Часть II

Общенаучные тексты для дополнительного чтения

From the history of the origin of science

Science had its origin in some distant era when people began to show desire to know about their environment and to record what they saw. In time, studies of these observations led to the idea that nature is knowable, that it operates according to "laws".

The actual birth of science took place in prehistoric times, pro­bably in Egypt and Babilonia, more than 2,000 years before our era.

But true progress in science did not begin until about the sixth century before our era, when the Greek civilisation began to flourish. The next 500 years was the age of the great philosophers of anti­quity — Thales, Pythagorus, Aristotle, Archimedes, and others.

Archimedes discovered some of the basic laws governing me­chanisms and floating bodies. To Archimedes we owe the first ap­plication of mathematics to the description of nature. He was very far in advance of his time.

In the period from the Greeks to the Renaissance few contribu­tions were made to the development of science. First in importance among the scientific achievements of the Renaissance was the idea that the sun, rather than the earth, is the centre of our system of sun, moon, and planets. At the beginning of the sixteenth century the prevailing idea was that of an earth-centred universe, as de­scribed by Ptolomy.

The Polish astronomer N. Copernicus assumed that the earth is merely one of the planets and that all of them moved about the sun. It is hard now to understand the courage required to advance an idea of this nature because of the great wave of opposition which .confronted Copernicus.

COMMENTARY

did not begin until about the sixth century начался приблизительно только в шестом столетии

far in advance значительно опередил

Rather than the earth а не земля

to advance an idea of this nature выдвинуть подобную мысль

because of вследствие, из за

A lesson in the history of little things

Until the beginning of the seventeenth century mankind had little understanding of the structure of the material world. Man believed that stones were stones, fire was fire, and water was simply water. Now we know that all kinds of substances consist of very small invisible particles — atoms. They make up all the elements and com­pounds that exist in the world, the air that man breathes, the ground on which he walks, man's food. Their interactions provide the energy that man uses.

In this connection, the question at once arises what are atoms like? The determination of the exact nature of nature was a very difficult and interesting problem. For a hundred years some of the best men of science on earth thought of it, and today many scientists do a lot of research.

The word atom came from the Greek and means "indivisible". The ancient Greeks studied the structure of matter and noted that it is possible to divide and further subdivide a stone until the par­ticles become like powder, which they thought was the limit of divi­sibility. The same was true for other common substances, such as wood or -water or minerals. They called .these smallest panicles atoms. But since the Greeks were philosophers arid not experimenters, they had no real-understanding and knowledge of the true structure of matter.

It was at the beginning of the nineteenth century that the scien­tists first established experimentally the atomic theory of the struc­ture of matter. They found that the simple forms of matter were chemical elements which consisted of atoms —particles of very small size.

At the end of the nineteenth century scientists achieved a great quantity of information on the atomic structure of matter and the general nature of the atom. They discovered most of the chemical elements and found that the atoms of each element were different in chemical and physical properties from the properties of other ele­ments.

A further discovery was that the atoms combine in small num­bers and form units of matter or molecules and that in all substan­ces the atoms and molecules are in a state of rapid motion. Besides, some fundamental chemical characteristics became clear. One of these was that atoms group according to their atomic weights into eight groups the chemical properties of which are similar.

ПОЯСНЕНИЯ К ТЕКСТУ

have little understanding мало понимать

at once сразу, тотчас же

what are atoms like что представляют собой атомы

all kinds of substances всевозможные вещества

a great quantity of очень много

in this connection в связи с этим