Топик: Билеты и ответы на них по Английскому языку на 2002 год
equipment enabled the construction of larger, more manoeuvrable ships.In-the East Europeans were cut off from land routes to India and China. The need for new avenues of trade with the Far East led to theseafaring explorations of the Age of Discovery.
In 1492 the Italian Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic in a Spanish-backed attempt to find a new trading route to the Far East. While that objective went unfulfilled, subsequent voyages by explorers did much to reveal both the complexities of transatlantic navigation and the nature of the New World. Simultaneously, Portuguese seafarers led by Bartolomeu Dias had pushed southward to the Cape of Good Hope, mapping the entire western coast of Africa in the process and proving the existence of a sea route between Europe and India. In 1497 John Cabot, a Venetian sea captain, completed the first recorded transatlantic voyage by an English vessel, while attempting to find a north-west passage to Asia. Cabot died during the second attempt to find a direct route to Cathay in 1498. Althoughl Sebastian Cabot continued his father's explorations in the Hudson Bay region in 1508-1509, England's interest in the New World waned. However, Cabot's voyages established England's belated claim to America, In 1520 Ferdinand Magellan discovered the strait, now bearing his name, that links the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The discovery of Cape Horn at the southernmost tip of South America was made in 1578 by the English navigator Francis Drake; this provided a more suitable route for trading ships.
Colonisation followed exploration, and, as isolated outposts gave way to larger protected settlements and military garrisons in the 17th and l8th centuries, the tide of colonists to the New World and the exploitation of natural resources from both land and sea increased. The explorers were inspired by curiosity and the desire tc become wealthy. The Age of Exploration enriched Europe.
Vocabulary
saga - увлекательная история New World -Новый Свет
successive – последующий exploration -исследование
Ptolemy - Птолемей accurately - точно
Columbus - Колумб' trading route - торговый путь
subsequent – последующий voyage - морское путешествие
explorer - исследователь reveal — показать
simultaneously - одновременно vessel - судно
wane - уменьшиться belated -запоздалый
claim - притязание Ferdinand Magellan - Фернандо Магелан
arrison - гарнизон
Caribbean - карибскии, относящийся к Карибскому морю
Age of Discovery = Age of Exploration - эпоха Великих ографических открытий
Barrtolomeu Dias - Бартоломеу Диаш
Education and future profession
The seventeenth century was the time of the development of various branches of science. The new mood had been established by Francis Bacon. Bacon was a lawyer who entered Parliament early and became James I's Lord Chancellor. Bacon bad a wide range of scholarly interests. He had the reputation of being the most learned man of his time. Francis Bacon's goal was synthesis. He wanted to organize 'all knowledge' in a united whole. He defined the scientific method in a form that is still relevant and stimulates the growth of science. Every scientific idea, he argued, must be tested by experiment. With idea and experiment following one the other, the whole natural world would be understood. In the rest of the century British scientists put these ideas into practice.
Bacon made a great contribution to historical writing. He was a master stylist - his scientific works can be read with pleasure, as literature. He saw himself as an intellectual Columbus, revealing new world of science to his contemporaries, and bringing back hips freighted with useful knowledge. In his «New Atlantis» Bacon described an island governed by an Academy of Sciences, founded 'for the knowledge of causes, and secret motion of things; and the enlarging the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible'. This is the most accessible and exciting of his writings on science.
In his essay «Of Study» Francis Bacon regards studies as they should be: for pleasure, for self-improvement, for business. He considers the evils of excess study: laziness, affectation, and preciosity. Bacon divides books into three categories; those to be read in part, those to be read casually, and those to be read with care. Studies should include reading, which gives depth: speaking, which adds readiness of thought; and writing, which trains in preciseness. The author ascribes certain virtues to individual fields of study: wisdom to history, wit to poetry, subtlety to mathematics, and depth to natural philosophy. This essay has intellectual appeal indeed.
Meanwhile, scientists, were demystifying the universe. Nobody knows for sure who invented the telescope, but Galileo Galilei had built one of his own. With it he was able to confirm the heretical speculations of Copernicus, Kepler and Tyeho Brahe that the sun, not the earth, was the center of our universe. The specific origins of the microscope are equally obscure. In the 17th century. Robe Hooke used it to describe accurately the anatomy of a flea and the design of a feather; Antonie de Leeuwenhoek discovered a world of wriggling organisms in a drop of water. The invention of logarithms and calculus led to more accurate clocks and optical instruments.
By 1700 Galileo, Rene Descartes, Sir Isaac Newton and other scientists had clarified the principles by which machines work. Henceforth Western civilization's technological supremacy was beyond challenge. Mechanical invention led inevitably to another step in the West's commercial and political hegemony over the world: the Industrial Revolution.
Vocabulary
science - наука branches of science - области науки
establish – создать define - давать (точное) определение
make a contribution to - внести вклад в contemporary - современник
freight - грузить, фрахтовать Academy of Sciences - Академия Наук
«New Atlantis» - Новая Атлантида accessible - доступная
exciting – увлекательный confirm - подтверждать