新世纪大学英语第四册课文和翻译.docx

1、新世纪大学英语第四册课文和翻译 Unit One Text A Man in the Realm of Nature Alexander Spirkin Human beings live in the realm of nature. They are constantly surrounded by it and interact with it. Man is constantly aware of the influence of nature in the form of the air he breathes, the water he drinks, and the food h

2、e eats. We are connected with nature by blood ties and we cannot live outside nature. Man is not only a dweller in nature, he also transforms it. Humanity converts natures wealth into the means of the cultural, historical life of society. Man has subdued and disciplined electricity and compelled it

3、to serve the interests of society. Not only has man transferred various species of plants and animals to different climatic conditions, he has also changed the shape and climate of his environment and transformed plants and animals. As society develops, man tends to become less dependent on nature d

4、irectly, while indirectly his dependence grows. Our distant ancestors lived in fear of natures destructive forces. Very often they were unable to obtain the merest daily necessities. However, despite their imperfect tools, they worked together stubbornly, collectively, and were able to attain result

5、s. Nature was also changed through interaction with man. Forests were destroyed and the area of farmland increased. Nature with its elemental forces was regarded as something hostile to man. The forest, for example, was something wild and frightening and people tried to force it to retreat. This was

6、 all done in the name of civilisation, which meant the places where man had made his home, where the earth was cultivated, where the forest had been cut down. But as time goes on mankind becomes increasingly concerned with the question of where and how to obtain irreplaceable natural resources for t

7、he needs of production. Science and mans practical transforming activities have made humanity aware of the enormous geological role played by the industrial transformation of the earth. At present the previous dynamic balance between man and nature and between nature and society as a whole, has show

8、n ominous signs of breaking down. The problem of the so-called replaceable resources of the biosphere has become particularly acute. It is getting more and more difficult to satisfy the needs of human beings and society even for such a substance, for example, as fresh water. The problem of eliminati

9、ng industrial waste is also becoming increasingly complex. Modern technology is distinguished by an ever increasing abundance of produced and used synthetic goods. Hundreds of thousands of synthetic materials are being made. People increasingly cover their bodies from head to foot in nylon and other

10、 synthetic, glittering fabrics that are obviously not good for them. Young people may hardly feel this, and they pay more attention to appearance than to health. But they become more aware of this harmful influence as they grow older. As time goes on the synthetic output of production turns into was

11、te, and then substances that in their original form were not very toxic are transformed in the cycle of natural processes into aggressive agents. Today both natural scientists and philosophers are asking themselves the question: Is mans destruction of the biosphere inevitable? The man-nature relatio

12、n the crisis of the ecological situation is a global problem. Its solution lies in rational and wise organization of both production itself and care for Mother Nature, not just by individuals, enterprises or countries, but by all humanity. One of the ways to deal with the crisis situation in the man

13、-nature system is to use such resources as solar energy, the power of winds, the riches of the seas and oceans and other, as yet unknown natural forces of the universe. But to return to our theme, the bitter truth is that those human actions which violate the laws of nature, the harmony of the biosp

14、here, threaten to bring disaster and this disaster may turn out to be universal. How apt then are the words of ancient Oriental wisdom: live closer to nature, my friends, and its eternal laws will protect you!人在自然界| 亚历山大斯伯金 人类生活在大自然的王国里。他们时刻被大自然所包围并与之相互影响。人类呼吸的空气、喝下的水和摄入的食 物，无一不令人类时刻感知到大自然的影响。我们与大自然

15、血肉相连，离开大自然，我们将无法生存。 2人类不仅生活在大自然之中，同时也在改变着大自然。人类把自然资源转变为各种文化，社会历史的财富。人类降服并控制了电，迫使它为人类社会的利益服务。人类不仅把各种各样的动植物转移到不同的气候环境，也改变了他生活环境的地貌和气候并使动植物因之而发生转变。 3随着社会的发展，人类对大自然的直接依赖越来越少，而间接的依赖却越来越多。我们远古的祖先生活在大自然的威胁及破坏力的恐惧之中，他们常常连基本的生活物资都无法获取。然而，尽管工具不甚完备，他们却能同心协力，顽强工作，并总是有所收获。在与人类的相互作用中，大自然也发生了改变。森林被破坏了，耕地面积增加了。大自然及

16、其威力被看成是和人类敌对的东西。譬如，森林被认为是野性的和令人恐惧的，因此人类便想方设法使其面积缩小。这一切都是打着“文明”的旗号进行的，所谓“文明”，就是人类在哪里建立家园，耕耘土地，哪里的森林就被砍伐。 4然而，随着岁月的流逝，人类越来越关注的是在何处得到和如何得到生产所需的不可替代的自然资源的问题。科学与人类改变大自然的实践活动已经使人类意识到了工业在改变地球的进程中对地质产生的重大影响。 5目前，人与自然以及自然与社会整体之间过去存在的动态平衡，已呈现崩溃的迹象。生物圈中所谓可替代资源的问题变得极为尖锐。人类和社会的需求，即便是简单得像淡水一样的物质，也变得越来越难以满足。清除工业废物

17、的问题也变得日益复杂。 6现代技术的特征是生产和使用日益丰富的人工合成产 品。人们生产成千上万的人工合成材料。人们越来越多地用尼龙和其他人造纤维把自己从头到脚地包裹起来，这些绚丽的织物显然对他们无益。年轻人或许很少注意到这一点，他们更关注的是外表，而不是健康。但是上了年岁之后，他们就会感受到这种有害的影响。 7久而久之，这些合成物质转变成废弃物，那些原本毒性不大的物质在自然循环中变为极其有害的物质。自然科学家和哲学家如今都在问自己这样一个问题：人类对生物圈的破坏难道是无法避免的吗？ 8人与大自然的关系生态环境的危机已经成为一个全球性问题。这一问题的解决之道在于理性而明智地协调生产和对大自然的关

18、爱之间的关系，这不仅要依靠个人、企业或者某些国家的力量，而且要依靠全人类的力量。解决人与大自然关系危机的方法之一，就是使用太阳能、风能、海洋能等资源，以及其他尚不为人所知的宇宙中的自然能。 9但是，回到我们原先的主题上，令人难以接受的事实是那些违背了自然规律、破坏了生物圈和谐的人类行为将会带来灾难，而这种灾难也许是全球性的。古代东方智者的话讲得真是恰如其分：朋友们，你要是亲近大自然，大自然就会用那永恒不变的规律永远呵护你！ Unit Two Text A Technology and Happiness James Surowiecki In the 20th century, America

19、ns, Europeans, and East Asians enjoyed material and technological advances that were unimaginable in previous eras. In the United States, for instance, gross domestic product per capita tripled from 1950 to 2000. Life expectancy soared. The boom in productivity after World War II made goods

20、 better and cheaper at the same time. Things that were once luxuries, such as jet travel and long-distance phone calls, became necessities. And even though Americans seemed to work extraordinarily hard, their pursuit of entertainment turned media and leisure into multibillion-dollar industries. By m

21、ost standards, then, you would have to say that Americans are better off now than they were in the middle of the last century. Oddly, though, if you ask Americans how happy they are, you find that they are no happier than they were in 1946 (which is when formal surveys of happiness started). In

22、 fact, the percentage of people who say they are very happy has fallen slightly since the early 1970s even though the income of people born in 1940 has, on average, increased by 116 percent over the course of their working lives. You can find similar data for most developed countries. The relationsh

23、ip between happiness and technology has been an eternal subject for social critics and philosophers since the advent of the Industrial Revolution. But its been left largely unexamined by economists and social scientists. The truly groundbreaking work on the relationship between prosperity and well-b

24、eing was done by the economist Richard Easterlin, who in 1974 wrote a famous paper entitled Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot? Easterlin showed that when it came to developed countries, there was no real correlation between a nations income level and its citizens happiness. Money, Easterlin

25、 argued, could not buy happiness at least not after a certain point. Easterlin showed that though poverty was strongly correlated with misery, once a country was solidly middle-class, getting wealthier did not seem to make its citizens any happier. This seems to be close to a universal phenomenon. I

26、n fact, one of happiness scholars most important insights is that people adapt very quickly to good news. Take lottery winners for example. One famous study showed that although winners were very, very happy when they won, their extreme excitement quickly evaporated, and after a while their moods an

27、d sense of well-being were indistinguishable from what they had been before the victory. So, too, with technology: no matter how dramatic a new innovation is, no matter how much easier it makes our lives, it is very easy to take it for granted. You can see this principle at work in the world of tech

28、nology every day, as things that once seemed miraculous soon become common and, worse, frustrating when they dont work perfectly. Its hard, it turns out, to keep in mind what things were like before the new technology came along. Does our fast assimilation of technological progress mean, then, that

29、technology makes no difference? No. It just makes the question of technologys impact, for good or ill, more complicated. Lets start with the downside. There are certain ways in which technology makes life obviously worse. Telemarketing, traffic jams, and identity theft all come to mind. These are al

30、l phenomena that make people consciously unhappy. But for the most part, modern critiques of technology have focused not so much on specific, bad technologies as the impact of technology on our human relationships. Privacy has become increasingly fragile in a world of linked databases. In many workp

31、laces, technologies like keystroke monitoring and full recordings of phone calls make it easier to watch workers. The notion that technology disrupts relationships and fractures community gained mainstream prominence as an attack on television. Some even say that TV is chiefly responsible fo

32、r the gradual isolation of Americans from each other. Similarly, the harmful effects of the Internet, which supposedly further isolates people from what is often called the real world. This broad criticism of technologys impact on relationships is an interesting one and is especially relevant to the question of happiness, because one of the few things we can say for certain is that the more friends and the closer relationships people have, the happier they tend to be. Today, technological change is so rapid that when you buy something, you do so kn