Summary of the last semester

• What do you think of your last semester’s study?

• Do you have good study habits and methods?• Do you have anything to be desired?• What should you do in this new term?

Our Objectives

• Cultivate your ability to make intellectual enquiries in English

• Improve your output skills such as speaking, writing and translation

New Semester Requirements

• In order to make progress, this semester you should learn to: summarize the main idea for each passage. analyze the ways of the organization of the passage. point out useful sentence structure. memorize good sentences. accumulate your vocabulary.• Prepare a study notebook:• 建立词汇银行Word bank• 积累好句段 Sentence reservoir• 练习英汉互译技巧 translation practice

Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself ---Emerson

幸福是香水 , 你洒在别人身上时 , 自己也会沾上一两滴 . --- 爱默森

Pre-class discussion

• What qualities should a scientist have?• What are the core elements of the scientific

method?

Can We Know the Universe?

Reflections on a Grain of Salt

Carl Sagan(1934-1996)

• an American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, science popularizer, and science communicator in astronomy and natural sciences. He published more than 600 scientific papers and articles and was author, co-author or editor of more than 20 books. He advocated scientifically skeptical inquiry and the scientific method, pioneered exobiology and promoted the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI).

• Sagan is known for his popular science books and for the award-winning 1980 television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. Sagan wrote the novel Contact, the basis for a 1997 film of the same name.

Ralph Waldo Emerson(1803—1882)

The Founder of Transcendentalism

Emerson’s Major Literary Works

1) Nature «论自然 »

the Bible of Transcendentalism

2) The American Scholar «论美国学者 »

It is regarded as "America's Declaration of Intellectual Independence"

Emerson’s Major Works3)The Divinity School Address «神学院致辞 »It stated his belief that

the individual’s intuitive( 直觉的 )spiritual experience was more important.

5) Poet «诗人 »

4) Self-reliance

The job of a poet to the seer, the sayer and the namer

The importance of cultivating oneself

Nature is a short essay by Emerson published anonymously in 1836.It is in this essay that the foundation of transcendentalism is put forth, a belief system that espouses a non-traditional appreciation of nature.

nature

Emerson defines nature as an all-encompassing divine entity inherently known to us in our unfettered innocence, rather than as merely a component of a world ruled by a divine, separate being learned by us through passed-on teachings in our experience.

nature

It contains the most solid statement of one of Emerson's repeating themes, the need for each individual to avoid conformity and false consistency, and follow his or her own instincts and ideas.

Self-Reliance

Basic Tenets of American Transcendentalism

• God can be found in both nature and human nature (Nature, Emerson stated, has spiritual manifestations).

• “More important than a concern about the afterlife, should be a concern for this life -- “the one thing in the world of value is the active soul.”

• Death is never to be feared, for at death the soul merely passes to the oversoul.

Core Beliefs of Transcendentalism

• Finding its root in the word “transcend,” Transcendentalists believed individuals could transcend to a higher being of existence in nature.

• God is located in the soul of each individual.

• Humanity’s potential is limitless.

• Experience is valued over scholarship.

• Nothing is rich but the inexhaustible wealth of nature. She shows us only surfaces, but she is a million fathoms deep.

• 最丰富的莫过于大自然所蕴含的无与伦比的财富，其表象之下深不可测。

• Fathom ： a unit for measuring the depth of water, equal to 1.8 meters 拓、英寻

• How would you interpret the paradox embedded in Emerson’s words?

Paragraph 1

• How does the writer define science? What is the goal of science?

• How does the author support the statement that our intuition is fallible and our perception may be distorted?

• By giving us the example that even Aristotle could not correctly answer the question that whether without friction a pound of lead falls faster than a gram of fluff.

• Regularity----the fact that the same thing always happens in the same circumstances

规律性、常规现象 Children unconsciously seek regularities in

learning their language.• Constituent---any of the parts that make up a

whole 成分、组分 the constituents of an atom

• Thence----from that place onwards 从那里、所以、因此

He went to Italy and thence to France. You didn’t work, thence you will get no pay.• By no means---not at all 绝不是 She is by no means a bad woman.• Infallible---never wrong, that never fails 永无过失

的、一贯正确的；万无一失的 Doctors are not infallible.

• Even so …a …as … 哪怕是像…，也 Even so young a child as he could tell the

truth.• Straightforward----simple and easy to

understand 简单易懂、不复杂的；坦率的 It’s quite straightforward to get here. Let me put it more straightforwardly.

Aristotle(384BC-322BC)• a Greek philosopher, a student

of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great.

• His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology.

• A pound of lead falls faster than a gram of fluff.

Galileo(1564-1642)• an Italian physicist,

mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher .

• Acceleration of a falling body does not depend on its weight.

Galileo

• Galileo's championing of heliocentrism was controversial within his lifetime.-------in contrast to geocentrism.

• His achievements include improvements to the telescope and consequent astronomical observations and support for Copernicanism.

• Galileo also worked in applied science and technology, inventing an improved military compass and other instruments.

• a dogma is a doctrine "to be believed by divine and Catholic Faith" that has been proposed by the Church to be "divinely and formally revealed."

"Doctrine" appears to just mean "teaching".

Thus, all dogmas are doctrines, but not all doctrines are dogmas.

• Doctrine 还可指政府正式声明

Paragraph 2-3

• Are those questions answerable? If the proposed answers are “just so stories”, are they acceptable to the scientific cast of mind?

• Altitude----height• Latitude----the distance of a place from the

equator• Longitude----a position on the Earth that is

measured in degrees east or west of a meridian

• Philanthropic----concerning the effort to increase the well-being of humankind, as by charitable aid and donations.

• Sinew----a long strong piece of tissue in one’s body that connects a muscle to a bone 筋腱

The sinews of his arm were tense.• Divorce----to separate completely The Olympics attempts to divorce sports from

politics.

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

• an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature.

• Just So Stories (1902) have a typical theme of a particular animal being modified from an original form to its current form by the acts of man, or some magical being. For example, the Whale has a tiny throat from a swallowed mariner who tied a raft in there to block the whale from swallowing others. The Camel has a hump given to him by a djinn as punishment for the camel refusing to work.

Incest taboo

• any cultural rule or norm that prohibits practices of sexual relations between relatives. All human cultures have norms regarding who is considered suitable and unsuitable sexual or marriage partners, and usually certain close relatives are excluded as possible partners.

• Is the incest taboo a universal characteristic of culture?

• Cast----the way sb. Looks, behaves or thinks 瞧、瞥、投以视线

She cast a welcoming smile in his direction. He shows an artistic cast of mind.• Alternative----a thing that you can choose out of two

or more possibilities; that can be used instead of sth. else 可供替代的

You can be paid in cash weekly or by check monthly; those are the two alternatives.

an alternative method of doing sth.

• Jumbly----being mixed together in a disorganized or confused way 混乱的、杂乱的

When the police broke into the room, they found it in a jumbly mess.

• spin-----to tell a story that is not true Beggars are good at spinning hard-luck stories.• Hypotheses----an idea that is suggested as a

possible way of explaining a situation

• Substantiate----to prove the truth that someone has said or claimed 证实、证明

Can you substantiate your claim in a court of law? There is little evidence to substantiate the rumor.• Deflate-----to show that a statement is overstated

使泄气、挫…的傲气 The failure left him deflated. The accumulating evidence seemed to deflate his

claim.

Walt Whitman(1819-1892)

• an American poet• incorporating both transcendentalism and

realism in his works.• Leaves of Grass adopts the form of free verse.

• In this respect----in this point Aunt Mary is very stubborn. In this respect

Kim takes after her.

Paragraph 4-7

• Why does the author draw an analogy between a grain of salt and the human grain?

• Make out-----to be just able to hear, see or understand sth.

I can barely make out her writing. We couldn’t make out what they were talking

about.• Correspond to/with ---- to be in agreement, to

match These goods don’t correspond to those I

ordered.

• Predetermine-----to fix unchangeably from the beginning

The color of a person’s eyes is predetermined by that of his parents.

Oedipus’s fate was predetermined from the moment of his birth.

• Strain----to force sth. to be used to a degree that is beyond a normal limit 使损伤、

You have strained my patience to the limit.• Muddle----to put sth. in the wrong order Someone has muddled up all the papers on

my desk. Your invoice got muddled up with Mr. Clark’s.

Quiz of vocabulary on the passageChinese English

形而上学

取之不尽的

亚核粒子

直觉

一贯正确的

高度

慈善的

转变、皈依

筋腱

提问题

English Chinese

exhilaration

A million fathoms deep

A small fraction of the phenomena

Old dogma

The incest taboo

The scientific cast of mind

English synonym

infallible

straightforward

Divorced from experiment