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  3. Many objects in daily use have clearly been influenced by science, but their

Many objects in daily use have clearly been influenced by science, but their

游客2025-01-05  40
问题    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 non-scientific 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 non-verbal 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 technologist’s 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 the 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, bat 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 of the Historic American Engineering Record wished to have drawings made of machines and isometric views of industrial processes for its historical record of American engineering, the only college students with the requisite abilities were not engineering students, but rather students attending architectural schools.
   Its courses in design, which in a strongly analytical engineering curriculum provide the background required for practical problem-solving, are not provided, we can expect to encounter silly but costly errors occurring in advanced engineering systems. For example, early models of high-speed railroad cars loaded with sophisticated controls were unable to operate in a snowstorm because a fan sucked snow into the electrical system. Absurd random failures that plague automatic control systems are not merely trivial aberrations; they are a reflection of the chaos that results when design is assumed to be primarily a problem in mathematics. (447) [br] The author uses the example of the early models of high-speed railroad cars primarily to ______.
选项 A、support the thesis that the number of errors in modern engineering systems is likely to increase
B、illustrate the idea that courses in design are the most effective means for reducing the cost of designing engineering systems
C、support the contention that a lack of attention to the nonscientific aspects of design results in poor conceptualization by engineers
D、weaken the proposition that mathematics is a necessary part of the study of design
答案 C
解析 推理判断题。作者列举高速列车无法在雪天行驶这一例子无非是为了证明，如果不考虑所谓非科学的或经验性的问题，就很可能造成愚蠢的，甚至严重的后果。
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