新概念第四册课文翻译及学习笔记：Lesson45

2021年1月26日发(作者：pershing)
新概念第四册课文翻译及学习笔记：
Lesson45


【课文】



First listen and then answer the following question.


听录音，然后回答以下问题。



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 even, but because of the different thoughts that
exist in the minds of their inhabitants. This is the point I 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 nuclear bomb. Imagine 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 I cannot do so because I am a prisoner
of the present-day world, just as all of you are. We cannot think
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
生词和短语】



dispute v.
争夺



mosquito n.
蚊子



subdue v.
征服



drainage n.
下水系统



envision n.
预想



Morocco n.
摩洛哥



latitude n.
纬度



heretic n.
异教徒，异端邪说



conceive v.
想像



suffice v.
足够



nuclear adj.
原子弹的



original adj.
有独到见解的



【课文注释】



a very poor show
出丑



e


v.


①

争论



例句：
The couple disputed where to spend the holiday.


夫妻俩为上哪儿度假而发生争论。



②争议



例句：
Now there was just one point on the boundary left to
dispute.


边界上有一点引起争议。



The land near the border is disputed ground.


靠近边界的土地是有争议的地区。



③质疑



例句：
The family wanted to dispute the will.