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  3. When George Price died in January 1975, his funeral in London was attended by five homeless men: untidy, smelly and cold. Alongs

When George Price died in January 1975, his funeral in London was attended by five homeless men: untidy, smelly and cold. Alongs

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问题     When George Price died in January 1975, his funeral in London was attended by five homeless men: untidy, smelly and cold. Alongside them were Bill Hamilton and John Maynard Smith, both distinguished British evolutionary biologists. All seven men had come to mourn an American scientist who helped to unpick the riddle of why people should ever be kind to one another, who had chosen to give away his clothes, his possessions and his home, and who, when his generosity was exhausted, slashed his own throat with a pair of scissors, aged 52.
    Ever since Charles Darwin had published his theory of evolution in 1859, scientists have pondered whether it can explain the existence of altruism: behavior that decreases an individual’s fitness but which increases the average fitness of the group to which he belongs. Such kindness is not unique to humans but exists also in complex insect societies. Bees, for example, live in colonies headed by a queen and populated by sterile workers. One reading of Darwin’s theory says that, because the workers do not breed, evolution should result in their elimination. Yet this is not what happens in nature.
    In the 1960s, Hamilton proposed that evolution acts on characteristics that favor the survival of close relatives of a certain individual. The bee colonies that survive are those in which sterile workers provide the "fittest" service to their mother. Each worker thus strives to favor the reproductive success of the queen, even at the price of her own reproductive failure.
    Price wanted to describe mathematically how a genetic predisposition to altruism could evolve. He devised a formula, now called the Price equation, that describes how characteristics that can, in some cases, prove disadvantageous, nevertheless persist in the population. By slightly changing the variables, he was able to describe populations in which kindness was widespread, everyone benefited and altruism was passed down the generations, and other, more brutal worlds, where charity was abused and kindness died out.
    Ultimately, Price ended up in such a place. In 1967 he moved to London, where he hooked up with Hamilton and derived the equation for which he is famed. At the same time, his interest in altruism blossomed into something less kin-based and more practical: he began to seek out needy strangers. At one stage, he had four homeless men staying in his flat, while he slept in his office. As he became increasingly unwell, both physically and mentally, he redoubled his efforts to help the poor, moving into a dirty cabin where, one freezing night, he committed suicide. Price ultimately became one of the homeless he had set out to save.
It can be learned that George Price ________.
选项 A、was a famous British evolutionary biologist
B、gave away his possessions after he died
C、tried to describe altruism in theory and practice
D、committed suicide because of mental disorder
答案C
解析 由于全文均与George Price有关，故本题需根据各选项内容，各自定位。C项中的altruism出现在第二段第一句，该句对该词作了解释，可知该词大概是指“有利于他人及团队的行为”，从第一段末的give away his possessions“捐赠财产”可知，这是对altruism的实践(in practice)。而第一段第三句中的helped to unpick the riddle of why…to one another，以及倒数第二段第二句提到的他设计了有关altruism的the Price equation“普莱斯方程式”，均可看作是对altruism的理论研究(in theory)，因而C项所述正确。A项的British和第一段第三句的American scientist不一致。B项说他在死后把自己的财产送人，而文中说的是他在生前就已经这么做了。D项说的自杀原因不符合事实。他自杀是因为他感到his generosity was exhausted“不能再帮助别人”，而非mental disorder“精神失常”。
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