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上海大学 2004 年攻读硕士学位研究生入学考试试题
考试科目：综合英语
SECTION 1: READING COMPREHENSION (45 points)
Directions: In this section, you will find two passages, each of which is followed by some
questions. Read the passages carefully and then answer the questions in your own words on your
Answer Sheet. Please note that each response should be limited to less than ten words in order to
be valid.
Questions 1 ~ 5
An essay that appeals chiefly to the intellect is Francis Bacon’s “Of Studies.” His careful
tripartite division of studies expressed succinctly in aphoristic prose demands the complete
attention of the mind of the reader. He considers studies as they should be: for pleasure, for
self-improvement, and 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
cursorily, 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. Somewhat
mistakenly, the author ascribes certain virtues to individual fields of study: wisdom to history, wit
to poetry, subtlety to mathematics and depth to natural philosophy. Bacon’s four-hundred-word
essay, studded with Latin phrases and highly compressed in thought, has intellectual appeal
indeed.
1. What is Bacon’s tripartite division of studies?
2. What does theword “affectation” (Line 4) mean?
3. What is Bacon’s criterion for dividing books into three categories?
4. What does the author think about Bacon’s ascribing certain virtues to individual fields of
study?
5. What characterizes Bacon’s “Of Studies”?
Questions 6 ~ 15
For me, scientific knowledge is divided into mathematical sciences, natural sciences or
sciences dealing with the natural world (physical and biological sciences), and sciences dealing
with mankind (psychology, sociology, all the sciences of cultural achievements, every kind of
historical knowledge). Apart from these sciences is philosophy, about which we will talk later. In
the first place, all this is pure or theoretical knowledge, sought only for the purpose of
understanding, in order to fulfill the need to understand what is intrinsic and consubstantial to man.
What distinguishes man from animal is that he knows and needs to know. If man did not know
that the world existed, and the world was of a certain kind, that he was in the world and that he
himself was of a certain kind, he wouldn’t be man. The technical aspects of applications of
knowledge are equally necessary for man and are of the greatest importance, because they also
contribute to defining him as man and permit him to pursue a life increasingly more truly human.
But even while enjoying the results of technical progress, he must defend the primacy and
autonomy of pure knowledge. Knowledge sought directly for its practical applications will have
immediate and foreseeable success, but not the kind of important result whose revolutionary scope
is in large part unforeseen, except by the imagination of the Utopians. Let me recall a well-known
example. If the Greek mathematicians had not applied themselves to the investigation of conic
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