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The Importance of science
科学是对自然、对宇宙、对生命的探索。发 现支配自然与生命现象的基本定律。 因此，科学对于人类的发展和社会的进步都 十分的重要。 对于研究生，掌握正确的科学的研究方法对 于我们的学习十分有利！
谢谢！
UNIT5 CAN WE KNOW THE UNIVERSE ?
REFLECTIONS ON A GRAIN OF SALT
Main id百度文库a
Science is a way of thinking and it aims at finding out how the world works. The universe is intractable, and even a grain of salt is very complicated and contains lots of information. But they are knowable. Human being has the capacity to understand the rules that governs the universe. And the search of rules and the only possible way to understand the universe is called science .
The first part
According to the author , science is more of a way of thinking than of a body of knowledge . Its goal is to find out how the world works ; to seek what regularities there may be , to penetrate the connections of things . Science cannot depend on our intuition or our percetion ; it is based on experiment , on the willingness to challenge old dogma , and on an openness to see the universe as it really is.
The fourth part
The search for rules,the only possible way to understand such a vast and complex universe,is called science. An ideal universe is an knowable one ,and at the same time,there is much unknown in it .The reason is clear : there will be no source of motivation for the thinking being if everything is known or if the universe is unknowable.
Structure
Para.1-3 Science is a way of thinking and aims at finding out how the world works, A scientific mind is to think about the phenomena of the world and to examine it critically.
Para.4-7 The universe is intractable. While human brains has limited information- carrying capacity. In this sense, we cannot understand a grain of salt, much less than the universe Para.8-9 In some sense, the universe is knowable. Human beings are capable of understanding the rules that governs the universe Para.10-11 The universe is complex. The search of rules and the only possible way to understand the universe is called science
The third part
Look more deeply at our microgram of salt,we know that the position of every sodium and chlorine atom is predetermined. If the universe also has laws that govern its behavior to the same degree of regularity that determines a crystal of salt,then the universe would be knowable. Much knowledge which exceeded the informationcarrying capacity of the brain could be stored in books or computer memories.
The second part
The author uses the structure of a grain of salt to illustrate his point. In that grain of salt there are about 1016 sodium and chlorine atoms. There are perhaps 1011 neurons in the brain. A typical brain neuron has perhaps a thousand little wires, the total number of things knowable by the brain is no more than 1014
Summary of the Text
This excerpt discusses how human beings can know the universe. Taking a grain of salt as an example, the author tries to illustrate that with regularities and natural laws the universe is knowable and that science is the only weapon for the human beings to understand the universe
• This number is only one percent of the number of atoms in our our spect of salt. • Superficially,the human mind seems to be even unable to carry all the information about a grain of salt • So in this sense the universe is intractable, astonishingly immune to any human attempt at full knowledge. We cannot on this level understand a grain of salt, much less the universe.
