Read and Speak. Круглова М.В. - 88 стр.

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88
TEXT 5B. SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS IN MODERN
SOCIETY
Study the following text and do the tasks given bellow
Natural science is the main characteristic feature distinguishing the present
civilization from the other civilizations in the past. From its early beginning in the
16
th
century the developments of science have influenced the course of western
civilization more and more. Until today it plays the most dominant role. It is not
much of exaggeration to say that we live in a world that materially and intellectually
has been created by science.
The point is easy to illustrate on the material level. There’s hardly an article used
in the homes, in the places of work, or in the places of enjoyment that has not been
modified by technology based on science.
Another part of the story is less obvious and less well known, but far more
important. It’s a story of expanding intellectual horizons - the impact of science on
the mind of a man. Fundamentally, science is an intellectual enterprise, an attempt to
understand the world in a particular way. All the developments are but the results, the
outcomes of this intellectual activity.
Over the past 150 years the range of human knowledge has been doubled every 12
or 15 years. In 1930 man knew 4 times as much as he did in 1900; by 1960 his
knowledge had grown sixteenfold, and in the year 2000 it was a hundred times what
it had been a century previously.
The second part of the 20
th
century has brought a number of technical innovations
which are still very young but which are taken so much for granted that it’s as if
they’ve always existed.
The transistor was not invented until 1948. This piece of electronic equipment
found wide use in space technology, computers, transistor radios, medical
instruments, television sets - in fact, wherever precise control and modulation of
electrical signals was required, however, the invention of ICs (integrated circuits) in
1958 brought in a new era of change in the field so fundamental, that it already has
the characteristics of a second industrial revolution.
A mere 12 years separated the launching of the satellite Sputnik 1 in 1957 and
man’s first landing on the Moon in 1969. The first long-term orbital station Salyut
launched in 1971 opened a new era in space research. Another period of 10 years and

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