問題詳情

(5) At the turn of the 20th century, a scientific genius came on the scene who was comparable to Newton, a German Jew calledAlbert Einstein, and he produced theories incompatible with Newton’s. Like Newton, Einstein was amazingly fertile of fundamentalideas. What he is best known for are his contributions to relativity theory: his Special Theory of Relativity, published in 1905, and hisGeneral Theory of Relativity, made public in 1915. Not surprisingly, these theories were highly controversial at first; but virtuallynobody who was knowledgeable in the field could deny that they were deserving of the most serious consideration. And that fact initself had disconcerting implications, because if Einstein was right then Newton was wrong—and in that case we had not “known”the contents of Newtonian science all along.   And so it was to prove. Crucial experiments were devised to adjudicate between the two sets of theories; and as the empiricalevidence mounted it unmistakably favored Einstein. The consequences of this for philosophy were earthquake-like. Ever sinceDescartes, the search for certainty had been at or near the center of Western philosophy; and with Newtonian science Western manbelieved he had uncovered a vast body of reliable knowledge about his world and beyond, knowledge of fundamental significanceand enormous practical usefulness. What is more, the methods by which that knowledge had been gathered had been closelyconsidered and carefully codified, and were thought to guarantee its certainty, to validate it as sure knowledge. And yet now it turnedout not to have been “knowledge” at all. What was it, then? Its use had led to immense progress in our understanding of the world; itspractical application through technology had brought about a whole new historical age, namely modern industrial civilization; yetnow, we discovered, it was inaccurate. This presented us with an utterly baffling situation, for it appeared that we had been mistakennot only about what was knowledge but about what knowledge was.
72. The best title for this passage would be ______.
(A) Two Scientific Geniuses
(B) On Theory and Practice
(C) General Theory of Relativity
(D) Uncertain Knowledge

參考答案

答案：D
難度：適中0.5
統計：A(1),B(1),C(1),D(3),E(0)

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