Exercise III. Read the following text and comment on it to show how far you agree or disagree with the author.

There are exactly as many ways of approaching the scientif­ic world as there are individuals in science; it is only because the results are expressed in the same language, are subject to the same control, that science seems to be more uniform than, say, original literature. In effect, in the end, it is more uniform; but if we could follow the process of a scientific thought through many minds, as it actually happens and not as it is convention­ally expressed after the event, we should see every conceivable variety of mental texture.

These varieties seemed to me to fall into two main types, perhaps this was a shape I imposed for myself and corresponds to nothing real; but they are types observed often enough be­fore in human affairs and I still believe that they are not en­tirely artificial. Applying them to scientific thinking, I should call the first the problem-solving type; minds which choose out of all the world round them a certain piece of experience and drive through it to an explanation. The probing, analytical, pragmatic minds, which at their best can reach the heights of Rutherford and Darwin. In everyday affairs it is probably the commoner type of mind, and so the performances of its high­est exponents seem familiar and easy to most of us, they are of the same nature as our own: which means that we underesti­mate them unduly, on the principle that what is not mysteri­ous cannot be profoundly admirable.

The second type, the abstracting mind. Gets perhaps more than its share of admiration, just because it is difficult for most of us to argue with, speaking as it does a different mental lan­guage from their own. These minds do not drive through a por­tion of experience; they wait for experience to make itself into shapes in their minds, they assimilate, correlate, find resem­blances in different things, differences in similar things. At their best, in Faraday, Einstein, they are great generalizes; at their worst they are infinitely fantastic and removed from all reality.

Exercise IV. Characterize any scientist, or scholar you know according to the types suggested by the author in the text given above. Use the following vocabulary:

a capacity for (detailed) scientific analysis / criticism; to have a scrupulous / tidy / analytical mind; to be out of one's reach; to have insight / imagination / drive, etc.; to envy somebody for the precision / rapidity / elegance of one's experiments; one's subtle / fertile mind; to be quickly / bright / slow, etc.; to be full of facts / speculations / ideas, etc.; to overflow with a sort of scientific wit; to be getting the name of a promising young scientist / scholar; to be a born scientist / scholar; to rush into work; to tackle / to solve the problem; to strike / to keep up to a useful line of one's own; there came a sudden flash of an idea; long routines; spurred by the success; to develop / to use a method of...; to have all the techniques / to lack the tech­nique; to generalize, etc.

Exercise V. Here is a difficult question for you to answer: Why do men take up science? Before considering it read the following meditations of C. P. Snow on this subject. How far do you agree with the author? Make use of the vocabulary given below:

One can do science because one believes that practically and effectively it benefits the world. A great many scientists have had this as their chief conscious reason. One can do science because it represents the truth. One selected one's data — set one's puzzle for oneself, as it were — and in the end solved the puz­zle by showing how they fitted other data of the same kind. It is rather as though one was avidly interested in all the country­side between this town and the next: one goes in for science for an answer, and is given a road between the two. One can also do science because one enjoys it. Many people like unravelling puzzles. Scientific puzzles are very good ones, with reasonable prizes. So that either without examining the functions of sci­ence, being indifferent to them or taking them for granted, a number of men go in for research as they would for law; living by it, obeying its rules, and thoroughly enjoying the problem-solving process. This is a perfectly valid pleasure, among them you can find some of the most effective of scientists. Nowadays I should allow more for accident; many men become scientists because it happens to be convenient and they may as well do it as anything else. But the real urgent drives remain.

Use the vocabulary:

to do science; to benefit the world / one'snation (to be a benefit for the world/ nation); to represent the truth; to like unravelling / solving puzzles; to go in for / to takeup research; to enjoy a problem-solving process; to be devoted to science; to be a devoted scientist; to gain enjoyment from research; to enjoy science;to examine the functions of science; to take something for granted; to have abelief in scientific values; one's dedicated search for scientific truth, etc.

Exercise VI. Read and discuss the text:

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