destructive effects have come not from physical weapons but from ideas. Ideas are dangerous. The Holy Office knew this full well when it caused heretics to be burned in days gone by. Indeed, the concept of free speech only exists in our modern society because when you are inside a community, you are conditioned by the conventions of the community to such a degree that it is very difficult to conceive of anything really destructive. It is only someone looking on from outside that can inject the dangerous thoughts. I do not doubt that it would be possible to inject ideas into the modern world that would utterly destroy us. I would like to give you an example, but fortunately I cannot do so. Perhaps it will suffice to mention the unclear bomb. Of making the effect on a reasonably advanced technological society, one that still does not possess the bomb, of making it aware of the possibility, of supplying sufficient details to enable the thing to be constructed. Twenty or thirty pages of information handed to any of the major world powers around the year 1925 would have been sufficient to change the course of world history. It is a strange thought, but I believe a correct one, that twenty or thirty pages of ideas and information would be capable of turning the present-day world upside down, or even destroying it. I have often tried to conceive of what those pages might contain, but of course outside the particular patterns that our brains are conditioned to, or, to be more accurate, we can think only a very little way outside, and then only if we are very original.
FRED HOYLE Of Men and Galaxies
New words and expressions 生詞和短語
dispute
v. 爭奪
mosquito
n. 蚊子
subdue
v. 征服
drainage
n. 下水系統(tǒng)
envision
n. 預(yù)想
Morocco
n. 摩洛哥
latitude
n. 緯度
heretic
n. 異教徒，異端邪說
conceive
v. 想像
suffice
v. 足夠
nuclear
adj. 原子彈的
original
adj.有獨到見解的
參考譯文
在人類早期，人類與其他生物的競爭一定是必不可少的。但這個發(fā)展階段已經(jīng)結(jié)束。確實，我們今天缺乏對付原始環(huán)境的實踐和經(jīng)驗。我斷定，如果沒有現(xiàn)代化的武器，要我和一只熊去爭洞穴，我會出洋相的;我也相信，出洋相者并非我一人。能與競爭的生物后只有蚊子，然而即使蚊子，也由于我們注意清理污水和噴灑化學(xué)藥品就被制服了。
然而人類之間的戰(zhàn)爭，人與人，團體與團體，依然在進行著，而且和以前一樣激烈。
但是，人與人的競爭并不像生物生物學(xué)中想像的那樣是一個簡單過程。它已不是為爭得物質(zhì)環(huán)境所決定的東西所決定。摩洛哥和加利福尼亞是地球上緯度極其相似的兩個地方，都在各自大陸的西海岸，氣候相似，自然資源也可能相似。但是，這兩個地方目前的發(fā)展程度完全不一樣。這倒不是因為人民不同，而是由于居民頭腦中的思想不同。 這是我要強調(diào)的論點。我們環(huán)境中重要的因素就是我們的思想狀況。
眾所周知，凡是白人侵入原始文化的地方，破壞作用大的不是殺人的武器，而是思想。思想是危險的。宗教法庭對此是非常清楚的，因此從前它總是把異教徒燒死。的確，言論自由的概念只存在于我們現(xiàn)代社會中，因為當(dāng)你生活在一個社團中時，社團的風(fēng)俗習(xí)慣會嚴格地制約你，使你很難有破壞性的想法。只有外部的旁觀者才能灌輸危險的思想。向現(xiàn)代世界灌輸一種思想以便摧毀我們?nèi)祟愂强赡艿氖?，對此我并不懷疑。我愿為你舉個例子，但幸虧我舉不出。也許提一下核彈就足以證明了。對一個沿未擁有核彈、但科技相當(dāng)發(fā)達的社會，如果告訴它制造核彈的可能性，而且向它提供制造核彈的細節(jié)，那么可以設(shè)想，這將對這個社會產(chǎn)生何等的影響。如果把二三十頁的情報交給1952年前后的任何一個世界強國，就足以改變世界歷史的進程。二三十頁材料中的思想和情報會便當(dāng)今的世界翻天覆地，甚至毀滅這個世界。這是個離奇的想法。不過我認為這個想法是正確的。我常常試圖想像這些紙上所寫的東西，不過我是做不到的，因為我和你們大家一樣，是當(dāng)今世界上的凡人。我閃不能脫離我們大腦所限定的模式去問題，我們只能稍微離開一點兒，就這也需要我們獨創(chuàng)的思想。