【正文】 llion trillion trillionfold in much less than a second, propelled by a sort of antigravity. 75) Odd though it sounds, cosmic inflation is a scientifically plausible consequence of some respected ideas in elementaryparticle physics, and many astrophysicists have been convinced for the better part of a decade that it is true. 新東方在線 [] 網(wǎng)絡(luò)課堂電子教材系列 英譯漢、完型與詞匯分冊 6 Passage 6 71) While there are almost as many definitions of history as there are historians, modern practice most closely conforms to one that sees history as the attempt to recreate and explain the significant events of the past. Caught in the web of its own tune and place, each generation of historians determines anew what is significant for it in the past. In this search the evidence found is always inplete and scattered。s craft is that its practitioners always know that their efforts are but contributions to an unending process. 72) Interest in historical methods has arisen less through external challenge to the validity of history as an intellectual discipline and more from internal quarrels among historians themselves. While history once revered its affinity to literature and philosophy, the emerging social sciences seemed to afford greater opportunities for asking new questions and providing rewarding approaches to an understanding of the past. Social science methodologies had to be adapted to a discipline governed by the primacy of historical sources rather than the imperatives of the contemporary world. 73) During this transfer, traditional historical methods were augmented by additional methodologies designed to interpret the new forms of evidence in the historical study. Methodolgy is a term that remains inherently ambiguous in the historical profession. 74) There is no agreement whether methodology refers to the concepts peculiar to historical work in general or to the research techniques appropriate to the various branches of historical inquiry. Historians, especially those so blinded by their research interests that they have been accused of tunnel method, frequently fall victim to the technicist fallacy. Also mon in the natural sciences, the technicist fallacy mistakenly identifies the discipline as a whole with certain parts of its technical implementation. 75) It applies equally to traditional historians who view history as only the external and internal criticism of sources, and to social science historians who equate their activity with specific techniques. 新東方在線 [] 網(wǎng)絡(luò)課堂電子教材系列 英譯漢、完型與詞匯分冊 7 Passage 7 Governments throughout the world act on the assumption that the welfare of their people depends largely on the economic strength and wealth of the munity. 71) Under modern conditions, this requires varying measures of centralized control and hence the help of specialized scientists such as economists and operational research experts. 72) Furthermore, it is obvious that the strength of a country39。 they may alter the structure of education, or interfere in order to reduce the wastage of natural resources or tap resources hitherto unexploited。 time the Star Trek holodeck will be a reality. Direct links between the brain39。 s futurologist, Ian Pearson, these are among the developments scheduled for the first few decades of the new millennium (a period of 1,000 years), when superputers will dramatically accelerate progress in all areas of life. 73) Pearson has pieced together the work of hundreds of researchers around the world to produce a unique millennium technology calendar that gives the latest dates when we can expect hundreds of key breakthroughs and discoveries to take place. Some of the biggest developments will be in medicine, including an extended life expectancy and dozens of artificial ans ing into use between now and 2040. Pearson also predicts a breakthrough in puterhuman links. By linking directly to our nervous system, puters could pick up what we feel and, hopefully, simulate feeling too so that we can start to develop full sensory environments, rather like the holidays in Total Recall or the Star Trek holodeck, he says. 74) But that, Pearson points out, is only the start of manmachine integration: It will be the beginning of the long process of integration that will ultimately lead to a fully electronic human before the end of the next century. Through his research, Pearson is able to put dates to most of the breakthroughs that can be predicted. However, there are still no forecasts for when fasterthanlight travel will be available, or when human cloning will be perfected, or when time travel will be possible. But he does expect social problems as a result of technological advances. A boom in neighborhood surveillance cameras will, for example, cause problems in 20xx, while the arrival of synthetic lifelike robots will mean people may not be able to distinguish between their human friends and the droids. 75) And home appliances will also bee so smart that controlling and operating them will result in the breakout of a new psychological disorder — kitchen rage. 新東方在線 [] 網(wǎng)絡(luò)課堂電子教材系列 英譯漢、完型與詞匯分冊 9 Passage 9 Almost all our major problems involve human behavior, and they cannot be solved by physical and biological technology alone. What is needed is a technology of behavior, but we have been slow to develop the science from which such a technology might be drawn. 61) One difficulty is that almost all of what is called behavioral science continues to trace behavior to states of mind, feelings, traits of character, human nature, and so on. Physics and biology once followed similar practices and ad