SECTION A
Aided by the recent ability to analyze samples of air trapped in glaciers, scientists now have a clearer idea of the relationship between atmospheric composition and global temperature change over the past 160,000 years. In particular, determination of atmospheric composition during periods of glacial expansion and retreat (cooling and warming) is possible using data from the 2,000 meter Vostok ice core drilled in Antarctica. The technique involved is similar to that used in analyzing cores of marine sediments, where the ratio of the two common isotopes of oxygen, 18O and 16O, accurately reflects past temperature changes. Isotopic analysis of oxygen in the Vostok core suggests mean global temperature fluctuations of up to 10 degrees centigrade over the past 160,000 years.
Data from the Vostok core also indicate that the amount of carbon dioxide has fluctuated with temperature over the same period: the higher the temperature, the higher the concentration of carbon dioxide and the lower the temperature, the lower the concentration. Although change in carbon dioxide content closely follows change in temperature during periods of deglaciation, it apparently lags behind temperature during periods of cooling. The correlation of carbon dioxide with temperature, of course, does not establish whether changes in atmospheric composition caused the warming and cooling trends or were caused by their.
The correlation between carbon dioxide and temperature throughout the Vostok record is consistent and predictable. The absolute temperature changes, however, are from 5 to 14 times greater than would be expected on the basis of carbon dioxide’s own ability to absorb infrared radiation, or radiant heat. This reaction suggests that, quite aside from (aside from: adv.除...以外) changes in heat-trapping gases, commonly known as greenhouse gases, certain positive feedbacks are also amplifying the temperature change. Such feedbacks might involve ice on land and sea, clouds, or water vapor, which also absorb radiant heat (radiant heat: n.[物]辐射热).
Other data from the Vostok core show that methane gas also correlates closely with temperature and carbon dioxide. The methane concentration nearly doubled, for example, between the peak of the penultimate glacial period and the following interglacial period. Within the present interglacial period it has more than doubled in just the past 300 years and is rising rapidly. Although the concentration of atmospheric methane is more than two orders of magnitude lower than that of carbon dioxide, it cannot be ignored: the radiative properties of methane make it 20 times more effective, molecule for molecule, than carbon dioxide in absorbing radiant heat. On the basis of a simulation model that climatological researchers have developed, methane appears to have been about 25 percent as important as carbon dioxide in the warming that took place during the most recent glacial retreat 8,000 to 10,000 years ago.
17. The primary purpose of the passage is to
(A) interpret data
(B) explain research methodology
(C) evaluate a conclusion
(D) suggest a new technique(A)
(E) attack a theory
18. According to the passage, which of the following statements about methane is true?
(A) Methane is found in marine sediments.
(B) Methane is more effective than carbon dioxide in absorbing radiant heat.
(C) The Earth’s atmosphere now contains more than twice as much methane as it does carbon dioxide.
(D) The higher the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere, the lower the concentration of methane.(B)
(E) Most of the global warming that has occurred during the past 10 years has been associated with increased methane concentration.
19. According to the passage, which of the following statements best describes the relationship between carbon dioxide and global temperature?
(A) Carbon dioxide levels change immediately in response to changes in temperature.
(B) Carbon dioxide levels correlate with global temperature during cooling periods only.
(C) Once carbon dioxide levels increase, they remain high regardless of changes in global temperature.
(D) Carbon dioxide levels increase more quickly than global temperature does.(E)
(E) During cooling periods, carbon dioxide levels initially remain high and then decline.
20. The author mentions “certain positive feedbacks” (lines 35-36) in order to indicate that
(A) increased concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere is responsible for global temperature increase
(B) some climate simulation models have produced useful information
(C) greenhouse gases alone do not account for global temperature increase
(D) variables that benefit life are causing global temperature to increase(C)
(E) beneficial substances that are not heat-trapping gases and that contribute to global temperature increase have been found in the Vostok ice core
21. It can be inferred from the passage that a long-term decrease in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere would
(A) increase methane concentration in the Earth’s atmosphere
(B) accompany a period of glaciation
(C) encourage the formation of more oxygen isotopes in the Earth’s atmosphere
(D) promote the formation of more water in the Earth’s global environment(B)
(E) increase the amount of infrared radiation absorbed by the Earth’s atmosphere
22. The passage suggests that when the methane concentration in the Earth’s atmosphere decreases, which of the following also happens?
(A) Glaciers melt faster.
(B) The concentration of carbon dioxide increases.
(C) The mean global temperature decreases.
(D) Carbon dioxide absorbs more radiant beat.(C)
(E) More clouds form in the Earth’s atmosphere.
23. In the fourth paragraph, the author is primarily concerned with
(A) restating the main idea of the passage
(B) using research findings to develop a simulation model
(C) outlining the direction of future reserves
(D) providing an additional example of a phenomenon(D)
(E) introducing a conflicting hypothesis
In The Women of Mexico City, 1796-1857, Sylvia Marina Arrom argues that the status of women in Mexico City improved during the nineteenth century. According to Arrom, households headed by females and instances of women working outside the home were much more common than scholars have estimated; efforts by the Mexican government to encourage female education resulted in increased female literacy; and influential male writers wrote pieces (5: a literary, journalistic, artistic, dramatic, or musical composition 9: OPINION, VIEW “spoke his piece”) advocating education, employment, and increased family responsibilities for women, while deploring women’s political and marital inequality. Mention of the fact that the civil codes of 1870 and 1884 significantly advanced women’s rights would have further strengthened Arrom’s argument.
Arrom does not discuss whether women’s improved status counteracted the effects on women of instability in the Mexican economy during the nineteenth century. However, this is not so much a weakness in her work as it is the inevitable result of scholars’ neglect of this period. Indeed, such gaps in Mexican history are precisely what make Arrom’s pioneering study an important addition to Latin American women’s history.
24. The passage is primarily concerned with doing which of the following?
(A) Reviewing a historical study of the status of women in Mexico City during the nineteenth century
(B) Analyzing the effects of economic instability on the status of women in Mexico during the nineteenth century
(C) Advancing a thesis explaining why women’s status in Mexico City improved during the nineteenth century
(D) Rejecting the thesis that the status of women in Mexico City during the nineteenth century actually improved(A)
(E) Praising an author for a pioneering attempt to bridge significant gaps in Mexico’s economic history prior to 1790
25. According to the author of the passage, Arrom’s study can be characterized as “an important addition to Latin American women’s history” (lines 21-22) because it
(A) offers a radical thesis concerning the status of women’s civil rights in Mexican society during the nineteenth century
(B) relies on a new method of historical analysis that has not previously been applied to Latin American history
(C) focuses only on the status of women in Mexican society
(D) addresses a period in Mexican history that scholars have to some extent (to some extent: 某种程度上, (多少)有一点) neglected(D)
(E) is the first study to recognize the role of the Mexican government in encouraging women’s education
26. It can be inferred from the passage that Arrom would agree with which of the following assertions?
(A) Efforts by the Mexican government to encourage education for women during the nineteenth century were hampered by the economic instability of that period.
(B) The most significant advances in the rights of Mexican women during the nineteenth century occurred prior to 1857.
(C) Improvements in the status of women in Mexico City during the nineteenth century were accompanied by similar improvements in the status of women in other large Latin American cities.
(D) Scholars have in the past accorded the most significance to nineteenth-century Mexican literature that supported the status quo in women’s political and marital rights.(E)
(E) Scholars have in the past underestimated the number of households headed by females in Mexico City.
27. Which of the following best describes the author’s attitude toward Arrom’s work?
(A) Uncritical approval
(B) Enthusiasm tempered by minor reservations
(C) Praise for her thesis, despite skepticism regarding the sources of her evidence
(D) Reluctant acceptance, despite lingering doubts regarding the accuracy of her thesis(B)
(E) Rejection, despite admiration for her attempt to break new ground in a hitherto neglected field
SECTION B
Present-day philosophers usually envision their discipline as an endeavor (activity directed toward a goal: ENTERPRISE “fields of endeavor”) that has been, since antiquity, distinct from and superior to any particular intellectual discipline, such as theology or science. Such philosophical concerns as the mind-body problem or, more generally, the nature of human knowledge, they believe, are basic human questions whose tentative philosophical solutions have served as the necessary foundations on which all other intellectual speculation (intellectual speculation: 知识的思索) has rested.
The basis for this view, however, lies in a serious misinterpretation of the past, a projection of modern concerns onto past events. The idea of an autonomous discipline called “philosophy,” distinct from and sitting in judgment on such pursuits as theology and science turns out, on close examination, to be of quite recent origin. When, in the seventeenth century, Descartes and Hobbes rejected medieval philosophy, they did not think of themselves, as modern philosophers do, as proposing a new and better philosophy, but rather as furthering “the warfare between science and theology.” They were fighting, albeit discreetly, to open the intellectual world to the new science and to liberate intellectual life from ecclesiastical philosophy and envisioned their work as contributing to the growth, not of philosophy, but of research in mathematics and physics. This link between philosophical interests and scientific practice persisted until the nineteenth century, when decline in ecclesiastical power over scholarship and changes in the nature of science provoked the final separation of philosophy from both.
The demarcation of philosophy from science was facilitated by the development in the early nineteenth century of a new notion, that philosophy’s core interest should be epistemology, the general explanation of what it means to know something. Modern philosophers now trace that notion back at least to Descartes and Spinoza, but it was not explicitly articulated until the late eighteenth century, by Kant, and did not become built into the structure of academic institutions and the standard self-descriptions of philosophy professors until the late nineteenth century. Without the idea of epistemology, the survival of philosophy in an age of modern science is hard to imagine. Metaphysics, philosophy’s traditional core—considered as the most general description of how the heavens and the earth are put together—had been rendered almost completely meaningless by the spectacular progress of physics. Kant, however, by focusing philosophy on the problem of knowledge, managed to replace metaphysics with epistemology, and thus to transform the notion of philosophy as “queen of sciences” into the new notion of philosophy as a separate, foundational discipline. Philosophy became “primary” no longer in the sense of “highest” but in the sense of “underlying”. After Kant, philosophers were able to reinterpret seventeenth-and eighteenth-century thinkers as attempting to discover “How is our knowledge possible?” and to project this question back even on the ancients.
17. Which of the following best expresses the author’s main point?
(A) Philosophy’s overriding interest in basic human questions is a legacy primarily of the work of Kant.
(B) Philosophy was deeply involved in the seventeenth-century warfare between science and religion.
(C) The set of problems of primary importance to philosophers has remained relatively constant since antiquity.
(D) The status of philosophy as an independent intellectual pursuit is a relatively recent development.(D)
(E) The role of philosophy in guiding intellectual speculation has gradually been usurped by science.
18. According to the passage, present-day philosophers believe that the mind-body problem is an issue that
(A) has implications primarily for philosophers
(B) may be affected by recent advances in science
(C) has shaped recent work in epistemology
(D) has little relevance to present-day philosophy(E)
(E) has served as a basis for intellectual speculation since antiquity
19. According to the author, philosophy became distinct from science and theology during the
(A) ancient period
(B) medieval period
(C) seventeenth century
(D) nineteenth century(D)
(E) twentieth century
20. The author suggests that Descartes’ support for the new science of the seventeenth century can be characterized as
(A) pragmatic and hypocritical
(B) cautious and inconsistent
(C) daring and opportunistic
(D) intense but fleeting(E)
(E) strong but prudent
21. The author of the passage implies which of the following in discussing the development of philosophy during the nineteenth century?
(A) Nineteenth-century philosophy took science as its model for understanding the bases of knowledge.
(B) The role of academic institutions in shaping metaphysical philosophy grew enormously during the nineteenth century.
(C) Nineteenth-century philosophers carried out a program of investigation explicitly laid out by Descartes and Spinoza.
(D) Kant had an overwhelming impact on the direction of nineteenth-century philosophy.(D)
(E) Nineteenth-century philosophy made major advances in understanding the nature of knowledge.
22. With which of the following statements concerning the writing of history would the author of the passage be most likely to agree?
(A) History should not emphasize the role played by ideas over the role played by individuals.
(B) History should not be distorted by attributing present-day consciousness to historical figures.
(C) History should not be focused primarily on those past events most relevant to the present.
(D) History should be concerned with describing those aspects of the past that differ most from those of the present.(B)
(E) History should be examined for the lessons it can provide in understanding current problems.
23. The primary function of the passage as a whole is to
(A) compare two competing models
(B) analyze a difficult theory
(C) present new evidence for a theory
(D) correct an erroneous belief by describing its origins(D)
(E) resolve a long-standing theoretical controversy
Biologists have long maintained that two groups of pinnipeds (pinniped: adj.鳍足类的), sea lions and walruses, are descended from a terrestrial bearlike animal, whereas the remaining group, seals, shares an ancestor with weasels. But the recent discovery of detailed similarities in the skeletal structure of the flippers in all three groups undermines the attempt to explain away (1: to get rid of by or as if by explanation; 2: to minimize the significance of by or as if by explanation) superficial resemblance as due to convergent evolution (convergent evolution: 趋同进化)—the independent development of similarities between unrelated groups in response to similar environmental pressures. Flippers may indeed be a necessary response to aquatic life; turtles, whales, and dugongs (an aquatic herbivorous mammal of a monotypic genus (Dugong) that has a bilobed tail and in the male upper incisors altered into short tusks, is related to the manatee, and inhabits warm coastal regions) also have them. But the common detailed design found among the pinnipeds probably indicates a common ancestor. Moreover, walruses and seals drive themselves through the water with thrusts of their hind flippers, but sea lions use their front flippers. If anatomical similarity in the flippers resulted from similar environmental pressures, as posited by the convergent evolution theory, one would expect walruses and seals, but not seals and sea lions, to have similar flippers.
24. According to the passage, it has been recently discovered that
(A) there are detailed skeletal similarities in the flippers of pinnipeds
(B) sea lions, seals, and walruses are all pinnipeds
(C) pinnipeds are descended from animals that once lived on land
(D) animals without common ancestors sometimes evolve in similar ways(A)
(E) animals that have flippers do not all use them in the same way
25. The author implies that which of the following was part of the long-standing view concerning pinnipeds?
(A) Pinnipeds are all descended from a terrestrial bearlike animal.
(B) Pinnipeds share a common ancestor with turtles, whales, and dugongs.
(C) Similarities among pinnipeds are due to their all having had to adapt to aquatic life.
(D) There are detailed similarities in the skeletal structure of the flippers in all pinnipeds.(C)
(E) Convergent evolution cannot account for the similarities among pinnipeds.
26. The author implies which of the following about the fact that turtles, whales, and dugongs all have flippers?
(A) It can be explained by the hypothesis that turtles, whales, and dugongs are very closely related.
(B) It can be explained by the idea of convergent evolution.
(C) It suggests that turtles, whales, and dugongs evolved in separate parts of the world.
(D) It undermines the view that turtles, whales, and dugongs are all descended from terrestrial ancestors.(B)
(E) It is the primary difference between turtles, whales, and dugongs, on the one hand, and pinnipeds, on the other.
27. In presenting the argument in the passage, the author does which of the following?
(A) Contends that key terms in an opposing view have been improperly used.
(B) Contends that opponents have purposely obscured important evidence.
(C) Shows that two theories thought to be in conflict are actually complementary.
(D) Shows that advocates of a theory have not always stated their view in the same manner.(E)
(E) Shows that an implication of a theory is contradicted by the facts.
