新概念第四册课文翻译及学习笔记：Lesson45

2015-01-30 12:15:21来源：网络

【资料库】第一册语法逐句精讲新概念英语2第三册经典句子解析新概念英语30天寒假学习计划
【课后题及答案解析】新概念英语第一册新概念英语第二册新概念英语第三册新概念英语第四册
【经验分享】学习新概念英语如何提升英语水平? 自学四大经典学习方法新概念学习方法及经验

　　为了方便同学们的学习，新东方在线新概念英语频道为大家整理了最全面的新概念第四册课文翻译及学习笔记，希望为大家的新概念英语学习提供帮助!

　　【课文】

　　First listen and then answer the following question.

　　听录音，然后回答以下问题。

　　What is the most influential factor in any human society?

　　In man's early days. competition with other creatures must have been critical. But this phase of our development is now finished. Indeed, we lack practice and experience nowadays in dealing with primitive conditions. I am sure that, without modern weapons, I would make a very poor show of disputing the ownership of a cave with a bear, and in this I do not think that I stand alone. The last creature to compete with man was the mosquito. But even the mosquito has been subdued by attention to drainage and by chemical sprays.

　　Competition between our selves, person against person, community against community, still persists, however; and it is as fierce as it ever was.

　　But the competition of man against man is not the simple process envisioned in biology. It is not a simple competition for a fixed amount of food determined by the physical environment, because the environment that determines our evolution is no longer essentially physical. Our environment is chiefly conditoned by the things we believe. Morocco and California are bits of the Earth in very similar latitudes, both on the west coasts of continents with similar climates, and probably with rather similar natural resources. Yet their present development is wholly different, not so much because of different people even, but because of the different thoughts that exist in the minds of their inhabitants. This is the point I wish to emphasize. The most important factor in our environment is the state of our own minds.

　　It is well known that where the white man has invaded a primitive culture, the most destructive effects have come not from physical weapons but from ideas. Ideas are dangerous. The Holy Office knew this full well when it caused heretics to be burned in days gone by. Indeed, the concept of free speech only exists in our modern society because when you are inside a community, you are conditioned by the conventions of the community to such a degree that it is very difficult to conceive of anything really destructive. It is only someone looking on from outside that can inject the dangerous thoughts. I do not doubt that it would be possible to inject ideas into the modern world that would utterly destroy us. I would like to give you an example, but fortunately I cannot do so. Perhaps it will suffice to mention the nuclear bomb. Imagine the effect on a reasonably advanced technological society, one that still does not possess the bomb, of making it aware of the possibility, of supplying sufficient details to enable the thing to be constructed. Twenty or thirty pages of information handed to any of the major world powers around the year 1925 would have been sufficient to change the course of world history. It is a strange thought, but I believe a correct one, that twenty or thirty pages of ideas and information would be capable of turning the present-day world upside down, or even destroying it. I have often tried to conceive of what those pages might contain, but of course I cannot do so because I am a prisoner of the present-day world, just as all of you are. We cannot think outside the particular patterns that our brains are conditioned to, or, to be more accurate, we can think only a very little way outside, and then only if we are very original.

　　FRED HOYLE Of Men and Galaxies

　　【New words and expressions 生词和短语】

　　dispute v. 争夺

　　mosquito n. 蚊子

　　subdue v. 征服

　　drainage n. 下水系统

　　envision n. 预想

　　Morocco n. 摩洛哥

　　latitude n. 纬度

　　heretic n. 异教徒，异端邪说

　　conceive v. 想像

　　suffice v. 足够