【尚友论坛】GRE阅读机经_designcoursesinengineering原文及答案.pdfVIP

Many objects in daily use have clearly been influenced by science, but their form and function, their dimensions and appearance, were determined by technologists, artisans, designers, inventors, and engineers—using non-scientific modes of thought. Many features and qualities of the objects that a technologist thinks about cannot be reduced to unambiguous verbal descriptions; they are dealt with in the mind by a visual, nonverbal process. In the development of Western technology, it has been non-verbal thinking, by and large, that has fixed the outlines and filled in the details of our material surroundings. Pyramids, cathedrals, and rockets exist not because of geometry or thermodynamics, but because they were first a picture in the minds of those who built them. The creative shaping process of a technologist’s mind can be seen in nearly every artifact that exists. For example, in designing a diesel engine (diesel engine: n. 柴油机), a technologist might impress individual ways of nonverbal thinking on the machine b y continually using an intuitive sense of rightness and fitness. What would be the shape of the combustion chamber (combustion chamber: 燃烧室)? Where should the valves be placed? Should it have a long or short piston? Such questions have a range of answers t hat are supplied by experience, by physical requirements, by limitations of available space, and not least by a sense of form. Some decisions, such as wall thickness and pin diameter, may depend on scientific calculations, but the nonscientific component of design remains primary. Design courses, then, should be an essential element in engineering curricula. Nonverbal thinking, a central mechanism in engineering design, involves perceptions, the stock -in-trade (stock-in-trade: n.存货, 惯用手段) of the artist, not the scientist. Because perceptive processes are not assumed to entail “hard thinking,” nonverbal thought is sometimes seen as a primitive stage in the development