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  3. Many objects in daily use have clearly been influenced by science, but their form and function, their dimensions and appearance,

Many objects in daily use have clearly been influenced by science, but their form and function, their dimensions and appearance,

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问题     Many objects in daily use have clearly been influenced by science, but their form and function, their dimensions and appearance, were determined by technologists artisans, designers, inventors, and engineers— using non-scientific modes of thought. Many features and qualities of the objects that a technologist thinks about cannot be reduced to unambiguous verbal descriptions; they are dealt with in the mind by a visual, nonverbal process. In the development of Western technology, it has been non-verbal 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 creative shaping process of a technologist’s mind can be seen in nearly every 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 Tightness and fitness. What would be the shape of the combustion chamber? Where should the 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, may depend on scientific calculations, but the nonscientific component of design remains primary.
    Design courses, then, should be an essential element in engineering curricula. Nonverbal thinking, 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 is 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 isometric 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 controls were unable to operate in a snowstorm because a fan sucked snow into the electrical system. Absurd random failure that plague automatic 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.  
The author uses the example of the early models of high-speed railroad cars primarily to support the contention that________.
选项 A、the number of errors in modem engineering systems is likely to increase
B、design courses are the most effective to reduce the cost of designing engineering systems
C、modern engineering systems have major defects due to lack of design courses in engineering curricula
D、a lack of attention to the nonscientific aspects of design results in poor conceptualization by engineers
答案D
解析 事实细节题。根据high-speed railroad cars定位到第三段第二句。该段首句指出，如果不提供设计课程，高级工程系统就会出现愚蠢且代价高昂的问题。这是在强调设计课程的重要性，不是说出现的主要问题就是因为缺少设计课程，C项错误。第二句以高铁为例进行说明，第三句指出，高铁的问题并不是误差造成的，而是将设计问题误认为是数学问题造成的，也就是不科学的设计因素的影响，故答案为D项。该段未提及现代工程系统中的错误增加的情况，也未提及设计课程能最有效减少设计工程体系的成本，故排除A项和B项。
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