Their reasoning was practical. For the philosopher David Hume, humanity was the right subject for philosophy because we can examine human behavior and so find real evidence of how people think and feel. And from that we can make judgments about the societies we live in and make concrete suggestions about how they can be improved, for universal benefit.
Hume was not a scientist himself, but his enquiry into the nature of knowledge laid the foundations for the scientific method - the pursuit of truth through experiment. His friend and fellow resident of Edinburgh, Adam Smith, famously applied the study of mankind to the ways in which mankind does business. Trade, he argued, was a form of information. Money is the way in which people tell each other what they want, and how much people pay is the best way we have of knowing how much somebody wants something. In pursuing our own interests through trading in markets, we all come to benefit each other.
Smith's idea of \self-interest\has come to dominate支配占优势modem views of economics. It also has wider applications. He was one of the first major philosophers to point out that nations can become rich, free and powerful more efficiently through peace, trade and invention than by means of war and plunder.
The original Scottish Enlightenment is thought to have ended with the lives of Smith, Hume and the other thinkers who .lived in Scotland at that time. But a wider Scottish Enlightenment can still be seen. It exists in the way that the ideas evolved逐步形成 at that time still underpin支撑our theories. It also exists in Scotland itself in an educational tradition that combines academic理论的excellence with practical orientation适应，定位，情况介绍，信仰，倾向.
The Institute for System Level Integration (ISLI) is a good example. Founded in 1998 by a group of four Scottish universities, ISLI draws on the academic expertise of the university departments of computer science, electronic and electrical engineering and informatics, But though it works at the cutting edge1 of science, ISLI's ultimate根本aims are rooted in the needs of the real world2: to produce highly skilled design engineers and researchers to meet the needs of the rapidly changing global semiconductor industry.
Though only one amongst many educational institutions in Scotland, ISLI's existence shows that the principles原则，原理of the Scottish Enlightenment still live on. It’s a country that's still inventing, still modernizing, and still doing its best to spread enlightenment
练习：
1. Scotland is thought to have made important contributions to the civilization of
the Western world because of
A) the great thinkers who were born there.
B) the methods introduced by its distinguished使显著 scholars学者. C) the first-class education it provides.
D) the ideas proposed计划，向 ... 提议by some famous thinkers and intellectuals.
2. Which of the following is the ultimate根本的aim of Hume's humanity-oriented studies?
A) To observe and investigate human behavior.
B) To find ways to improve human society as a whole.
C) To find out how people think and feel. D) To judge the societies humans live in
3. Smith's idea of \启蒙self-interest\ A) the pursuit of personal interest. B) the prosperity繁荣of all nations.
C) the improvement of international trade. D) the study of economics only.
4. Which of the following statements is true of the Scottish Enlightenment? A) It ended with the death of such thinkers as Hume and Adam Smith. B) It is embodied包含，代表 only in the way Scottish universities are run. C) Its influence is found only in economics. D) It is still alive in a broad sense.
5. The Institute for System Level Integration is used as an example to illustrate A) the practical orientation适应定位，情况介绍of Scottish higher education. B) the tradition of Scottish higher education.
C) Smith's application of Hume's philosophical ideas to economies. D) the high level of education Scottish universities have attained.
第四十九篇 The Beginning of American Literature文学
American has always been a land of beginnings. After Europeans‘discovered' America in the fifteenth century, the mysterious New World became for many people a genuine真正的，名副其实的hope of a new life, an escape from poverty贫穷,贫困and persecution迫害;困扰, a chance to start again. We can say that, as nation, America begins with that hope. When, however, does American literature begin? American literature begins with American experiences. Long before the first
colonists殖民地居民arrived, before Christopher Columbus1, before the Northmen who 'found' America about the year 1,000, Native Americans lived here. Each tribe's literature was tightly woven into the fabric of daily life and reflected the unmistakably American experience of lining with the land2. Another kind of experience, one filled with fear and excitement, found its expression in the reports that Columbus and other explorers sent home in Spain, French and English. In addition, the journals of the people who lived and died in the New England wilderness3 tell unforgettable tales of hard and sometimes heartbreaking experiences of those early years.
Experience, then, is the key to early American literature. The New World provided a great variety of experiences, and these experiences demanded a wide variety of expressions by an even wider variety of early American writers. These writers included John Smith, who spent only two-and-a-half years on the American continent. They included Jonathan Edwards and William Byrd, who thought of themselves as British subjects主题;题目, never suspecting怀疑 a revolution革命,革命运动that would create a United States of America with a literature of its own. American Indians, explorers,Puritan ministers, frontier边远地区wives, plantation owner - they are all the creators of the first American literature.
练习：
1. What does 'that hope' in the first paragraph refer to? A) The hope that America would be discovered. B) The hope to start a new life.
C) The hope to see the mysteries of the New World. D) The hope to find poverty here. 2. When did American literature begin?
A) Before the American natives lived there.
B) When Columbus and other explorers sent reports back home C) When the Northmen found America in about 1,000. D) Long before the year 1,000.
3. What can we learn from the literature of the tribes宗族，部落 of the native Americans?
A) About the everyday life of the native Americans. B) About the arrival of Columbus.
C) About the experience of the first European settlers.
D) About the experience of those who died in the New England wilderness. 4. The main purpose of the last paragraph is to tell the readers that
A) in the early days most American writers were from Great Britain. B) people with rich life experiences became writers.
C) there were many writers in the early days of American history.
D) early-day experience provided the foundation for American literature
5. According to the last paragraph, which of the following statements is true about American literature? ~
A) Some British writers started American literature.
B) Early-day American literature is a reflection of the boring life then. C) Some British writers had doubts about the future of American literature. D) Some British writers had great confidence信心in the future of American literature.
第五十篇Older Volcanic Eruptions爆发i'r?p??n v?l'k?nik
Volcanoes were more destructive in ancient history, not because they were bigger, but because the carbon dioxide they released wiped out life with greater ease.
Paul Wignall from the University of Leeds was investigating the link between volcanic eruptions and mass extinctions大规模灭绝的. Not all volcanic eruptions killed off large numbers of animals, but all the mass extinctions over the past 300 million years coincided一致，符合 with huge formations of volcanic rock. To his surprise, the older the massive volcanic eruptions were, the more damage they seemed to do. He calculated the \the proportion of life they killed off with the volume of lava that they produced. He found that size for size, older eruptions were at least 10 times as effective at wiping out life as their more recent rivals.
The Permian extinction, for example, which happened 250 million years ago, is marked by floods of volcanic rock in Siberia that cover an area roughly the size of western Europe. Those volcanoes are thought to have pumped out about 10 gigatonnes of carbon as carbon dioxide. The global warming that followed wiped out 80 per cent of all marine genera at the time, and it took 5 million years for the planet to recover. Yet 60 million years ago, there was another huge amount of volcanic activity and global warming but no mass extinction. Some animals did disappear but things returned to normal within ten thousands of years. \have an effect at all,\dinosaurs 65 million years ago, because many scientists believe it was primarily
caused by the impact of an asteroid. He thinks that older volcanoes had more killing power because more recent life forms were better adapted to dealing with increased levels of CO2.
Vincent Courtillot, director of the Paris Geophysical. Institute in France, says that Wignall‘s idea is provocative. But he says it is incredibly hard to do these sorts of calculations. He points out that the killing power of volcanic eruptions depends on how long they lasted. And it is impossible to tell whether the huge blasts lasted for thousands or millions of years. He also adds that it is difficult to estimate how much lava prehistoric volcanoes produced, and that lava volume may not necessarily correspond to carbon dioxide emissions.
词汇：
dioxide n. 二氧化物 lava n. 熔岩
Permian adj. 二叠纪 gigaton n. 十亿吨梯恩梯 genera n. 种类 dinosaurs n. 恐龙 asteroid n. 小行星
注释：
The Permian extinction 二叠纪物种灭绝
练习：
1. Why did older volcanic eruptions do more damage than more recent ones? A) Because they killed off life more easily. B) Because they were brighter. C) Because they were larger. D) Because they were hotter.
2. How did Wignall calculate the killing power of those older volcanic eruptions?
A) By estimating how long they lasted. B) By counting the dinosaurs they killed.
C) By studying the chemical composition of lava.
D) By comparing the proportion of life wiped out with the volume of lava produced.