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  3. Many objects in daily use have clearly been influenced by science, but their form and function, their dimensions and appearance,

Many objects in daily use have clearly been influenced by science, but their form and function, their dimensions and appearance,

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问题     Many objects in daily use have clearly been influenced by science, but their form and function, their dimensions and appearance, were determined by technologists artisans, designers, inventors, and engineers— using non-scientific modes of thought. Many features and qualities of the objects that a technologist thinks about cannot be reduced to unambiguous verbal descriptions; they are dealt with in the mind by a visual, nonverbal process. In the development of Western technology, it has been non-verbal thinking, by and large, that has fixed the outlines and filled in the details of our material surroundings. Pyramids, cathedrals, and rockets exist not because of geometry or thermodynamics, but because they were first a picture in the minds of those who built them. The creative shaping process of a technologist’s mind can be seen in nearly every artifact that exists. For example, in designing a diesel engine, a technologist might impress individual ways of nonverbal thinking on the machine by continually using an intuitive sense of Tightness and fitness. What would be the shape of the combustion chamber? Where should the valves be placed? Should it have a long or short piston? Such questions have a range of answers that are supplied by experience, by physical requirements, by limitations of available space, and not least by a sense of form. Some decisions, such as wall thickness and pin diameter, may depend on scientific calculations, but the nonscientific component of design remains primary.
    Design courses, then, should be an essential element in engineering curricula. Nonverbal thinking, a central mechanism in engineering design, involves perceptions, the stock-in-trade of the artist, not the scientist. Because perceptive processes are not assumed to entail "hard thinking," nonverbal thought is sometimes seen as a primitive stage in the development of cognitive processes and inferior to verbal or mathematical thought. But it is paradoxical that when the staff of the Historic American Engineering Record wished to have drawings made of machines and isometric views of industrial processes for its historical record of American engineering, the only college students with the requisite abilities were not engineering students, but rather students attending architectural schools.
    If courses in design, which in a strongly analytical engineering curriculum provide the background required for practical problem-solving, are not provided, we can expect to encounter silly but costly errors occurring in advanced engineering systems. For example, early models of high-speed railroad cars loaded with sophisticated controls were unable to operate in a snowstorm because a fan sucked snow into the electrical system. Absurd random failure that plague automatic control systems are not merely trivial aberrations; they are a reflection of the chaos that results when design is assumed to be primarily a problem in mathematics.  
It can be inferred that the author thinks engineering curricula are________.
选项 A、strengthened when they include courses in design
B、strong because nonverbal thinking is still emphasized by most of the courses
C、strong despite the errors that graduates of such curricula have made in the development of automatic control systems
D、weakened by the substitution of physical science courses for courses designed to develop mathematical skills
答案A
解析 判断推理题。第二段是关于工程专业的课程的内容。该段前两句提到，设计课程应该是工程专业的重要课程，而非语言思维是设计课程的核心。最后一句举例说明，工程专业的学生非语言思维弱，不能胜任专业内的工作。也就是说，设计课程中的非语言思维对于工程专业也是很重要的，设计课程能够弥补工程专业课程在这一方面的缺陷，使工程专业的课程更完善。故A项强化设计课程为答案。当前的工程专业课程缺乏对学生非语言思维的锻炼，故B项错误。文中未提及C项和D项。
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