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  3. The thought experiment has a noble place in research, but some thoughts are deemed nobler than others. Darwin and Einstein could

The thought experiment has a noble place in research, but some thoughts are deemed nobler than others. Darwin and Einstein could

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问题    The thought experiment has a noble place in research, but some thoughts are deemed nobler than others. Darwin and Einstein could let their minds wander and imagine the consequences of certain actions or natural laws. 【F1】But scientists and historians who try to estimate what might have happened if, say, Darwin had drowned, are often accused of playing parlor games.
   Most of these counterfactual thought experiments tend to focus on changes to the lives of historical figures—what would have happened had Hitler never been born, for instance. Dismissed as silly and speculative, such exercises are considered of little academic value.
   【F2】The course of history is surely dependent on the roles of influential individuals, which is why counterfactual tales of frustrated plots succeeding and dictators killed as infants seem so poorly anchored to reality. An individual really can steer events, so a world without that individual is unknowable. But what about the course of science, and the ideas that push it along? Is scientific and technical progress equally dependent on circumstance and personality? Or are discoveries inevitable, and independent of the people who happen to be around to make them?
   What if Darwin had toppled overboard before he joined the evolutionary dots? 【F3】That discussion seems useful, because it raises interesting questions about the state of knowledge, then and now, and how it is communicated and portrayed. 【F4】In his 2013 book—in which the young Charles is, indeed, lost in a storm—the historian Peter Bowler argued that the theory of evolution would have emerged just so, but with the pieces perhaps placed in a different order, and therefore less opposed to religious society.
   This week, another historian offers an alternative pathway for science: what if the ideas of Gregor Mendel on the inheritance of traits had been challenged more robustly and more successfully by a rival interpretation by the scientist W. F. R. Weldon? Gregory Radick argues that a twentieth-century genetics driven more by Weldon’s emphasis on environmental context would have weakened the dominance of the current misleading impression that nature always outdoes nurture.
   A well-informed interest in alternative scientific pasts can help us to take the actual past more seriously as a source of present-day insight. It can also help us to stay self-critical as we make choices in the present. Science without consensus would be chaos. 【F5】But the price of consensus is eternal watchfulness of self-satisfaction, and a willingness to contemplate the road otherwise not travelled.
【F2】
选项
答案历史的进程无疑有赖于重要人物的推动作用，这便解释了为什么假想历史反败为胜、独裁者夭折是多么不切实际。
解析 ①本句是复合句。which引导的定语从句修饰的是前面的整个句子，解释说明假想历史局面扭转和独裁者夭折的不切实际性。定语从句包含一个why引导的表语从句，说明前面的主句内容是此表语从句所述内容的原因。②主句的主干是A is dependent on B，其中A是The course of history“历史进程”，B是the roles of influential individuals“重要人物所扮演的角色”，翻译起来即是“历史进程取决于重要人物”。③frustrated plots succeeding和dictators killed as infants都是counterfactual tales的两个例子，这两个词组都是“名词+分词短语”的形式。frustrated plots后是现在分词succeeding作后置定语，意为“成功扭转败局”；dictators后是过去分词killed as infants作后置定语，意为“襁褓期被扼杀的独裁者”。
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