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1、U5Additional lnformation for the Teachers ReferenceText Reflections on His Eightieth BirthdayWarm-up ActivitiesFurther ReadingWriting SkillsAdditional WorkWarm-up Activities1.Russell writes in one of his works,“Three passions,simple but overwhelmingly strong,have governed my life:the longing for lov
2、e,the search for knowledge,and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.”What are the passions that rule your life now?2.One of Russells famous quotes is,“The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.”Try to present your own understanding and explanation of this sentence.Is his
3、“good life”the same as yours?Warm-up 1.1 A stupid mans report of what a clever man says can never be accurate,because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion,for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.Everything is vagu
4、e to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt.I shouldnt wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy,not even mine.Warm-up 4.13.Study the following Bertrand Russell Quotations:I would never
5、die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts,he will scrutinize it closely,and unless the evidence is overwhelming,he will refuse to believe it.If,on the other hand,he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to h
6、is instincts,he will accept it even on the slightest evidence.If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others,we could have paradise in a few years.Warm-up 4.2Warm-up 4.3 In all affairs its a healthy thing n
7、ow and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice,and often the good suffer,and often the wicked prosper,and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying.It has been said that man is a rational
8、 animal.All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.It is a waste of energy to be angry with a man who behaves badly,just as it is to be angry with a car that wont go.Many people would sooner die than think;in fact,they do so.Warm-up 4.4 Mathematics,rightly viewed,possess
9、es not only truth,but supreme beauty a beauty cold and austere,like that of sculpture.Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth more than ruin more even than death.Thought is subversive and revolutionary,destructive and terrible,thought is merciless to privilege,established institutions,an
10、d comfortable habit.Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid.Thought is great and swift and free,the light of the world,and the chief glory of man.No one gossips about other peoples secret virtues.Warm-up 4.5 Passive acceptance of the teachers wisdom is easy to most boys and girls.It inv
11、olves no effort of independent thought,and seems rational because the teacher knows more than his pupils;it is moreover the way to win the favour of the teacher unless he is a very exceptional man.Yet the habit of passive acceptance is a disastrous one in later life.It causes man to seek and to acce
12、pt a leader,and to accept as a leader whoever is established in that position.Science may set limits to knowledge,but should not set limits to imagination.So far as I can remember,there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.The good life,as I conceive it,is a happy life.I do not m
13、ean that if you are good you will be happy I mean that if you are happy you will be good.The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.The main things which seem to me important on their own account,and not merely as means to other things,are knowle
14、dge,art,instinctive happiness,and relations of friendship or affection.The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.Warm-up 4.6 The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compen
15、sation in interfering with the pleasures of others.The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves,but wiser people so full of doubts.Warm-up 4.7 Bertrand Arthur William Russell(1872-1970),British philosopher,logician,essayist,and social critic,is best
16、 known for his work in mathematical logic and analytic philosophy.His most influential contributions include his defense of logicism,and his theories of definite descriptions and logical atomism.Along with G.E.Moore,Russell is generally recognized as one of the founders of analytical philosophy.He i
17、s also usually credited with being one of the two most important logicians of the 20th century,the other being Kurt Godel.Over the course of his long life spanning the 19th and 20thAIFTTR1.1Additional lnformation for the Teachers Reference1.Bertrand RussellAIFTTR1.2centuries,Russell made significant
18、 contributions,not just to philosophy,but to a wide range of other subjects as well.Many of his writings on a wide variety of topics,including education,ethics,politics,history,religion and popular science,have influenced generations of readers.After a life marked by controversy,including dismissals
19、 from both Trinity College,Cambridge,and City College,New York,Russell was awarded the Order of Merit in 1949 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950.Also noted for his many spirited antiwar and anti nuclear protests,Russell remained a prominent public figure until his death at the age of 97.In t
20、he autumn of 1920,after a short visit to Russia to study theAIFTTR1.3conditions of Bolshevism,Russell went to China for a course of lectures on philosophy at Peking University.Text Reflections on His Eightieth BirthdayNotesIntroduction to the Author and the ArticlePhrases and ExpressionsExercisesMai
21、n Idea of the Text Main Idea of the Text 1Main Idea of the Text Russell uses the occasion of his eightieth birthday to recall his dedication to mathematics and philosophy and summarize the failures and success he has experienced in his life.Having devoted half of his life to mathematics and logic,hi
22、s skepticism eventually leads him to the conclusion that there is no certainty in mathematics and much of what passes for mathematical knowledge is dubitable.Nonetheless,his strong interest in the logical basis of mathematics underpins a fascination with philosophy.At this point,his reflection moves
23、 well beyond the personal level,for he also shares his keen insight into the self imposed tortures that human beings suffer.He assumes thatMain Idea of the Text 2mens inadequate mastery of nature and hostility to their fellows are the causes of human miseries and follies past and present.He is a ver
24、y disappointed witness of the scourge 20th century wars both so shaking the faith of people who grew up during the widespread 19th century optimism.Nonetheless,he has always had a certain degree of optimism and argues that wisdom and patience will sooner or later lead the human race out of torture.H
25、e holds the firm conviction that social and political problems will eventually be solved through reforms in both institutions and character,which should be achieved by developing greater respect for diversity rather than by means of a dogmatic and precise gospel.Beneath all the load of horrors,he st
26、ill looks forward to a world of free and happy human beings.Bertrand Russell(1872-1970)was a British philosopher,mathematician and man of letters.He was born the grandson of Lord John Russell,who had twice served as Prime Minister under Queen Victoria.Following the death of his mother(in 1874)and of
27、 his father(in 1876),Russell and his brother went to live with their grandparents.Following the death of his grandfather(in 1878),Russell was raised by his grandmother,Lady Russell.Educated at first privately,and later at Trinity College,Cambridge,Russell obtained first class degrees both in mathema
28、tics and in the moral sciences.Introduction to the Author and the article 1Introduction to the Author and the Article Over a long and varied career,Bertrand Russell made ground breaking contributions to the foundations of mathematics and to the development of contemporary formal logic,as well as to
29、analytic philosophy.His chief works include The Principles of Mathematics(1903),Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy(1919),Education and Social Order(1932)and Inquiry into Meaning and Truth(1940).In 1950 he received Nobel Prize for Literature.In the following article,Russell recalls how he devote
30、d himself to mathematics and philosophy,what kind of success he achieved and what kind of failure,too,he experienced.Introduction to the Author and the article 2 The serious part of my life ever since boyhood has been devoted to two different objects which for a long time remained separate and have
31、only in recent years united into a single whole.I wanted,on the one hand,to find out whether anything could be known;and on the other hand,to do whatever might be possible toward creating a happier world.Up to the age of thirty-eight IPart2_T1Bertrand RussellReflections on His Eightieth BirthdayText
32、gave most of my energies to the first of these tasks.I was troubled by scepticism and unwillingly forced to the conclusion that most of what passes for knowledge is open to reasonable doubt.I wanted certainty in the kind of way in which people want religious faith.I thought that certainty is more li
33、kely to be found in mathematics than elsewhere.But I discovered that many mathematical demonstrations,which my teachers expected me to accept,were full of fallacies,and that,if certainty were indeed discoverable in mathematics,it would be in a new kind of mathematics,with more solid foundations than
34、 those that had hitherto been thought secure.But as the work proceeded,I was continually reminded of the fable about the elephant and the Part2_T2tortoise.Having constructed an elephant upon which the mathematical world could rest,I found the elephant tottering,and proceeded to construct a tortoise
35、to keep the elephant from falling.But the tortoise was no more secure than the elephant,and after some twenty years of very arduous toil,I came to the conclusion that there was nothing more that I could do in the way of making mathematical knowledge indubitable.Then came the First World War,and my t
36、houghts became concentrated on human misery and folly.Neither misery nor folly seems to me any part of the inevitable lot of man.And I am convinced that intelligence,patience,and eloquence can,sooner or later,lead the human race out of its self-imposed tortures provided it does not exterminate itsel
37、f meanwhile.Part2_T3 On the basis of this belief,I have had always a certain degree of optimism,although,as I have grown older,the optimism has grown more sober and the happy issue more distant.But I remain completely incapable of agreeing with those who accept fatalistically the view that man is bo
38、rn to trouble.The causes of unhappiness in the past and in the present are not difficult to ascertain.There have been poverty,pestilence,and famine,which were due to mans inadequate mastery of nature.There have been wars,oppressions and tortures which have been due to mens hostility to their fellow
39、men.And there have been morbid miseries fostered by gloomy creeds,which have led men into profound inner discords that made all outward prosperity of no avail.Part2_T4All these are unnecessary.In regard to all of them,means are known by which they can be overcome.In the modern world,if communities a
40、re unhappy,it is often because they have ignorances,habits,beliefs,and passions,which are dearer to them than happiness or even life.I find many men in our dangerous age who seem to be in love with misery and death,and who grow angry when hopes are suggested to them.They think hope is irrational and
41、 that,in sitting down to lazy despair,they are merely facing facts.I cannot agree with these men.To preserve hope in our world makes calls upon our intelligence and our energy.In those who despair it is frequently the energy that is lacking.Part2_T5 The last half of my life has been lived in one of
42、those painful epochs of human history during which the world is getting worse,and past victories which had seemed to be definitive have turned out to be only temporary.When I was young,Victorian optimism was taken for granted.It was thought that freedom and prosperity would spread gradually througho
43、ut the world by an orderly process,and it was hoped that cruelty,tyranny,and injustice would continually diminish.Hardly anyone was haunted by the fear of great wars.Hardly anyone thought of the nineteenth century as a brief interlude between past and future barbarism.For those who grew up in that a
44、tmosphere,adjustment to the world of the present has been difficult.It has been difficult not Part2_T6only emotionally but intellectually.Ideas that had been thought adequate have proved inadequate.In some directions valuable freedoms have proved very hard to preserve.In other directions,especially
45、as regards relations between nations,freedoms formerly valued have proved potent sources of disaster.New thoughts,new hopes,new freedoms,and new restrictions upon freedom are needed if the world is to emerge from its present perilous state.I cannot pretend that what I have done in regard to social a
46、nd political problems has had any great importance.It is comparatively easy to have an immense effect by means of a dogmatic and precise gospel.But for my part I cannot believe Part2_T7that what mankind needs is anything either precise or dogmatic.Nor can I believe with any wholeheartedness in any p
47、artial doctrine which deals only with some part or aspect of human life.There are those who hold that everything depends upon institutions,and that good institutions will inevitably bring the millennium.And,on the other hand,there are those who believe that what is needed is a change of heart,and th
48、at,in comparison,institutions are of little account.I cannot accept either view.Institutions mould character,and character transforms institutions.Reforms in both must march hand in Part2_T8hand.And if individuals are to retain that measure of initiative and flexibility which they ought to have,they
49、 must not be all forced into one rigid mould;or,to change the metaphor,all drilled into one army.Diversity is essential in spite of the fact that it precludes universal acceptance of a single gospel.But to preach such a doctrine is difficult especially in arduous times.And perhaps it cannot be effec
50、tive until some bitter lessons have been learned by tragic experience.My work is near its end,and the time has come when I can survey it as a whole.How far have I succeeded,and how far have I failed?From an early age I thought of myself as dedicated to great and arduous tasks.Nearly three quarters o