Unit 2 scientific research and scientists

BEFORE READING:

1. Why have you decided to devote yourself to research work? (Give at least 3 reasons to explain your choice.) What are your associations with the “scientist of the XXI-st century’?

2.Do you think that scientific work of any kind can itself be a means of developing the moral qualities of the individual concerned?

PRE-TEXT EXERCISES: Task1 Read and translate the definitions of the following words:

Science:

1 (the study of) knowledge which can be made into a system and which usually depends on seeing and testing facts and stating general laws;

2. a branch of such knowledge.

Scientist - a person who carries out new work in a science(physics, economics etc).

Scientific concerning science or its principles or rules: scientific education, scientific writing, scientific spirit etc.

Scholar - a person who knows much in a particular field of knowledge( refers mainly, though not exclusively, to the humanities).

Task 2 Match the columns:

1.conscious reason a) припускати, вважати доведеним

2. to select the data b) задача, яку не можна розв‘язати

3.unravelling puzzle c) знаходити схожість

4.to take for granted d) здоровий розум

5.mental texture e) відбирати дані, інформацію

6.to reach the heights f) розумова структура

7.to find resemblances g) досягати вершини

TASK 3 Read the text and say what types of human minds are discussed in it

One can do science because one believes that practically and effectively it benefits the world. A great many scientists have had this chief conscious reason. One can do science because it represents the truth. One selected one’s data - set one’s puzzle for oneself, as it were - and in the end solved the puzzle by showing how they fitted other data of the same kind. One can also do scienсe because one enjoys it. Many people like unravelling puzzles. Scientific puzzles are very good ones, with reasonable prizes. So that either without examining the functions of science, being indifferent to them or taking them for granted, a number of men go in for research as they would for law; living by it, obeying its rules, and thoroughly enjoying the problem-solving process.

If we could follow the process of a scientific thought through many minds we should see every conceivable variety of mental texture. These varieties seem to fall into two main types. The first could be called the problem-solving type – minds which choose out of all the world round them a certain piece of experience and drive through it to an explanation. The probing, analytical, pragmatic minds, which at their best can reach the heights of Rutherford and Darwin. In everyday affairs it is probably the commoner type of mind, and so the performances of its highest exponents seem familiar and easy to most of us, they are of the same nature as our own. The second type is the so called abstracting mind. These minds do not drive through a portion of experience; they wait for experience to make itself into shapes of their minds, they assimilate, correlate, find resemblances in different things, differences in similar things. At their best, in Faraday, Einstein, they are great generalizers; at their worst they are infinitely fantastic and removed from all reality.

POST-TEXT EXERCISES:

TASK I Match the words from two columns as they are used in the text and translate them in your native language:

1 to benefit a) variety

2 to represent b) thought

3 to fit c) the rules

4 to solve d) the truth

5 reasonable e) the world

6 scientific f) the puzzle

7 conceivable g)the data

8 to obey h) prizes

TASK 2 Complete the sentences below using the words from the text:

resemblance reasonable fall affair represents excperience

1. Scientific puzzles offer ....... prizes.

2. People devote themselves to science because it .........the truth.

3. The variety of humans’ mental texture........into two groups.

4. A problem-solving mind choose a certain piece of .........and drive through it.

5. In everyday .........problem-solving type of mind is the commoner one.

6. The abstracting mind find .............. in different things.

TASK 3 Find the words in the text which have the similar meaning to the words below:

1. main 5. to regulate

2. choose 6. to adopt

3. to suit 7. top

4. to achieve 8. to follow

TASK 4 Characterize any scientist or scholar you know according to the types suggested in the text given above. Use the following vocabulary:

a capacity for scientific analysis; to have scrupulous/analytical mind; to be out of one’s reach; to have insight imagination(drive); the elegance of the experiments; to be full of facts; to be quickly/bright/slow,etc; to overflow with a sort of scientific wit; to be getting the name of a promising young scientist/scholar; to be a born scientist(scholar); to rush into work; a sudden flash of an idea; long routines; to have all the technigues; to generalize, etc.