Passage one Many obj ects in daily use have clearly been influenced by science,but their form and functlon’their dlmensions and

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问题 Passage one
Many obj ects in daily use have clearly been influenced by science,but their form and functlon’their dlmensions and appearance,were determined by technologists,artisans,designers,Inventors,and engineers—using nonscientific modes of thought.Many features and aualities of the obj ects that a technologist thinks about cannot be reduced to unambiguous verbal descry Dtions;they are dealt with in the mind by a visual,nonverbal process.In the development of Western technology,it has been nonverbal 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 creatlve shaping process of a technologist’s mind can be seen in nearly everv 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 rightness and fitness. What would be the shape of the combustion chamber?Where should be 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,mav depend  on scientific calculations,but the nonscientific component of design remains primary. Design courses,then,should be an essential element in engineering curricula.Nonverbal  t hlnking,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 1s 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 isometrlc 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 contr01s were unable to operate in  a snowstorm because a fan sucked snow into the electrical system.Absurd random failures that  Plague utomatlc 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.
In the text,the author is primarily concerned with .

选项 A、identifying the kinds of thinking that are used by technologists
B、stressing the importance of nonverbal thinking in engineering design
C、proposing a new role for nonscientific thinking in the development of technology
D、contrasting the goals of engineers with those of technologists

答案B

解析 这是一道中心主旨题。本题的正确答案信息点在原文第一段的倒数第二句,该句强调“nonver_bal thinking’’的重要性。可见本题的正确选项应该是B项。考生在破解中心主旨题时一定要首先找出原文的中心主旨句。
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