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On Knowing the Difference
It is as though we can know nothing of a thing until we know its name. Can we be said to know what a pigeon is unless we know that it is a pigeon? We may have seen it again and again, and noted it as a bird with a full bosom and swift wings. But if we are not able to name it except vaguely as a “bird”, we seem to be separated from it by a vast distance of ignorance. Learn that it is a pigeon however, and immediately it rushes towards us across the distance, like something seen through a telescope. No doubt to the pigeon fancier (爱好者) this would seem but the most basic knowledge, and he would not think much of our acquaintance with pigeons if we could not tell a carrier from a pouter. That is the charm (魅力) of knowledge—it is merely a door into another sort of ignorance.
There are always new differences to be discovered, new names to be learned, new individualities to be known, new classifications to be made. No man with a grain of either poetry or the scientific spirit in him has any right to be bored with the world, though he lived for a thousand years.
There is scarcely a subject that does not contain sufficient differences to keep an explorer happy for a lifetime. It is said that thirteen thousand species of butterflies have already been discovered, and it is suggested that there may be nearly twice as many that have so far escaped the naturalists Many men give all the pleasant hours of their lives to learning how to know the difference between one kind of moth (蛾) and another. One used to see these moth-hunters on windless nights chasing their quarry fantastically with nets in the light of lamps. In chasing moths, they chase knowledge. This, they feel, is life at its most exciting, its most intense.
The townsman passing a field of sheep finds it difficult to believe that the shepherd can distinguish between one and another of them with as much certainty as if they were his children. And do not most of us think of foreigners as beings who are all turned out as if on a pattern, like sheep?
Thus our first generalizations spring from ignorance rather than from knowledge. They are true, as long as we know that they are not entirely true. As soon as we begin to accept them as absolute truths, they become lies. I do not wish to deny the importance of generalizations. It is not possible to think or even to act without them. The generalization that is founded on a knowledge of and a delight in the variety of things is the end of all science and poetry.
Title: On Knowing the Difference | |
Passage outline | Supporting details |
The 1. of a name in knowing a thing | ● Not knowing its name, you will feel distantly 2. from a thing however many times you’ve seen it. ● A thing will become magically close and 3. to you the moment you are able to name it. ● The charm of knowledge 4. in that its boundaries can be always pushed back. |
A world full of differences | ● As there’s always something new remaining to be 5., one is not supposed to Suffer any boredom with the world in his lifetime. ● One subject alone contains so many 6. that anyone interested may have to devote his 7. to learning them. ● By chasing knowledge, people will experience the greatest 8. and intensity that life can offer. |
True but never entirely true generalizations | ● The way the townsman look at sheep and we look at foreigners illustrates that our first generalizations are made out of 9. of knowledge. ● Important as generalizations are in our thinking and acting, they will become lies once we regard them as absolute 10.. ● Coming to know the variety of things with delight is the final generalization all science and poetry aim to make. |
As she ran her eyes over the flight-test calculation sheets the engineer had given her, Katherine Goble could see there was something wrong with them. The engineer had made an error with a square root (平方根). And it was going to be tricky to tell him so. It was her first day on this assignment, when she and another girl had been picked out of the computing pool at the Langley aeronautical laboratory, to help the all-male flight research unit.
But there were other, more significant snags (障碍) than simply being new—he was a man and she was a woman. In 1953 women did not question men. They stayed in their place, in this case usually the computing pool, tapping away on their desktop calculators or filling sheets with figures, she as neatly turned out as all the rest. Men were the grand designers, the engineers; the women were “computers in skirts”, who were handed a set of equations (方程式) and exhaustively, diligently checked them. Men were not interested in things as small as that.
Nonetheless, this engineer’s calculation was wrong. If she did not ask the question, an aircraft might not fly, or might fly and crash.
So, very carefully, she asked it. Was it possible that he could have made a mistake? He did not admit it but, by turning the colour of a cough drop, he ceded (屈服) the point. She asked more such questions, and they got her noticed. As the weeks passed, the men “forgot” to return her to the pool. Her incessant “why?” and “how?” made their work sharper. It also challenged them. Why were their calculations of aerodynamic forces so often out? Because they were maths graduates who had forgotten their geometry, whereas she had not; her high-school brilliance at maths had led to special classes on analytic geometry in which she, at 13, had been the only pupil.
Why was she not allowed to get her name on a flight-trajectory report when she had done most of the work? Because women didn’t. That was no answer, so she got her name on the report, the first woman to be so credited. Why was she not allowed into the engineers’ lectures on orbital mechanics and rocket propulsion? Because “the girls don’t go”. Why? Did she not read Aviation Week, like them? She soon became the first woman there.
As NASA’s focus turned from supersonic flight to flights in space, she was therefore deeply involved, though still behind the scenes. She ensured that Alan Shepards mercury capsule splashed down where it could be found quickly in 1961, and that John Glenn in 1962 could return safely from his first orbits of the earth. Indeed, until she had checked the figures by hand against those of the newfangled electronic computer, he refused to go.
Later she calculated the timings for the first moon landing (with the astronauts’ return), and worked on the space shuttle. But in the galaxy of space-programme heroes, despite her 33 years in the flight research unit, for a long time she featured nowhere.
It did not trouble her. First, she also had other things to do: Raise her three daughters, cook, sew their clothes, care for her sick first husband. Second, she knew in her own mind how good she was—as good as anybody. She could hardly be unaware of it, when she had graduated from high school at 14 and college at 18, expert at all the maths anyone knew how to teach her.
But when their story emerged in the 21st century, most notably in a book and a film called “hidden figure”, she had a NASA building named after her and a shower of honorary doctorates.
Do your best, she always said Love what you do. Be constantly curious. And learn that it is not dumb to ask a question; it is dumb not to ask it. Not least, because it might lead to the small but significant victory of making a self-proclaimed (自称的) superior realise he can make a mistake.
1.Why did Katherine hesitate about pointing out the engineer’s error?
A.Because she lacked working experience and wasn’t sure of the error.
B.Because she was worried about being sent back to the computing pool.
C.Because men played a dominant role in the lab and couldn’t be questioned.
D.Because the man was an authority in that field and wouldn’t admit his error.
2.Women took on the calculation work in the lab because ________.
A.they were more careful and diligent than men B.men showed great respect for them
C.they were fond of doing lighter work D.men were unwilling to do such minor thing
3.What happened after Katherine Goble asked many questions in the flight research unit?
A.Male engineers ignored her deliberately. B.She gave male engineers a deep impression.
C.She made small errors occasionally. D.Special classes on analytic geometry were arranged.
4.The example of John Glenn is given in Paragraph 6 to show that ________.
A.Katherine Goble was considered reliable
B.he was a stubborn but cautious person
C.computers were of less significance at that time
D.male engineers preferred checking figures by hand
5.Katherine Goble didn’t get troubled by being nameless, because ________.
A.she led a relatively busy life and was confident about her ability
B.she devoted all her time to taking care of her children
C.she received a good education at an early age
D.she was ordinary among mathematicians
6.What’s the best title of the passage?
A.a girl who asked questions B.A figure who worked up to her fame
C.A woman who was ignored by male workmates D.A scientist who was crazy about maths
Eliud Kipchoge’s extraordinary sub-two-hour marathon in Vienna on Saturday is one of the greatest sporting achievements—recording a time that has never been achieved before, again. It is a time on the fringes (边缘) of what scientists believe is humanly possible.
“It is a great feeling to make history in sport after Sir Roger Bannister in 1954. I am the happiest man in the world to be the first human to run under two hours and I can tell people that no human is limited,” Kipchoge said afterwards.
Is he right? Where are the limits of human ability? And how close are we to reaching them?
Raph Brandon, head of science for England cricket, distinguishes between achievements which are constrained (限制) by human anatomy (解剖学), and those which require human determination or skill.
“When Bolt ran 9.58 in Berlin 10 years ago, if you analyse the split times it’s very hard to imagine where the improvement comes from,” said Brandon, “The Usain Bolt 100m or the two-hour marathon, they’re in that category.”
Multi-day, ultra-endurance events, such as Thomas’s cross-Channel swim, are different, Brandon said.
“They need determination, psychology and bloody-mindedness to go that little bit further. Those people will continue to do unique things because you’re not really taking the body to its anatomical limit. It’s more a question of how much you’re prepared to consume and exhaust yourself.”
And there’s a third category, those sporting endeavours (努力) that rely on hand-eye coordination: the goal tallies of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, and the batting of Virat Kohli Steve Smith or Don Bradman, who trained by hitting a golf ball with a stump against a wall to become the best batsman ever to play Test cricket.
Equipment has been a factor for many sports. NFL receivers wear gloves that enable them to make improbable one-handed catches. The GB cycling team swept the board at the Olympics because of their amazing new clothing tech.
The line between what is fair and unfair is blurry. Kipchoge’s sub-two-hour run will not be officially recognized. He ran behind a car which beamed a green laser on to the ground in front of him. Teams of pacemakers, 41 in total, ran in a v-formation to protect him from headwinds (逆风). He wore specially designed shoes and the time and date of the event were picked only after detailed weather forecasting.
Jo Davies, a sport psychologist, says recent studies have shown athletes can push themselves harder because of their perception of exhaustion.
Other research published this year which looked at athletes who had won multiple gold medals found that they were different in several important ways. They had often had a shocking and upsetting life experience and had suffered significant setbacks in their performance during their careers, as well as personality traits of determination, perseverance and perfectionism.
So whether or not those limits have been reached, there will be no shortage of people prepared to try to go beyond them.
1.Why is Eliud Kipchoge’s sub-two-hour marathon considered extraordinary?
A.It was made in Vienna on a weekend.
B.It pushed the limits of human ability.
C.It proved that there was no boundary of his achievements.
D.It was greater than the record kept by Sir Roger Bannister.
2.The Usain Bolt 100m and the two-hour marathon belong to the same category in that ________.
A.they need great determination or skills B.they can be achieved via equipment
C.they rely on hand-eye coordination D.they are reaching anatomical limit
3.Kipchoge’s sub-two-hour marathon will not be officially recognized because ________.
A.he was followed by pacemakers B.he was caught in headwinds
C.he got much special help D.he didn’t run on the picked day
4.It can be inferred from the last three paragraphs that ________.
A.Jo Davies believes that athletes make progress in the same way
B.anatomical limit prevents athletes from having sad life experience
C.an athlete who has suffered setbacks will win gold medals
D.whether an athlete can succeed or not may depend on himself
You’ve got the butter, the eggs, the organic salad greens and the laundry soap. And so you make your way to the front of the grocery store, which is where you’ll face your moment of truth:
Will you step in behind the mom with a wiggly baby and a full cart? Or take your chances with the young couple you spotted arguing over the best milk in Aisle 3B?
Better make up your mind, quick. Because, faster than the guy with “just one item” who’s about to cut in line, this whole scene is going to disappear.
Amazon recently opened its own convenience store, Amazon Go, in Seattle. It’s the first of its kind: a truly cashless grocery experience in which shoppers enter through gates that look like subway turnstiles (闸机), take what they want from the shelves and exit the way they came. No carts, no lines, no waiting. The store accurately lists what you take and charges your Amazon account, efficiently delivering an electronic receipt after you’ve left. Like most things that Amazon does, this smells like inevitability. We know, as surely as we knew the day that first Amazon box showed up on the doorstep, that the future of shopping has arrived.
Like all progress, it comes at a cost. “Based on data”, says Manoj Thomas, a professor of marketing at Cornell University, “we know that when people use any abstract form of payment, they spend more. And the type of products they choose changes too.”
Decades of psychological research has reinforced the knowledge that the further we are removed from “the pain of paying,” the less we understand how much were really spending. “If you are paying by credit card,” says Thomas, “you might pause at the checkout and suddenly think,” Should I be buying this? “Or if you are paying cash, that reflection happens at the very beginning. Both will be gone with the Amazon store.” Unhealthy impulse purchases and overspending will result from it, he says. “Both are completely related because they are influenced by our impulse urges.”
Win Is Thomas advocating that we all make a run for the atm and attempt to turn back time by using old hard currency? “No, no, no,” he says.
He envisions a world in which you’ll be able to set budget or calorie limits on an app that will recognize when you pick up unhealthy or budget-busting items and will warn you that they fall outside your goals. He expresses confidence that there is some tech hero out there right now, figuring out this exact solution to keep us all on the straight and narrow.
1.What does the underlined phrase “this whole scene” in Paragraph 2 refer to?
A.Customers arguing over the best item. B.Customers lining up at the checkout.
C.Customers cutting in line for the bargains. D.Customers doing shopping with their babies.
2.What might you experience if you do shopping in Amazon Go?
A.Less “pain of paying” at the checkout counter.
B.Convenient entering through subway turnstiles.
C.Overspending on more than you actually need.
D.Quicker delivering of goods to your car.
3.Manoj Thomas probably holds the view that ________.
A.abstract payment contributes to market prosperity
B.impulse consumption may be regulated with the new app
C.extra spending will surely not happen with the warning of the app
D.it is better for people to use cash or credit cards to avoid overspending
Who Can Apply
*First-year fall applicants
*Transfer students through the transfer admission process
How to Apply
For each class, we bring together a varied mix of high-achieving, intellectually gifted students from diverse backgrounds to create an exceptional learning community.
We care about what students have accomplished in and out of the classroom. The process is highly selective. In recent years, we’ve offered admission to less than 7 percent of applicants.
As you prepare your application, help us to appreciate your talents, academic accomplishments and personal achievements. We’ll ask for your transcript (成绩单) and recommendations, and we will want to know more than just the statistics in your file. Tell us your story. Show us what’s special about you. Tell us how you would seize the academic and nonacademic opportunities at Princeton and contribute to the Princeton community. Above all, please write in a style that reflects your own voice.
Princeton accepts the Coalition Application and Common Application. Princeton treats them all equally. To apply, you will need to submit online either the Coalition Application or the Common Application, plus the Princeton Supplement.
When to Apply
You have two choices for applying to Princeton for first-year admission—single-choice early action or regular decision. Before you begin preparing your application, we strongly encourage you to review our standardized testing policy, which includes detailed information regarding our standardized testing requirements.
*Single-choice Early Action, also known as restrictive early action (If you have thoroughly researched your college options and have decided that Princeton is your first choice)
Nov. 1 Application Due
Nov. 9 Princeton Financial Aid Application Due
*Regular Decision
Jan. 1 Application Due
Feb. 1 Princeton Financial Aid Application Due
1.What should be included in the application to Princeton University?
A.Talents that you have great appreciation for.
B.Stories that reflect what people think of you.
C.Statistics that show your academic accomplishments.
D.Contributions that you have made to the Princeton community.
2.We can learn from the passage that ________.
A.transfer students are not qualified for application
B.students need to submit their application by fax
C.the chance of being admitted is relatively low
D.applicants should take Princeton as their single choice
Struggling to Let Go of My College-Student Daughter
When I sent my daughter, Emma, off for her freshman year of college a few years ago, I was sad down to my bones.
Indeed, this is the season when countless articles are published recommending helicopter parents to stop hovering (盘旋) so much. _________ based on Emma’s college schedule “helicopter children” may be more _________.
The first one out of my _________ has come fluttering back home nearly every month of the year. In the meantime, _________ keeps our children connected far more than I was with my _________ in the late 70s. I used to call home once a week from a pay phone. Emma calls, texts or e-mails me almost every day.
Given all this, missing Emma seems kind of _________; I’ve never really gotten the chance. So why, then, have I still felt that I’ve experienced a great _________?
All Summer long _________ Emma left that first year, I cried _________—at everything. I took Emma out for countless mother-daughter breakfasts, lunches, coffees and walks.
At the same time, I was unusually __________. In my eyes, Emma had spent the weeks going out with her friends too much, not working enough and __________ not spending enough time with me!
Although it’s taken quite a while to __________ what was happening, I now understand that my unhappiness and anxiety are not a(n) __________ of how much time Emma and I spend together.
__________ how often she comes home, Emma is now gone in a far grander sense. She is well on the road to __________, and from this, she will never __________.
I know full well that this is completely __________. And I take pride and joy in seeing Emma make her way so confidently and capably. She’s going to be fine and we will always remain __________.
Nonetheless, Emma’s going to college has __________ the passing of something that I cherished—her childhood and my __________ to her as a child—and I can’t help being a little sad about that.
1.A.So B.But C.And D.Or
2.A.ambiguous B.formal C.accurate D.dull
3.A.nest B.favour C.way D.head
4.A.love B.technology C.respect D.responsibility
5.A.classmates B.teachers C.colleagues D.parents
6.A.addictive B.accessible C.absurd D.adorable
7.A.insight B.loss C.shift D.belief
8.A.after B.before C.since D.beyond
9.A.openly B.angrily C.loudly D.constantly
10.A.critical B.punctual C.economical D.practical
11.A.certainly B.exactly C.probably D.gradually
12.A.reject B.neglect C.dismiss D.realize
13.A.composition B.collection C.application D.reflection
14.A.Apart from B.Instead of C.Regardless of D.According to
15.A.innocence B.adulthood C.happiness D.success
16.A.return B.respond C.regret D.recover
17.A.apparent B.excellent C.unique D.normal
18.A.close B.guilty C.distant D.indifferent
19.A.contradicted B.defined C.signaled D.recalled
20.A.complaint B.cruelty C.relationship D.disappointment
