V. Consequences of the sp 2

The second type of consequences is the negative aspects of the SP on nature and

the environment and on the human beings themselves. Despite its aim for

predictability, we have not considered or not been able to foresee the adverse

consequences of the fruits of the SP in the sciento-technological interaction

between man and nature: the depletion of natural resources, the contamination of

nature, the atmosphere and the seas by chemical pollutants, the depletion of the

ozone-layer, and the rise in the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. Secondary

effects from the SP also arise due to the enormously increased capacity of

mechanical work as well as transportation. This has lead to the cutting down of

rainforests with inundations and desertification as consequences, the

impoverishment of the soil quality, the diminishing of animal and insect species,

etc. All these phenomena taken together is considered by leading scientists and

ecologists to be the worst threat to the survival of mankind that we have seen in

recorded history. We have also produced nuclear weapons in such quantities that

they are still a severe threat to all of civilization. And even in the future we see

no end to these problems with present scientific based technology. For example

the fusion energy program will lead to the production of very radioactive waste

products that will be difficult to handle, not to mention the danger of leakage of

the tritium needed to run the reactors, should this program be implemented.

Tritium, which is a radioactive hydrogen isotope, if coming out into nature will

quickly contaminate all kinds of biological material like plants, grass etc.

Francis Bacon formulated the need and reason to abandon the final causes to

obtain power over nature in his famous parabola cited earlier. Obviously, if we

consider nature as a being consecrated to God, it might be difficult to have

procreation of utilities for mankind, as long as we respect this. Modern man has

unfortunately let go of almost all prohibitions in this respect and lost perspective

of the deeper values nature has for man.

VI. Consequences of the sp 3

Modern scientists also claim that there is no meaning in nature. Scientists like

Jacques Monod (1970), Steven Weinberg (1977), Stephen Hawking, Richard

Dawkings (1986), William Provine (1989), etc (you may wish to add your own

favourite names to the list) all go out in books and interviews to state this as a

consequence of the SP. However, it should have been clear from the previous

discussion that scientific knowledge provides us at best with a map of reality or

nature. This map is constructed according to certain rules, the three elements that

were described above. It should then be obvious that the above mentioned

scientists all mistake the map for the reality. The map is constructed so as not to

contain final causes or purposes. Nature is therefore described as being without

meaning; this is part of the structure of the map. A map is made due to a certain

aim and is then containing information relevant to that aim. If I want to go by car

from my home to Sigtuna here, I need a map that tells me how the roads are

connected, where I shall turn left or right and which way to choose at a crossroad.

Focus on Grammar Review

Do the following exercises:

Exercise 1. Translate the following sentences, paying attention to the difficulties of lexical correspondences. How does the context influence the choice of a variant?

1. The State Secretary finds that the U.S government has an unbroken record of friendship for China dating back to 1844.

1. Washington D.C. is the city with the highest crime record.

2. Why have the records of the discussions and decisions at vital Cabinet meetings during the year of the Munich crises mysteriously disappeared?

3. If you run through the record of every national group from earliest times you will find people seeking asylum in one form or another in Canada.

4. As the crematorium facilities were maintained for the public by the public, regardless of whether they were religious or not, they should be treated equally

5. The nationalized industries of Britain have always been exploited by big business interests. But now the Tories are just giving away Britain’s public wealth.

6. The Swiss business community is sophisticated and highly experienced in international trade.

7. It would be wrong to believe, however, that all is harmony within the community of the Common Market countries.

8. The report comes in the midst of drastic unemployment among youth, especially in the black communities.

9. The following day, the poor people- whites, Mexican-Americans, Puerto Ricans and Indians as well as Negroes- will begin to erect a community of tents and shanties on a site in Washington

Exercise 2.. Translate the following sentences paying attention to different types of lexical transformations and means of contextual substitutions. Explain and comment your choice.

1. Scotland Yard yesterday denied that it had been asked by the American authorities to join in inquiries into the alleged plot to assassinate the US President.

2. The Italian communists call for a left government

3. They are busy like the ant, but are not prepared to slave away all their lives in the capitalist anthill just to make Mr Richards and his fellow employers more wealthy.

4. He watched the young man out of the room.

5. The President has now called for Congress to look to the problem of crime nationally and take appropriate action.

6. Zambia’s delegate said that South African armed forces were in Rhodesia only to murder and kill black Africans

7. Students have charged the police with harassment and intimidation

8. Activities proposed for the demonstration include a sit-in inside the Pentagon and a milelong picket around the building.

9. With the name of Nasser are associated the basic socio-economic transformations effected in Egypt in the interests of the broad mass of working men and women.

10. The proposal was rejected and repudiated.

Exercise 3. Translate the following sentences paying attention to different means of contextual substitutions. Explain and comment your choice.

1. It’s sweet for you to see my patients go wrong and yours recover

2. The painting was called “Napoleon on his mount visiting the plague stricken in the streets of Jaffa”

3. He was a thin, stoop-shouldered man not much under six feet tall.

4. At this moment O’Brien glanced at his wrist-watch.

5. The Liverpool by-election was an acid test for the Labour candidate.

6. At last he found his voice.

7. I don’t think she’s living here at the moment. Her bed wasn’t slept in.

8. The woman at the other end asked him to hang on.

9. No boy should defy his parents.

10. But if I was puzzled and disconcerted, I was not inimpressed.

11. “I never clapped eyes on him,” was the reply. “But I read some of his poetry out of that book there on the table just before you came in.

12. Clyde, whose education was not a little superior to that of his guide, commented quite sharply in his own mind on the use of such words as “knowed” and “gotta” and so on.

13. A little water stood in her eyes.

14. It is time you were awake to the danger of your position

15. His speech tends to put the entire blame for unemployment on the unemployed rather than right where it belongs – on government policies which have brought about this unemployment.

16. Here’s to you

17. Hear, hear!

18. Bother!

Exercise 4. Analyze the semantic structure of the given attributive phrases. Translate the sentences.

1. Patriot’s offer gives hope to Laotian Peace.

2. The group spent three days in Washington conferring with heads of Government agencies and Congressional leaders to plead for more Federal assistance for the nation’s poor.

3. The question of dumping chemical warfare agents in the sea has already provoked Congressional anxiety.

4.It is first and foremost, the Labour movement which must act to break the grip of the money lenders, defeat the profit-making vested interests which batten on the plight of the homeless and challenge the giant monopolists.

1. Trade union anger against Mrs Barbara Castle will be increased tomorrow with the publication of her wage-curb White Paper, which puts the blame for the plight of low-paid workers on those who are better-paid.

2. Several American soldiers were injured in fights between Negro and white servicemen at Cam Ranh Bay supply base last week.

3. The Nato nuclear weapons planning working group

4. The Conservative Party election campaign committee

5. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party delegates

6. The mail train robbery case

7. Strategic arms limitation talks

8. The latest casualty figures list

9. The T.U.C. General Council meeting

10. The Molniya space satellite communications system

11. Transport and General Workers’ Union executive council

12. For different reasons the American mother company took a hand-off approach.

13. The BBC Europe business correspondent.

14. The President’s new Cabinet – level Cost-of-Living Council is to meet tomorrow.

15. Swedes have one of the lowest take-home pay envelopes in the Western world.

Exercise 5. Translate the following sentences paying attention to the translation of causative constructions. Explain and comment your choice

11. “It is clear that Arab leaders are prepared to listen to us and are prepared to have us play the role of peacemakers,”said a ministry spokesman.

12. The country will judge the President on the speed with which he can get the miners working again.

13. To have your phone tapped in Rome today has become a matter of prestige.

14. Washington is trying diplomatically to get Moscow to cancelthe nuclear deal with Iran.

15. On arms, the President once again promised to try to get Parliament to ratify the nuclear weapons treaty.

16. So much will depend not merely on the taxes the President will propose or the sacrifices he will ask when he finally presents his energy program in the next few days, but on how he can appeal to the better instincts of the nation, and get the non-governmental organizations of the country to go with him.

17. In the past Labour party conferences passed progressive resolutions, only to have them completely ignored by the leadership of the Parliamentary Labour.

18. There was anxiety that one side or the other would be hustled into rash decisions without consultations either with the other or with its allies.

19. Congress can get the President to reconsider his position.

20. Senior government officers claim that they have their enemy squeezed into five or six major concentrations, most of them near the border in the South.

Exercise 6. Translate the following sentences paying attention to the translation of emphatic constructions. Explain and comment your choice

1. The whole cost of government did impose a heavy burden upon the taxpayers.

2. It is the refusal of German banks to invest at home that is the heart of the problem.

3.It was here, in Baden-Baden, that Dostoevsky lost the money he got from pawning his wife’s jewelry.

4.It was not until the president began talking about rationing gasoline that the people began to wake up.

5.At no time was the President aware of what was happening.

6.Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few (W.Churchill).

7 Impatient as Americans sometimes become with Europe, very few Americans would like to live in a world where Europe was not faring well.

8. Not only was it a financial matter but a question whether the US had too many troops in Europe.

9. Whoever he picks for the government, the new Ukranian president and his team need to prove to 44% of voters in the southern and eastern regions that they do not intend to humiliate the East and South sulturally and ruin them economically.

10. Now arising is the question not how to define happiness and measure it, but how to experience it.

Exercise 7. Translate sentences with Emphatic do:

1. These molecules are too small to be seen, even with the microscope, but strong experimental evidence seems to show that they do exist.

2. The formation of ozone during the electrolysis of water does not change the weight of the gas collected at the positive pole but it does decrease the volume.

3. We were discussing so far what happens to a body when forces do not act on it. Let us now consider what happens when forces do act on it.

4. Though some substances (e. g. sand) seem to be very nearly insoluble, water does dissolve most things to some extent.

Exercise 8. Translate the sentences paying attention to the functions of the verb “do”

This field does not affect the forward motion of the electrons but does act upon the transverse motion.

1. Not all metals react with acids, and when they do the gas evolved is not always hydrogen.

2. Gold usually occurs in the natural state while iron does not.

4. The individual electrons do not move even approximately independent of the another as do, for example, the planets in the solar system.

5. Copper does not combine with oxygen when cold, but it does do so slowly when heated.

6. The beta-rays which do pass through the aluminium do not ionize the gas as profusely as do the alpha-rays.

7. Most authorities agree that catalysts do in some manner combine with the substance or substances upon which their catalytic influence is exerted.

Exercise 9. Translate the sentences and point out the inversion:

1. Nowhere can we see such rapid progress as in radio engineering.

2. Not only does chlorine unite with gaseous hydrogen, but it will sometimes take hydrogen from other elements.

3. Only upon the adsorption of larger amounts was the sensitivity again lowered.

4. No sooner has the current started running in one direction than back it comes again.

5. Of great significance, however, is the fact that a few of particles are deflected through large angles.

6. Perhaps never was the making of an important invention shared by so many persons distributed so widely over the world.

Translate the sentences and single out the predicate:

7. Correlative with the conception of a system of planes is that of a system of great circles.

8. Surrounding this nucleus are electrons, the actual number depending upon the atom being considered.

9. Included in this table are currents calculated on the supposition that the entire effect is due to ionization by collision of negative ions only.

10. Belonging to this class are all elastomeric substances.

Translate the sentences. Single out conjunctions so, neither,

11. Lever J moves upwards, so does lever M.

12. Carbon dioxide does not burn, nor does it support combustion.

13. The Moon having no atmosphere, there can be no wind, neither can there be any noise, for sound is carried by the air.

14. It is incorrect to say that an element is that which cannot be broken up into anything simpler. Nor can the electron be regarded as a chemical element.

15. The ancients had no knowledge of stellar distances, neither was there then any means by which they could determine them.

Exercise 10. Translate the sentences paying attention to concessive sentences:

1. Important as this question is in itself, the debate on the subject went far beyond its original bounds.

2. Strange as it may seem, sulphur dioxide may act as a reducing agent or as an oxidizing agent.

3. Small though it is, the proportion of natural plutonium is apparently greater than it can be thus accounted for.

4. Enormous as this prodigious flow of energy is, we do not know the manner of its coming.

5. Whatever these consideration may appear at first glance they are of great practical importance.

6. Wherever "a craze intersects the surface perturbation or discontinuity results.

7. Whoever the author may have been he should have dwelt on this problem.

Exercise 11. Double negation:

1. Mars and Venus have atmospheres not dissimilar to ours.

2. River and lake deposits also not uncommonly contain remains of organisms which inhabited waters.

3. It seems not at all unlikely that many of the lower animal forms also have the power to make a similar distinction.

4. The advances of modern sciences in the production of a wide range of experimental temperatures are thus seen to be not inconsiderable.

Exercise 12. Translate the following sentences and single out emphatic collocations: it is... that (who, which) и it is not until... that:

1. It is these special properties of sound that are the subject of the present chapter.

2. It was the Dutch physicist, Christian Huygens, who first offered an explanation for the phenomena.

3. It was not until about 1911 that a first really successful theory of atomic structure was suggested by Rutherford.

4. It was not until Einstein discovered the connection between gravitation and inertia that the mystery Newton could not understand was solved.

5. Radioactive phenomena occur within the nucleus, and it is here that mass and positive charge resides.

6. A solenoid carrying a current behaves just like a magnet. It was the great French physicist Ampere who first showed this to be the case.

7. It is just energy which the atom thus yields up that is held to account for the radiation.

Exercise 13. Translate sentences and define the emphasis:

I

1. Not only did the newly discovered electron provide an entity which was assumed to be a constituent of all atoms, but it also provided a natural unit of electric charge.

2. Positrons have only a short period of existence after their formation. It is for this reason that the positive electron had proved so difficult to detect.

3. Incomplete though these figures are, they give more information in several respects than has before been available.

4. Satisfactory as this theory may be in many respects it is far from being probable.

5. Not all substances separate from solution in the crys­talline state: for instance, wax dissolves in petrol, but on evaporating the solvent we do not get crystals of wax, nor is glass crystalline.

6. It can only have been the close chemical similarity ofcirconium and hafnium which prevented the isolation of the latter by chemical means at a much earlier date.

7. Inserted in the circuit thus created is an instrument, called a galvanometer, diagrammed as a circle with an arrow that will indicate the passage of electric current through it and the two wires.

8. In short, it is practically impossible to design a machine so specialized that it will have value only with respect to the field of application originally intended. Nor is there any computer which is superior to any other computer with respect to every problem.

II

9. It is from experiments on solubility of gases in liquids that Dalton appears first to have derived direct evidence in favour of this view.

10. The particles of water grow larger as condensation continues and ultimately become rain drops. Not until then do they fall earthward with an appreciable velocity.

11. So slight are the differences between the members of division A and В in the Periodic Table that the division into subgroups is scarcely necessary except for convenience.

12. The value of this mass would not be affected by any systematic error common to all the observations not even by such an error which varied uniformly with the time. Nor would small errors in the adopted elements of the sun have any effect upon result.

13. At first it is only the molecules which terminate the longer paths that are ionized by collisions.

14. As the flux oscillates across the pole faces, so also does the neutral commulating zone oscillate.

15. Prominent among the confirmations of Einstein's hypothesis is the work related to the "photoelectric effect".

16. The "quant" theory, useful as it has proved itself does not yet possess the assured position of the atomic theory of matter.

17. Not until after the humanistic movement revived the study of Greek in Western Europe did Greek words begin to enter the English vocabulary in great quantity.

18. The values so estimated were not so high as we now know them to be, nor were they always accepted, but recognition of the polymeric nature of proteins is as old as the peptide theory.

19. Whatever this cause, or causes, the symptoms are the following.

Ill

20. Not only are perfect crystals an unattainable ideal, but they would be completely useless for most research studies.

21. It was Thales who taught the Greek sailors to steer their ships by the Pole Star.

22. Indeed, it is not unusual to find evidence of partial melting of the lead bullet on extracting it from the block, especially if the latter be of rather hard and resistant wood.

23. Thus it is known that birds do not keep direction by orientating themselves in the earth's magnetic field, neither apparently, does memorizing the route play an essential part.

Exercise 14. Study the expressions with Antonymic correspondences:

не быть обнаруженным to escape detection

не внушать доверия to be suspect

не выходить запределы to stay within; to be contained within the confines of

не допускать загрязнения to keep dirt out; to keep smth. freeof dirt

не иметь себе равных to be second to none

не находиться в эксплуатацииto be out of commission

не отставать от to keep pace with

не позволять добиться большого to leave less room for improvement улучшения

не превышать to be less than

не представлять труда to be straightforward

не придавать значения to overlook

не принимать всерьез to take lightly

не соглашаться с to take issue with

не содержать to be free of

не требовать пояснения to be self-explanatory

не требовать разъяснений to require little comment

не уступать to be as good as

не являться to be other than

«Условные антонимические соответствия» существуют не только для русских глаголов, но и для других частей речи — прилагательных, причастий, местоимений, наречий:

небольшой small, minor, tight (о зазоре),

limited (о количестве),

mild (о степени выраженности)

недопустимый prohibitive

невооруженный глаз naked eye

нерасчетный off-design

не лежащий на диагонали off-diagonal

не требующий большого обслуживания lowmaintenance[design]

не содержащий окислов oxide-free[coating]

не такой, какой хотелось бы иметь less than desired

небольшими ступенями incrementally

неблагоприятно влиять to adversely affect; to be detrimental to

недостаточно хорошо определен is ill defined

Exercise 15.

Translate the following sentences paying attention to Attributive –Prepositive constructions: 1. With their pay rise banned by the Government, the men have refused to co­operate with their employers in productivity measures to which the rise was linked. 2. It was decided, with only five against, that if an inspection committee again looked into the trouble there would be a resumption of work in the morning. 3. The present dispute at Doncaster follows a protest walkout of 260 on the night shift against the action of four men in breaking an overtime ban in operation at the plant. 4. But strongest of all the arguments is the huge profits the car owners have been making over the years. It is one of the ironies of the situation that just as their payrolls fall and their car outputs go down, all the companies are reporting record profits made for the past year. 5. The machine is an electronic computer which does the job in a fraction of the time taken by dozens of the speediest wage clerks. 6. But what is meant by this is not always clear. Does it mean the necessity to fight redundancy dismissals, pit closures, rail closures'? 7. The principle of collective cabinet responsibility has been dealt a heavy blow, and senior ministers have forfeited the respect not only of the public and their professional advisers, but also of foreign statesmen. 8. It was a sudden wind change that sent the first black waves lapping over dozens of holiday beaches and oyster beds, bringing destruction which will cost millions of francs. 9. Home Office spokesman said yesterday that their policy was not to disclose any information about a taxpayer or his affairs without his prior consent. 10. His April Budget increases formed a very large part in the retail price in­dex increase during that month. 11. The Treasurer introduced a Bill to implement the Government's plan to give preferential taxation treatment to life insurance companies. 12. In the past few years coordination agencies have been created by the Gov­ernment to include a Foreign Exchange Committee and an Internal Finance Committee; and the Central Bank and the Ministries of Finance, Commerce and State Enterprises exert some influence in this sphere. 13. The three U. N. men will have a meeting with the Foreign Secretary at his official- Foreign Office country house in Buckinghamshire. On Monday he flies off to Washington for a SEATO Ministers meeting, but the U. N. mission is expected to remain in London until Tuesday. 14. A week of county council election opened in England and Wales yester­day when Monmouthshire and Norfolk went to the polls. 15. Public support for the railway strike decision is growing. This is shown in an opinion poll published in yesterday's Mail. 16. The protest is against National Coal Board redundancy notices to 140 miners, mainly young men of under 21, which take effect today. 17. The new way is to form an association of monopoly capitalist states which are industrially powerful in order collectively to exploit the underdeveloped and raw material production countries of the world. 18. Reflecting on last week's disastrous local election results most Labour MPs have at last realized that their Prime Minister's home and foreign policies are vote-losers. 19. The World Peace Council has always sought to keep the door open between the opposing sides in our divided world because peace in this nuclear age demands coexistence as the condition of survival. 20. The Hiroshima-Nagasaki World Peace Conference expressed full support for the Australian Conference for International Cooperation and Disarmament. 21. Only one-quarter of the world's synoptic surface weather observation posts are below the Equator. 22. The initiators of the Moscow World Youth Solidarity Forum had the support of democratic youth and student organizations throughout the world. 23. Communist Councillor S. K. yesterday made a stinging criticism of the Tory-controlled Greater London Council's so-called 'plan' for the capital. 24. Even if this proposal were acted upon, and it is now evident that the President has disavowed it, the fundamental guns-instead-of-butter nature of the economy would in no way be altered. 25. Japan yesterday formally requested a review of the provision in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) under which 14 member states can refrain from granting most-favoured-nation treatment to another member. 26. Representatives of 122 Governments arrived in Geneva at the weekend to attend the "little General Assembly". This is the name given here to the three-month United Nations World Trade and Development Conference which opens today. 27. This is precisely the situation the Geneva Agreement sought to avoid, when it included provision for a six-mile demilitarized zone between North and South. 28. Now the Civil Rights Commission, in two days of open hearings, has turned the spotlight on the near-ghetto conditions in which native Negroes live in the only major city in the country where they are in a majority. 29. Three Black Arrow three-stage satellite launchers have been ordered from Westland Aircraft by the Ministry of Technology. 30. The Minister of Labor is considering this weekend whether there is any action he can take in the 16-week-old dispute at the American-owned Roberts-Arundel factory. 31. If you thought that this latest increase in the index — which, by the way does not reflect at all the Government-imposed postal charge increases — would justify a bigger wage increase, you are mistaken. 32. Several magistrates are staying away from the civic luncheon being given by the Labor-controlled city magistrates. 33. Paradoxically, the poll returns mean that he will be able to go ahead with his plan to introduce a pay-as-you-earn income tax scheme, which had been the main issue of the elections. 34. The three-man U. N. mission leaves London today after four days of talks with the British Government. The mission yesterday described the London talks as "useful" 35. To the original time-table for several days for wide-ranging discussions between the President and the British Prime Minister in Washington next week, the news from Laos last Saturday suddenly prefixed a three-hour war-and-peace conference in Florida. 36. "However, the of-necessity-somewhat hypocritical nature of a number of our findings and their dependence on certain political, biological and technical assumptions is a feature they share with many contemporary planning schemes," he said.