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2019年12月英语六级阅读真题预测：科学先驱

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英语六级阅读真题预测：科学先驱

A Pioneering Woman of Science Re-Emergesafter 300 Years

A) Maria Sibylla Merian, like many European womenof the 17th century, stayed busy managing ahousehold and rearing children. But on top of that, Merian, a German-born woman who lived in theNetherlands, also managed a successful career as anartist, botanist, naturalist and entomologist (昆虫学家).

B) "She was a scientist on the level with a lot of people we spend a lot of time talking about," said Kay Etheridge, a biologist at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania who has been studyingthe scientific history of Merian's work. "She didn't do as much to change biology as CharlesDarwin, but she was significant. "

C) At a time when natural history was a valuable tool for discovery, Merian discovered factsabout plants and insects that were not previously known. Her observations helped dismissthe popular belief that insects spontaneously emerged from mud. The knowledge shecollected over decades didn't just satisfy those curious about nature, but also providedvaluable insights into medicine and science. She was the first to bring together insects andtheir habitats, including food they ate, into a single ecological composition.

D) After years of pleasing a fascinated audience across Europe with books of detaileddescriptions and life-size paintings of familiar insects, in 1699 she sailed with her daughternearly 5, 000 miles from the Netherlands to South America to study insects in the jungles ofwhat is now known as Suriname. She was 52 years old. The result was her masterpiece, Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium.

E) In her work, she revealed a side of nature so exotic, dramatic and valuable to Europeansof the time that she received much acclaim. But a century later, her findings came underscientific criticism. Shoddy(粗糙的)reproductions of her work along with setbacks to women'sroles in 18th- and 19th- century Europe resulted in her efforts being largely forgotten. "It waskind of stunning when she sort of dropped off into oblivion(遗忘)," said Dr. Etheridge. "Victorians started putting women in a box, and they're still trying to crawl out of it."

F) Today, the pioneering woman of the sciences has re-emerged. In recent years, feminists，historians and artists have all praised Merian's tenacity(坚韧), talent and inspirationalartistic compositions. And now biologists like Dr. Etheridge are digging into the scientific textsthat accompanied her art. Three hundred years after her death, Merian will be celebrated atan international symposium in Amsterdam this June.

G) And last month, Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium was republished. It contains 60 plates (插图)and original descriptions, along with stories about Merian's life and updatedscientific descriptions. Before writing Metamorphosis, Merian spent decades documentingEuropean plants and insects that she published in a series of books. She began in her 20s, making textless, decorative paintings of flowers with insects. "Then she got really serious," Dr. Etheridge said. Merian started raising insects at home, mostly butterflies and caterpillars. "Shewould sit up all night until they came out of the pupa (桶)so she could draw them," she said.

H) The results of her decades' worth of careful observations were detailed paintings anddescriptions of European insects, followed by unconventional visuals and stories of insectsand animals from a land that most at the time could only imagine. It's possible Merian used amagnifying glass to capture the detail of the split tongues of sphinx moths (斯芬克斯飞蛾)depicted in the painting. She wrote that the two tongues combine to form one tube fordrinking nectar (花蜜). Some criticized this detail later, saying there was just one tongue, butMerian wasn't wrong. She may have observed the adult moth just as it emerged from its pupa. For a brief moment during that stage of its life cycle, the tongue consists of two tiny half-tubesbefore merging into one.

I) It may not have been ladylike to depict a giant spider devouring a hummingbird, but whenMerian did it at the turn of the 18th century, surprisingly, nobody objected. Dr. Etheridge calledit revolutionary. The image, which also contained novel descriptions of ants, fascinated aEuropean audience that was more concerned with the exotic story unfolding before them thanthe gender of the person who painted it.

J) "All of these things shook up their nice, neat little view," Dr. Etheridge said. But later, peopleof the Victorian era thought differently. Her work had been reproduced, sometimes incorrectly. A few observations were deemed impossible. "She'd been called a silly woman for saying thata spider could eat a bird," Dr. Etheridge said. But Henry Walter Bates, a friend of CharlesDarwin, observed it and put it in book in 1863, proving Merian was correct.

K) In the same plate, Merian depicted and described leaf-cutter ants for the first time. "InAmerica there are large ants which can eat whole trees bare as a broom handle in a singlenight, she wrote in the description. Merian noted how the ants took the leaves below groundto their young. And she wouldn't have known this at the time, but the ants use the leaves tofarm fungi (菌类)underground to feed their developing babies.

L) Merian was correct about the giant bird-eating spiders, ants building bridges with theirbodies and other details. But in the same drawing, she incorrectly lumped together army andleaf-cutter ants. And instead of showing just the typical pair of eggs in a hummingbird nest, she painted four. She made other mistakes in Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium aswell: not every caterpillar and butterfly matched.

M) Perhaps one explanation for her mistakes is that she cut short her Suriname trip aftergetting sick, and completed the book at home in Amsterdam. And errors are common amongsome of history's most- celebrated scientific minds, too. "These errors no more invalidate Ms. Merian's work than do well- known misconceptions published by Charles Darwin or IsaacNewton, " Dr. Etheridge wrote in a paper that argued that too many have wrongly focused onthe mistakes of her work.

N) Merian's paintings inspired artists and ecologists. In an 1801 drawing from his book, General Zoology Amphibia, George Shaw, an English botanist and zoologist, credited Merian fordescribing a frog in the account of her South American expedition, and named the young treefrog after her in his portrayal of it. It wouldn't be fair to give Merian all the credit. Shereceived assistance naming plants, making sketches and referencing the work of others. Herdaughters helped her color her drawings.

O) Merian also made note of the help she received from the natives of Suriname, as well asslaves or servants that assisted her. In some instances she wrote moving passages thatincluded her helpers in descriptions. As she wrote in her description of the peacock flower, "The Indians, who are not treated well by their Dutch masters, use the seeds to abort theirchildren, so that they will not become slaves like themselves. The black slaves from Guinea andAngola have demanded to be well treated, threatening to refuse to have children. In fact, they sometimes take their own lives because they are treated so badly, and because theybelieve they will be born again, free and living in their own land. They told me this themselves. "

P) Londa Schiebinger, a professor of the history of science at Stanford University, called thispassage rather astonishing. It's particularly striking centuries later when these issues are stillprominent in public discussions about social justice and women's rights. "She was ahead ofher time," Dr. Etheridge said.

36. Merian was the first scientist to study a type of American ant.

37. The European audience was more interested in Merian's drawings than her gender.

38. Merian's masterpiece came under attack a century after its publication.

39. Merian's mistakes in her drawings may be attributed to her shortened stay in SouthAmerica.

40. Merian often sat up the whole night through to observe and draw insects.

41. Merian acknowledged the help she got from natives of South America.

42. Merian contributed greatly to people's better understanding of medicine and science.

43. Merian occasionally made mistakes in her drawings of insects and birds.

44. Now, Merian's role as a female forerunner in sciences has been re-established.

45. Merian made a long voyage to South America to study jungle insects over three centuriesago.

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