37~40 題為一題組Although the fossil record holds few clues to the evolution of cells, recent advances in biochemistry and molecular biologyhave provided powerful new means of reconstructing the past by probing the present. Hardly 300 years have elapsed since theday when a living cell was first glimpsed by the human eye. Throughout that period, every milestone about cell discovery bearsthe name of a new tool or instrument.The world of cells remained entirely unknown and unexplored until the middle of the 17th century, when individuals ofprying minds served by skilled hands started grinding lenses and using them to extend their power of vision. One of the firstdesigners of microscopes was the English scientist Robert Hooke—physicist, meteorologist, biologist, engineer, architect—amost remarkable product of his time. In 1665, he published a popular collection called Micrographia; among the beautifuldrawings of his observations was one of a thin slice of cork showing a honeycomb structure, an array of what he called“microscopic pores” or “cells.” In his description of it, Hooke used the word “cell” in its original meaning of small chamber, asin the cell of a prisoner or a monk. The word has remained, not to describe the little holes that Hooke saw in dead bark, butrather to designate the little blobs of matter that are the inmates of the holes in the living tree.One of Hooke’s most gifted contemporaries was the Netherlander Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, who made almost threehundred microscopes of a very distinct design--- a small bead of glass inserted in a copper plate. By holding this contraptionclose to his eye and peering through the glass bead at an object held of a needle he manipulated with a screw. Leeuwenhoeksucceeded in obtaining magnification 270 times that of the naked eye. He was able to see for the first time what he called “animalcules” in blood, sperm and the water of marshes and ponds. Amazingly, he even saw bacteria, which he drew soaccurately that specialists can identify them today.Not all early users of microscopes were as perceptive. The images they were able to observe with their simpleinstruments—especially when it came to objects as small as living cells—were so blurred that most details had to be filled in bythe imagination. Many showed admirable restraint in the use of this faculty. Others took full advantage of it, as did theFrench scientist Gautier D’Agoty, who believed that a fully formed baby existed within a sperm cell.For a long time, microscopy did little more than hover around the world of cells until, in 1827, the Italian physicistGiovanni Battista Amici succeeded in correcting the major optical aberrations Section 2 How to Prepare for Academic Readingand Listening of lenses. Through three pairs of matched lenses that could deflect light without separating it into colors, thesharpness of the images was dramatically increased; so much so that only a few years later the generalized theory wasformulated that plants and animals are made of one or more similar units—cells.This theory was proposed for plants in 1837 by the German botanist Mathias Schleiden and was extended to animals byhis friend, the physiologist Theodor Schwann. The theory was subsequently completed by the pathologist Rudolf Virchow,when he proclaimed in 1855: “ Every cell arises from a cell,” an altered version of “ Every living being arises from an egg.”The latter was an assertion made by William Harvey, the English physician who discovered blood circulation and who had diedshortly before Robert Hooke’s discovery. By the turn of the century, a number of important cell parts had been described andnamed.Later investigators found themselves confronting a new obstacle, seemingly insurmountable, as it was set by thevery laws of physics. Even with a perfect instrument, no detail smaller than about half the wavelength of the light used can beperceived, which puts the absolute limit of resolution of a microscope utilizing visible light at .25 millionth of a meter. In theworld of cells, such a dimension is quite large, relatively speaking. Just think of what we would miss in our own world if nodetail smaller than inches could be distinguished, and what classical microscopists would have seen had they been able tomagnify the living cell a millionfold.
37. In Paragraph 4, why does the author introduce the statement “Many showed admirable restraint in the use of thisfaculty.” ?
(A) To ridicule the absurd theories made by “imaginative” scientists.
(B) To emphasize how limited the early microscope models were.
(C) To point out the wisdom of consulting with other scholars.
(D) To criticize the investigators for not being more imaginative.