Passage 6
Most people would agree that, although our age exceeds all previous ages in knowledge, there has been no corresponding increase in wisdom. But agreement cease as soon as we attempt to define "wisdom" and consider means of promoting it.
There are several factors that contribute to wisdom. Of these I should put first a sense of proportion: the capacity to take account of all the important factors in a problem and to attach to each its due weight. This has become difficult than it used to owing to the extent and complexity of the special knowledge required of various kinds of techniques. Suppose, for example, that you are engaged in research in scientific medicine. The work is difficult and is likely to absorb the whole of your mind. Your have not time to consider the effect which your discoveries or inventions may have outside the field of medicine. Your succeed(let us say), as modern medicine has succeeded, in enormously lowering the infant death-rate, not only in Europe and America, but also in Asia and Africa. This has the entirely unintended result of making the food supply inadequate and lowering the standard of life in the parts of the world that have the greatest populations. To take an even more dramatic example, which is in everybody's mind at the present time: you study the make-up of the atom form a disinterested desire for knowledge, and by chance place in the atom form a disinterested desire for knowledge, and by chance place in the hands of a powerful mad man the means of destroying the human race.
Therefore, with every increase of knowledge and skill, wisdom becomes more necessary, for realizing our purposes, and therefore arguments our capacity for evil, if our purposes are unwise.
1. Disagreement arises when people try to decide _____ .
［A］ what wisdom is and how to develop it
［B］ how much more wisdom we have now than before
［C］ if there is a great increase of wisdom in our age
［D］ whether wisdom can be developed or not
2. According to the author, "wisdom" is the ability to _____ .
［A］ carefully consider the bad effects of any kind of research work
［B］ give suitable consideration to all the possible elements in a problem
［C］ acquire a great deal of complex and special knowledge
［D］ give each important problem some careful consideration
3. Lowering the infant death-rate may
［A］ prove to be helpful everywhere in the world
［B］ give rise to an increase in population in Europe
［C］ raise the living standard of the people in Africa
［D］ cause food shortages in Asia and Africa
4. The author uses the examples in the passage to illustrate his point that
［A］ success in medical research has its negative effects
［B］ it's extremely difficult to consider all the important elements in a problem
［C］ scientists may unknowingly cause destruction to the human race
［D］ it's unwise to be totally absorbed in research in scientific medicine
2.5. 阐述型阅读理解练习 Passage 6
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