英语翻译电子书
辽宁专科学校-续写穷人300字
Textbook
Intensive
English Reading
Compiled by
z.w.z.
for
Candidates
Applying
for
Doctor’s Degree
in the Art Academy
of China
September 1,
2010
1 62
Contents
Unit 1
Unit 2
Unit 3
Unit 4
Text 1 The Paradox of Knowledge
---------------- Page 3
Text 2 Tyranny of the
Urgent ---------------------- Page 8
Text
1 The Virtues of Ambition --------------------
Page 16
Text 2 Three Days to See
---------------------------- Page 21
Text
1
The West Unique, Not Universal
--------Page 24
Text 2 What I Have Lived
For -------------------- Page 28
Text 1
Philosophy and Art ----------------------------
Page 30
Text 2 Chopin—The Beautiful Soul of
Music---- Page 39
Art Theory
------------------------------------------------
Page 41
Translation Exercises
-----------------------------------Page 46
Son
gs------------------------------------------------
------- Page 48
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Unit 1
Text 1 The Paradox of Knowledge
Skeptical Inquirer, Sept-Oct, 1995 by Lee
Loevinger
Main theme: As knowledge about
nature expands, so does ignorance, and ignorance
may increase
more than its related knowledge.
1. The greatest achievement of humankind in
its long evolution from ancient hominoid ancestors
to its present status is the acquisition and
accumulation of a vast body of knowledge about
itself,
the world, and the universe. The
products of this knowledge are all those things
that, in the
aggregate, we call including
language, science, literature, art, all the
physical
mechanisms, instruments, and
structures we use, and the physical
infrastructures on which society
relies. Most
of us assume that in modern society knowledge of
all kinds is continually increasing
and the
aggregation of new information into the corpus of
our social or collective knowledge is
steadily
reducing the area of ignorance about ourselves,
the world, and the universe. But
continuing
reminders of the numerous areas of our present
ignorance invite a critical analysis of
this
assumption.
2. In the popular view,
intellectual evolution is similar to, although
much more rapid than, somatic
evolution.
Biological evolution is often described by the
statement that recapitulates
phylogeny
human baby, passes through
successive stages in which it resembles ancestral
forms of the human
species. The popular view
is that humankind has progressed from a state of
innocent ignorance,
comparable to that of an
infant, and gradually has acquired more and more
knowledge, much as a
child learns in passing
through the several grades of the educational
system. Implicit in this view
is an assumption
that phylogeny resembles ontogeny, so that there
will ultimately be a stage in
which the
accumulation of knowledge is essentially complete,
at least in specific fields, as if
society had
graduated with all the advanced degrees that
signify mastery of important subjects.
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3. Such views have, in fact, been
expressed by some eminent scientists. In 1894 the
great
American physicist Albert Michelson said
in a talk at the University of Chicago:
While it is never safe to affirm that the
future of Physical Science has no marvels in store
even
more astonishing than those of the past,
it seems probable that most of the grand
underlying
principles have been firmly
established and that further advances are to be
sought chiefly in the
rigorous application of
these principles to all the phenomena which come
under our notice .... The
future truths of
Physical Science ate to be looked for in the sixth
place of decimals.
4. In the century since
Michelson's talk, scientists have discovered much
more than the refinement
of measurements in
the sixth decimal place, and none is willing to
make a similar statement today.
However, many
still cling to the notion that such a state of
knowledge remains a possibility to be
attained
sooner or later. Stephen Hawking, the great
English scientist, in his immensely popular
book A Brief History of Time (1988), concludes
with the speculation that we may a
complete
theory
the mind of God.
human mind may be
able to grasp some of the secrets encompassed by
the title of his book The
Mind of God (1992).
Other contemporary scientists write of of
everything,meaning
theories that explain all
observable physical phenomena, and Nobel Laureate
Steven Weinberg,
one of the founders of the
current standard model of physical theory, writes
of his Dreams of a
Final Theory (1992).
5.
Despite the eminence and obvious yearning of these
and many other contemporary scientists,
there
is nothing in the history of science to suggest
that any addition of data or theories to the
body of scientific knowledge will ever provide
answers to all questions in any field. On the
contrary, the history of science indicates
that increasing knowledge brings awareness of new
areas
of ignorance and of new questions to be
answered.
6. Astronomy is the most ancient of
the sciences, and its development is a model of
other fields of
knowledge. People have been
observing the stars and other celestial bodies
since the dawn of
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recorded
history. As early as 3000 B.C. the Babylonians
recognized a number of the
constellations.
7. During the first five thousand years or
more of observing the heavens, observation was
confined to the narrow band of visible light.
In the last half of this century astronomical
observations have been made across the
spectrum of electromagnetic radiation, including
radio
waves, infrared, ultraviolet, X-rays,
and gamma rays, and from satellites beyond the
atmosphere.
It is no exaggeration to say chat
since the end of World War II more astronomical
data have been
gathered than during all of the
thousands of years of preceding human history.
8. However, despite all improvements in
instrumentation, increasing sophistication of
analysis
and calculation augmented by the
massive power of computers, and the huge
aggregation of data,
or knowledge, we still
cannot predict future movements of planets and
other elements of even the
solar system with a
high degree of certainty. Ivars Peterson, a highly
trained science writer and an
editor of
Science News, writes in his book Newton's Clock
(1993) that a surprisingly subtle chaos
pervades the solar system. He states:
In
one way or another the problem of the solar
system's stability has fascinated and tormented
asrtonomers and mathematicians for more than
200 years. Somewhat to the embarrassment of
contemporary experts, it remains one of the
most perplexing, unsolved issues in celestial
mechanics. Each step toward resolving this and
related questions has only exposed additional
uncertainties and even deeper mysteries.
9. Similar problems pervade astronomy. The two
major theories of cosmology, general relativity
and quantum mechanics, cannot be stated in the
same mathematical language, and thus are
inconsistent with one another, as the
Ptolemaic and Copernican theories were in the
sixteenth
century, although both contemporary
theories continue to be used, but for different
calculations.
Oxford mathematician Roger
Penrose, in The Emperors New Mind (1989), contends
that this
inconsistency requires a change in
quantum theory to provide a new theory he calls
quantum gravity.
……
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10. The progress of biological and life
sciences has been similar to that of the physical
sciences,
except that it has occurred several
centuries later. The theory of biological
evolution first came to
the attention of
scientists with the publication of Darwin's Origin
of Species in 1859. But Darwin
lacked any
explanation of the causes of variation and
inheritance of characteristics. These were
provided by Gregor Mendel, who laid the
mathematical foundation of genetics with the
publication of papers in 1865 and 1866.
11. Medicine, according to Lewis Thomas, is
the youngest science, having become truly
scientific
only in the 1930s. Recent and
ongoing research has created uncertainty about
even such basic
concepts as when and how life
begins and when death occurs, and we are spending
billions in an
attempt to learn how much it
may be possible to know about human genetics.
Modern medicine
has demonstrably improved both
our life expectancies and our health, and further
improvements
continue to be made as research
progresses. But new questions arise even more
rapidly than our
research resources grow, as
the host of problems related to the Human Genome
Project illustrates.
12. From even such an
abbreviated and incomplete survey of science as
this, it appears that
increasing knowledge
does not result in a commensurate decrease in
ignorance, but, on the
contrary, exposes new
lacunae in our comprehension and confronts us with
unforeseen questions
disclosing areas of
ignorance of which we were not previously aware.
13. Thus the concept of science as an
expanding body of knowledge that will eventually
encompass or dispel all significant areas of
ignorance is an illusion. Scientists and
philosophers
are now observing that it is
naive to regard science as a process that begins
with observations that
are organized into
theories and are then subsequently tested by
experiments. The late Karl Popper,
a leading
philosopher of science, wrote in The Growth of
Scientific Knowledge (1960) chat
science
starts from problems, not from observations, and
chat every worthwhile new theory raises
new
problems. Thus there is no danger that science
will come to an end because it has completed
its task, clanks to the
14. At least
since Thomas Kuhn published The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions (1962), it has
been
generally recognized that observations are the
result of theories (called paradigms by Kuhn
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62
and other philosophers), for without
theories of relevance and irrelevance there would
be no basis
for determining what observations
to make. Since no one can know everything, to be
fully
informed on any subject (a claim
sometimes made by those in authority) is simply to
reach a
judgment that additional data are not
important enough to be worth the trouble of
securing or
considering.
15. To carry the
analysis another step, it must be recognized that
theories are the result of
questions and
questions are the product of perceived ignorance.
Thus it is chat ignorance gives
rise to
inquiry chat produces knowledge, which, in turn,
discloses new areas of ignorance. This is
the
paradox of knowledge: As knowledge increases so
does ignorance, and ignorance may
increase
more than its related knowledge.
16. My own
metaphor to illustrate the relationship of
knowledge and ignorance is based on a line
from Matthew Arnold:
chat, indeed,
envelops our world, is ignorance. Knowledge is the
illumination shed by whatever
candles (or more
technologically advanced light sources) we can
provide. As we light more and
more figurative
candles, the area of illumination enlarges; but
the area beyond illumination
increases
geometrically. We know chat there is much we don't
know; but we cannot know how
much there is
chat we don't know. Thus knowledge is finite, but
ignorance is infinite, and the
finite cannot
ever encompass the infinite.
17. This is a
revised version of an article originally published
in COSMOS 1994. Copyright 1995
by Lee
Loevinger.
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Text 2 Tyranny of the Urgent
Charles E. Hummel
Have you ever wished for
a thirty-hour day? Surely this extra time would
relieve
the tremendous pressure under which we
live. Our lives leave a trail of unfinished
tasks. Unanswered letters, unvisited friends,
unwritten articles, and unread books
haunt
quiet moments when we stop to evaluate. We
desperately need relief.
But would a
thirty-hour day really solve the problem?
Wouldn’t we soon be
just as frustrated as we
are now with our twenty-four allotment? A
mother’s work is
never finished, and neither
is that of any student, teacher, minister, or
anyone else we
know. Nor will the passage of
time help us catch up. Children grow in number
and
age to require more of our time. Greater
experience in profession and church brings
more exacting assignments. So we find
ourselves working more and enjoying it less.
JUMBLED PRIORITIES…
When we stop
to evaluate, we realize that our dilemma goes
deeper than a
shortage of time; it is
basically the problem of priorities. Hard work
does not hurt us.
We all know what it is to
go full speed for long hours, totally involved in
an important
task. The resulting weariness is
matched by a sense of achievement and joy. Not
hard work, but doubt and misgiving, produce
anxiety as we review a month or year
and
become oppressed by the pile of unfinished tasks.
We sense uneasily that we
may have failed to
do the important. The winds of people’s demands
have driven us
onto a reef of frustration. We
confess, quite apart from our sins, “We have left
undone those things which we ought to have
done; and we have done those things
which we
ought not to have done.”
Several years
ago an experienced cotton mill manager said to me,
“Your
greatest danger is letting the urgent
things crowd out the important.” He didn’t
8
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realize how hard his maxim hit. It
often returns to haunt and rebuke me by raising
the critical problem of priorities.
We live in constant tension between the urgent and
the important. The
problem is that the
important task rarely must be done today or even
this week.
Extra hours of prayer and Bible
study, a visit with the non-Christian friend,
careful
study of an important book: these
projects can wait. But the urgent tasks call for
instant action---endless demands pressure
every hour and day.
A man’s home is no
longer his castle; it is no longer a place from
urgent tasks
because the telephone breaches
the walls with imperious demands. The momentary
appeal of these tasks seems irresistible and
important, and they devour our energy.
But in
the light of time’s perspective their deceptive
prominence fades; with a sense
of loss we
recall the important task pushed aside. We
realize we’ve become slaves
to the tyranny of
the urgent.
CAN YOU ESCAPE…….?
Is there any escape from this pattern of living?
The answer lies in the life of
our Lord. On
the night before He died, Jesus made an
astonishing claim. In the
great prayer of
John 17 He said, “ I have finished the work which
Thou gavest me to
do” (verse 4).
How
could Jesus use the word “finished”? His three-
year ministry seemed all
too short. A
prostitute at Simon’s banquet had found
forgiveness and a new life, but
many others
still walked the street without forgiveness and a
new life. For every ten
withered muscles that
had flexed into health, a hundred remained
impotent. Yet on
that last night, with many
useful tasks undone and urgent human needs unmet,
the
Lord had peace; He knew He had finished
God’s work.
The Gospel records show that
Jesus worked hard. After describing a busy day
Mark writes, “That evening at sundown, they
brought to Him all who were sick or
possessed
with demons. And the whole city was gathered
about the door. And He
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healed many who were sick with various
diseases, and cast out many demons”
(1:32-34).
On another occasion the demand of the ill
and maimed caused Him to miss
supper and to
work so late that His family thought He was beside
Himself (Mark
3:21). One day after a
strenuous teaching session, Jesus and His
disciples went out
in a boat. Even a storm
didn’t awaken Him (Mark 4:37-38). What a picture
of
exhaustion.
Yet His life was never
feverish; He had time for people. He could spend
hours
talking to one person, such as the
Samaritan women at the well. His life showed a
wonderful balance, a sense of timing. When
His brothers wanted Him to go to Judea,
He
replied, “My time has not yet come” (John 7:6).
Jesus did not ruin His gifts by
haste. In The
Discipline and Culture of the Spiritual Life, A.E.
Whiteham observes;
“Here in this Man is
adequate purpose…inward rest, that gives an air of
leisure to His
crowded life: above all there
is in this Man a secret and a power of dealing
with the
waste-products of life, the waste of
pain, disappointment, enmity, death---turning to
divine uses the abuses of man, transforming
arid places of pain to fruitfulness,
triumphing at last in death and making a short
life of thirty years or so, abruptly cut
off,
to be a ‘finished’ life. We cannot admire the
poise and beauty of this human life,
and then
ignore the things that made it.”
WAIT FOR INSTRUCTIONS…
What was
the secret of Jesus’ work? We find a clue
following Mark’s account
of Jesus’ busy day.
Mark observes that “….in the morning, a great
while before day,
He rose and went out to a
lonely place, and there He prayed” (Mark 1:35).
Here is
the secret of Jesus’ life and work for
God: He prayerfully waited for His Father’s
instructions and for the strength to follow
them. Jesus had no divinely-drawn
blueprint;
He discerned the Father’s will day by day in a
life of prayer. By this
means He warded off
the urgent and accomplished the important.
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Lazarus’s death illustrates
this principle. What could have been more
important than the urgent message from Mary
and Martha, “Lord, he whom you love
is ill”
(John 11:3)? John records the Lord’s response in
these paradoxical words:
“Now Jesus loved
Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when He
heard that he was
ill, He stayed two days
longer in the place where He was” (verses 5-6).
What was
the urgent need? Obviously it was to
prevent the death of this beloved brother. But
the important thing from God’s point of view
was to raise Lazarus from the dead.
So
Lazarus was allowed to die. Later Jesus revived
him as a sign of His magnificent
claim, “I am
the resurrection and the life: he who believes in
Me though he die, yet
shall he live” (verse
25).
We may wonder why our Lord’s
ministry was so short, why it could not have
lasted another five or ten years, why so many
wretched sufferers were left in their
misery.
Scripture gives not answer to these questions, and
we leave them in the
mystery of God’s
purposes. But we do know that Jesus’ prayerful
waiting for God’s
instructions freed Him from
the tyranny of the urgent. It gave Him a sense of
direction, set a steady pace and enabled Him
to do every task God assigned. And on
the
last night He could say, “I have finished the work
which Thou gavest me to do.”
DEPENDENCE
MAKES YOU FREE…
Freedom from the
tyranny of the urgent is found in the example and
promise of
our Lord. At the end of a vigorous
debate with the Pharisees in Jerusalem, Jesus said
to those who believed in Him: “If you continue
in My Word, you are truly my
disciples, and
you will know the truth, and the truth will make
you free… Truly,
truly, I say to you,
everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin…So if
the Son makes
you free, you will be free
indeed” (John 8:31-36).
Many of us have
experienced Christ’s deliverance from the penalty
of sin.
Are we letting Him free us from the
tyranny of the urgent? He points the way: “If
you continue in My Word.” This is the way to
freedom. Through prayerful
meditation on
God’s Word we gain His perspective.
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P.T. Forsyth once said, “The worst
sin is prayerlessness.” We usually think of
murder, adultery, or theft as among the worst.
But the root of all sin is
self-sufficiency---
independence from God. When we fail to wait
prayerfully for
God’s guidance and strength we
are saying, with our actions, if not our lips,
that we
do not need Him. How much of our
service is characterized by “going it alone”?
The opposite of such independence is prayer in
which we acknowledge our
need for God’s
instruction and supply. Concerning a dependent
relationship with
God, Donald Baillie says:
“Jesus lived His life in complete dependence upon
God, as
we all ought to live our lives. But
such dependence does not destroy human
personality. Man is never so truly and fully
personal as when he is living in
complete
dependence upon God. This is how personality
comes into its own. This
is humanity at its
most personal.”
Prayerful waiting on God
is indispensable to effective service. Like the
time-out in a football game, it enables us to
catch our breath and fix new strategy.
As we
wait for directions, the Lord frees us from the
tyranny of the urgent. He
shows us the truth
about Himself, ourselves, and our tasks. He
impresses on our
minds the assignments He want
us to undertake. The need itself is not the call;
the
call must come form the God who knows our
limitation. “The Lord pities those who
fear
Him. For He knows our frame; He remembers that we
are dust” (Psalm
103:13-14). It is not God
who loads us until we bend or crack with an ulcer,
nervous
breakdown, heart attack, or stroke.
These come from our inner compulsions coupled
with the pressure of circumstances.
EVALUATE…
The modern businessman
recognizes this principle of taking time out for
evaluation. When Greenwalt was president of
DuPont, he said, “One minute spent
in planning
saves three or four minutes in execution.” Many
salesmen have
revolutionized their profits by
setting aside Friday afternoon to plan carefully
the
major activities for the coming week. If
an executive is too busy to stop and plan, he
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may find himself replaced by
another man who takes time to plan. If the
Christian is
too busy to stop, take spiritual
inventory, and receive his assignments from God,
he
becomes a slave to the tyranny of the
urgent. He may work day and night to achieve
much that seems significant to himself and
others, but he will not finish the work God
has for him to do.
A quiet time of
meditation and prayer at the start of the day
refocuses our
relationship with God. Recommit
yourself to His will as you think of the hours
that
follow. In these unhurried moments list
in order of priority the tasks to be done,
taking into account commitments already made.
A competent general always draws
up his battle
plan before he engages the enemy; he does not
postpone basic decisions
until the firing
starts. But he is also prepared to change his
plans if an emergency
demands it. So try to
implement the plans you have made before the day’s
battle
against the clock begins. But be open
to any emergency interruption or unexpected
person who may call.
You may also find
it necessary to resist the temptation to accept an
engagement
when the invitation first comes
over the telephone. No matter how clear the
calendar
may look at the moment, ask for a day
or two to pray for guidance before committing
yourself. Surprisingly the engagement often
appears less important after the
pleading
voice has become silent. If you can withstand the
urgency of the initial
moment, you will be in
a better position to weigh the cost and discern
whether the
task is God’s will for you.
In addition to your daily quiet time, set aside
one hour a week for spiritual
inventory.
Write an evaluation of the past, record anything
God may be teaching
you, and plan objectives
for the future. Also try to reserve most of one
day each
month for a similar inventory of
longer range. Often you will fail. Ironically,
the
busier you get the more you need this time
of inventory, but the less you seem to be
able
to take it. You become like the fanatic, who,
when unsure of his direction,
doubles his
speed. And frenetic service for God can become an
escape from God.
But when you prayerfully
take inventory and plan your days, it provides
fresh
perspective on your work.
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CONTINUE THE EFFORT…
Over the years the greatest continuing struggle in
the Christian life is the effort
to make
adequate time for daily waiting on God, weekly
inventory, and monthly
planning. Because this
time for receiving marching orders is so
important, Satan
will do everything he can to
squeeze it out. Yet we know from experience that
only
by this means can we escape the tyranny
of the urgent. This is how Jesus succeeded.
He did not finish all the urgent tasks in
Palestine or all the things He would have liked
to do, but He did finish the work which God
gave Him to do. The only alternative to
frustration is to be sure that we are doing
what God wants. Nothing substitutes for
knowing that this day, this hour, in this
place we are doing the will of the Father.
Then and only then can we think of all the
other unfinished tasks with equanimity and
leave them with God.
Sometime ago
Simba bullets killed a young man, Dr Paul Carson.
In the
providence of God, his life’s work was
finished. Most of us will live longer and die
more quietly, but when the end comes, what
could give us greater joy than being sure
that
we have finished the work God gave us to do? The
grace of our Lord Jesus
Christ makes this
fulfillment possible. He has promised deliverance
from the sin and
the power to serve God in the
tasks of His choice. The way is clear. If we
continue
in the Word of our Lord, we are truly
His disciples. And He will free us from the
tyranny of the urgent, free us to do the
important, which is the will of God.
Copyright 1967 by Intervarsity Christian
Fellowship. Reprinted by permission of
InterVarsity Press,
Downers Grove, Il 60515
A Discussion of Tyranny of the Urgent
It seems to me that perfection of means and
confusion of goals seem to characterize
our
age.---Albert Einstein
The good is often the
enemy of the best.----Unknown
1. Define
the word “urgent” as used in the Tyranny of the
Urgent.
______________________________________
_________________________
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___
__________________________________________________
__________
____________________________________
___________________________
___________________
____________________________________________
__
__________________________________________________
___________
___________________________________
__________
2. Define the word “important”
as used in the Tyranny of the Urgent.
_______
__________________________________________________
______
________________________________________
_______________________
_______________________
________________________________________
______
__________________________________________________
_______
_______________________________________
________________________
______________________
_______________________
3. In the space
below, jot down the thoughts that most impressed
you from your
reading of Tyranny of the
Urgent.
______________________________________
_________________________
_____________________
__________________________________________
____
__________________________________________________
_________
_____________________________________
__________________________
____________________
___________________________________________
___
__________________________________________
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