DESTINATION
“The particles that were composed at the beginning of the Universe, the atoms that were forged in the stars, the molecules that were constituted on Earth or in another place… all that is also inside us.” Michel Cassé, French astro-physicist
"Who is man, and what his place? Anxious asks the heart, perplext In this recklessness of space, Worlds with worlds thus intermixt: What has he, this atom creature, In the infinitude of Nature?"
Francis Turner Palgrave, British critic and poet
LEAD IN
A. Study the epigraph to the lesson. How do you understand these quotations?
B. Read the introductory notes. Try to predict what it is going to be discussed in this lesson. Is the topic actual to you? Have you asked yourself the questions mentioned?
... At one point or another in people’s lives we begin to ask ourselves important questions about Life in general and our own Life specifically. Whether driven by a crisis, a loss of someone close or just getting older, important questions begin to occur to us. When I die, is that it? Is there part of me that goes on after death? If I have been fortunate and my needs have been met; is all that life comes down to is interacting with friends and family, buying stuff, travelling, partying and sitting in front of the tube? Does Life have a purpose? If it does, what specifically is Mine? Is there really a God? What is Man’s true nature anyway?
C
.
Look at the pictures. What common topic are they united by?
D. Match the following definitions of the main theories explaining the origin of man with the pictures above. What do you know about these theories? What is their attitude towards humanity and its destination in this world?
Creationism – the theory that asserts that humans, as well as the rest of the natural world, were created by one or more supernatural beings or gods. For instance, Genesis, a book of the Bible, is one creation theory, telling the story of God creating the world and the first humans in seven days.
Panspermia – the theory which proposes that primitive life forms have been transported between different worlds of this and other planetary systems in the interior of rocks ejected into space by an asteroid or comet impact on the planet where the life evolved.
Evolutionary theory – the theory that groups of organisms change with passage of time, mainly as a result of natural selection, so that descendants differ morphologically and physiologically from their ancestors.
E. What are your beliefs about the origin of man? Do they coincide with any of the theories mentioned?
TOPICAL VOCABULARY
A. Work with an explanatory dictionary. Find the meaning of the following terms.
Identity, oneness, evolution, punctuated equilibrium, young-earth (old-earth, progressive, gap) creationism, natural selection, alteration, eon, transcendence, anthropic principle, delayed choice, isotope.
B. Explain the meaning of the terms from the previous exercise with your own words. Give examples of their use in speech. What are their Ukrainian equivalents?
C. Consult reference sources to check what these sciences study:
Palaeontology, geology, anthropology, biology, cosmology, astrophysics, quantum physics, ethnography, archaeology, ethnology.
D. Consult reference sources to check what dates the following periods in geologic time scale refer to. Why are they called so? Find Ukrainian equivalents of their names.
Precambrian, Cambrian, Mesozoic, Paleozoic, Jurassic, Mississippian, Phanerozoic, Cretaceous, Cryogenian, Tertiary.
E. Work at home. Prepare a group project on the topic “The History of Earth”. Share tasks among the group members. Cover different stages of the development of Earth. Ensure that your project is provided with sufficient illustrative matter.
F. Study the following words and word combinations:
Human: human, humanlike, anthropic, hominid, earthling, ancestor, forebear, descendant, generation, primate, ape, primitive, savage, Pithecanthropus, Neanderthal, Cro-Magnon, tribe, matriarchy, patriarchy, destiny, destination, fate, fortune, consciousness, subconsciousness, self-awareness, existence, sentient, trait;
Development: creationism, creature, organism, epoch, era, dawn, glacier, gradual, stage, genesis, development, evolve, evolution, natural (artificial) selection, adaptation, mutation, extinction, dinosaur, dating, geological layer, fossil record, relics, artefact, burrowing, rock strata, deposit, continental drift, species, variety, genetic variation, random, form of life, biodiversity, phenotype, embryo, hybrid, single-celled, multicelled, bacteria, algae, invertebrate, mammals, inheritance, lifetime, lifespan, evolve, diverge, diversify;
Universe: big bang, extend galaxy, universe, space, celestial body, unindentified flying object, matter, atom, elementary particle, physical world, extraterrestrial, meteorite shower, clash, collision, constellation, energy, microcosm, eternity.
G. Translate the sentences into Ukrainian paying attention to the words and expressions in bold:
1
.
Paleoanthropologists
have
several ways to determine the age of fossils.
The simplest, relative
dating, relies
on the fact that older deposits
are found below more recent geological
layers
in places where geological activity has not disturbed the original
orientation of the layers. 2.
Since
the earliest hominid
species
diverged
from the ancestor
we share with modern African apes,
5 to 8 million years ago, there have been at least a dozen different
species of these humanlike
creatures.
3. According
to the theory
of evolution,
humans
evolved
through the same biological processes that govern the evolution of
all life on Earth.
4.
Cosmic
inflation
theory proposes that a random,
microscopic density fluctuation in the fabric of space and time gave
birth to the universe in a hot big
bang
approximately 13.7 billion years ago. 5. Life began more than 3
billion years before the Cambrian,
and gradually diversified
into a wide variety
of single-celled
organisms.
6. Toward the end of the Precambrian,
about 570 million years ago, a number of multicelled
forms began to appear in the fossil
record,
including invertebrates
resembling sponges and jellyfish, and some as-yet-unknown burrowing
forms of life.
7. Rather than having life begin in very simple
forms
- proteins, bacteria,
algae,
etc., and then gradually evolve into more complex forms, the theory
of creation
says that creatures
started out as distinct and separate organisms
when God created them. 8. The term evolution
basically means alterations
through time
- typically very slow changes over a very long time interval. 9.
Darwin
continually emphasized the difference between his two great
accomplishments: establishing the fact of evolution,
and proposing a theory (natural
selection)
to explain the mechanism of evolution. 10. Astronomers
view galaxies
of stars that appear to be in different stages
of development
in their lifetime
which extends
over many thousands of millions of years. 11. The earliest fossilized
life
forms,
which are simple, single-celled
organisms
found in deeply buried
rocks, are dated as many hundreds of millions of years old. 12.
Geologists study the evolution
of the continents and their present arrangement on the earth's
surface through continental
drift.
13. We
may look upon celestial
bodies
as a link between ourselves and our ancestors,
for even if we do not know our distant forebears
individually, we have this in common: we have all looked at our sun
and moon, at the age-old planets and the self-same stars. 14. Life
appears to be a manifestation of the constant if subtle interaction
of the wave-packets classically known as 'matter'
with the underlying vacuum
field. 15. Many
sceptics tout an idea called the anthropic
argument that claims extraterrestrial
intelligence must be very rare because the time it takes for
intelligent life to evolve
is, on the average, much longer than the portion of a star's
existence that is conducive to such life.
H. Read the dictionary article about the difference in the use of words ‘destiny’ and ‘fate’:
“Although the words are used interchangeably in many cases, ‘fate’ and ‘destiny’ can be distinguished. Modern usage defines fate as a power or agency that predetermines and orders the course of events. Fate defines events as ordered or “inevitable”. Fate is used in regard to the finality of events as they have worked themselves out; and that same sense of finality, projected into the future to become the inevitability of events as they will work themselves out, is Destiny”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destiny
Consult a dictionary to explain the difference in the use of following words from your active vocabulary:
‘destiny’ and ‘destination’, ‘destiny’ and ‘fortune’;
‘primate’ and ‘primitive’;
‘diverge’ and ‘diversify’;
‘consciousness’ and ‘self-awareness’;
‘universe’, ‘space’ and ‘cosmos’.
I. Fill in the gaps with one of the words given, making all necessary changes. Translate the text into Ukrainian. Anthropology
Humankind, variations, evolution, study, natural sciences, adaptation, traits, develop, being, cultural, lifeway, organisation, trace, environments, ancestors
A
nthropology
is the (1) ... of humankind over the entire world and throughout
time. It has its intellectual origins in
both the (2) …, and the humanities. Its basic questions concern,
“What defines Homo sapiens?”
“Who are the (3) … of modern Homo
sapiens?”, “What are our physical
(4) …?” “How do we behave?”, “Why are there (5) … and
differences among different groups of humans?” “How has the
evolutionary past of Homo sapiens
influenced its social (6) … and culture?” and so forth.
Anthropologists study existing cultures,
beliefs, and practices of living people
((7) ... anthropology), traditions
(folklore), prehistoric cultures and (8) ... (archaeology), the
biological makeup and (9) ... of humans (physical anthropology), and
the origin and nature of language (linguistics). The extensive
subject of anthropology has two main branches: physical anthropology
and cultural anthropology. Physical anthropology, according to George
Kneller, (10) ... the evolution of the human organism and its (11)
... to various environments. Cultural anthropology is the study of
cultures, past and present. Anthropology, like history, helps (12)
... find answers to the many problems facing our natural and
political (13) ... . It also helps explain how we have (14) ... as
physical and social (15) ..., both positively and negatively.
J. Translate the sentences from Ukrainian into English using your active vocabulary.
1. На думку більшості спеціалістів, що досліджують минуле, буквальне тлумачення священних текстів різноманітних релігій щодо творіння не лише не наукове, а й псевдонаукове, оскільки таке тлумачення протирічить масиву палентологічних, біологічних, геологічних та астрофізичних даних. 2. Активні дискусії між прибічниками креаціонізму та його супротивниками ведуться у багатьох країнах, у тому числі й в Україні, здебільшого з приводу доречності викладання цих поглядів у школі. 3. У християнському креаціонізмі існує велика кількість різноманітних течій, серед яких виділяють: буквалістський (младоземельний) креаціонізм, який наполягає, що світ буквально був створений за шість днів і 6000 років тому, метафоричний (староземельний) креаціонізм, згідно з яким „6 днів творіння” – це лише універсальна метафора, адаптована до рівня сприйняття людей з різним рівнем знань, а також креаціонізм поступового творіння, відповідно до якого Бог безперервно скеровує процес зміни біологічних видів та їх появи. 4. Залежно від матеріалу, з якого переважно виготовляється знаряддя праці, найдавнішу історію України умовно поділяють на 6 періодів: давній кам’яний вік (палеоліт), середній кам’яний вік (мезоліт), новий кам’яний вік (неоліт), мідно-кам’яний вік (енеоліт), бронзовий вік та останній, залізний вік. 5. На теренах України вченими виявлено і досліджено 25 археологічних культур: від другої половини VI тисячоліття до н.е. до V століття н.е. 6. Залишки найдавніших на території України первісних людей були знайдені на одній з гір, над річкою Тисою біля села Королеве на Закарпатті. 7. Коротко суть панспермії можна звести до існування зародків життя, що розвіяні у Всесвіті і принципово здатні заселити будь-яку планету, якщо умови на ній виявляться придатними для розвитку життя. 8. Астрономічні відкриття останніх часів довели наявність у Космосі недоступної приладам енергії, яка керує ходом розвитку всесвіту. 9. 1965 р. фізик Белл з Центру ядерних досліджень у Швейцарії опублікував теоретичну роботу, суть якої полягає у тому, що у світі не існує ізольованих систем, кожна частка Всесвіту перебуває в „миттєвому” зв’язку з усіма іншими частками. 10. Важко розглядати еволюцію Всесвіту без такого чинника, як Свідомість Всесвіту, фрагментом якої є свідомість людини.