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  3. It is impossible to measure the importance of Edison by adding up the specific inventions with which his name is associated. Far

It is impossible to measure the importance of Edison by adding up the specific inventions with which his name is associated. Far

admin2009-04-27  50
问题     It is impossible to measure the importance of Edison by adding up the specific inventions with which his name is associated. Far-reaching as many of them have been in their effect upon modern civilization, the total effect of Edison’s career surpasses the sum of all of them.
    He did not merely mak6 the incandescent lamp and the phonograph and innumerable other devices practicable for general use; (46)it was given to him to demonstrate the power of applied science so concretely, so understandably, so convincingly that he altered the mentality of mankind. In his lifetime, largely because of his successes, there came into widest acceptance the revolutionary conception that man could by the rise of his intelligence invent a new mode of living on this planet; the human spirit, which in all previous ages had regarded the conditions of life as essentially unchanging and beyond man s control, confidently, and perhaps somewhat naively, adopted the conviction that anything could be’ changed and-everything could be controlled.
    This idea of progress is in the scale of history a very new idea. It seems first to have taken possession of a few minds in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as an accompaniment of the great advances in pure science. It gained greater currency in the first half of the nineteenth century when industrial civilization began to be transformed by the application of steam power. (47)But these changes, impressive as they were, created so much human misery by the crude and cruel manner in which they were exploited that all through the century men instinctively feared and opposed the progress of machines, and of the sciences on which they rested. It was only at the end of the century, with the perfecting of the electric light bulb, the telephone, the phonograph, and the like, that the ordinary man began to fell that science could actually benefit him. (48)Edison supplied the homely demonstrations which insured the popular acceptance of science, and clinched the popular argument, which had begun with Darwin, about the place of science in man’s outlook upon life.
    Thus he became the supreme propagandist of science and his name the great symbol of an almost blind faith in its possibilities. Thirty years ago, when I was a schoolboy, the ancient conservatism of man was still the normal inheritance of every child. We began to have electric lights, and telephones, and to se, homeless carriages, but our attitude was a mixture of wonder, fear, and doubt. Perhaps these would work Perhaps they would not explode. Perhaps it would be amusing to play with them. (49)Today every school boy not only takes all the existing inventions as much for granted as we took horses and dogs for granted, but also, he is entirely convinced that all other desirable things can and will be invented. In my youth the lonely inventor who could not obtain a hearing was still the stock figure of the imagination. Today the only people who are not absolutely sure that television is perfected are the inventors themselves. (50)No other person played so great a part as Edison in this change in human expectation, and finally, by the cumulative effect of his widely distributed inventions plus a combination of the modem publicity technique and the ancient myth-making faculty of men, he was lifted in the popular imagination to a place where he was looked upon not only as the symbol but as the creator of a new age.

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答案人类对未来的期望不同于从前，在这点上爱迪生所起的作用无人可及。由于他的那些涉及范围广泛的发明所产生的总体影响，再加上现代传播技术与古代人们编造和话的天赋的巧妙结合，爱迪生在人们心目中的地位最终上升至他不仅被视为是新时代的象征，而且还是新时代的缔造者。
解析 这是两个分句组成的并列句。第二个分句的主句是被动结构he was lifted...to place...，介词短语in the popular imagination和to a place是状语，定语从句where...of a new age 修饰a place，by the commutative...of men为介词短语作状语。
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