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Man as a species has attained supremacy amongst animals and plants
through a unique combination of advantageous characters. In the first
place. he has a very large brain in actual terms and relative to his body size.
lie has binocular vision and thus can focus his gaze on a circumscribed
part of his field of vision and can maintain this focus as the object moves.
He has forelimbs which have retained many primitive features and thus
are more versatile than those which have become specialized, as they have
in the quadrupeds, the birds and seals. Man's ability to localize objects in
the three dimensions of space through his binocular vision, and to perform
exact and complex manoeuvres with his fingers and opposable thumbs,
has endowed him with a great ability to change or modify the animate and
inanimate world around him. He has developed the capacity to make
tools and to use them with ever-increasing sophistication and precision.
His large brain has equipped him with the capacity to modify his behaviour
in the light of past experience.
All these advantageous characters have been
hugely amplified because
man is a social rather than a solitary animal. Most higher animals communicate with each other, by sound as in bird song and the calls of mammals,
or by movements such as the posture and display of birds and mammals and
the dances of insects. But man has produced a means of communication,
language, which is so versatile and so precise that it can convey complicated
information and abstractions of that information from one individual to
many others. The human brain has a large capacity for storage and thus
the information can be. and is, in even the most primitive tribes, transmitted
from one generation to another. Then man developed another mechanism
of storage, writing, through which information can be transmitted even
though there is a gap of many generations between receiving and giving.
And now. finally, he has produced the computer, which not only stores
but analyses.
Because of these inherent advantages, man has been able to invent new
tools and new techniques: he has been able to acquire more and more
knowledge of the components and behaviour of the world in which he lives, and
thereby to use natural forces in his own interest: he
has devised new methods of delighting the eye, the ear
and the mind. And these achievements are not peculiar to an individual. They can be communicated to
others: they can be passed on to the next generation and even to generations
that will not be born for centuries. So it has come about that man's unique
achievement is the creation of highly differentiated, highly organized and
highly competent social organizations termed cultures or civilizations. We
learn from writings how a succession of these have dominated that part of
the world in which they have flourished. In a biological sense these societies
have achieved supreme fitness.
Ancient Egypt, China, Greece, Rome and the present Western civilizations are examples. These organizations are peculiar in the animal kingdom
because of the extent to which adaptive behaviour is developed continuously
and communally and the fruits transmitted from one generation to the next.
Of these civilizations the present has reached a complexity and a degree of
control over nature which is without parallel in the past. This achievement
of our own society is due to a new intellectual discipline, the scientific
method. by which events in the world around us can be chronicled, understood and controlled. Thus in the end it is the adaptive behaviour, and
particularly the intellectual processes associated with the mind. which
have made man supreme.
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1. |
The great advantage that man has over other animals is |
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(A) |
his large brain. |
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(B) |
his binocular vision. |
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(C) |
his versatile forelimbs. |
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(D) |
a combination of the preceding features. |
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2. |
Man possesses "the capacity to modify his behaviour in the light of past
experience". This implies that man is able to |
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(A) |
imagine. |
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(B) |
become better behaved. |
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(C) |
learn. |
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(D) |
achieve happiness. |
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3. |
One outstanding proof of man's brain power is his |
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(A) |
use of language. |
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(B) |
ability to focus on moving objects. |
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(C) |
ability to perform complex manoeuvres with his fingers. |
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(D) |
development of sophisticated tools. |
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4. |
"hugely amplified" in the second paragraph means |
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(A) |
greatly enlarged. |
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(B) |
made stronger. |
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(C) |
made louder. |
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(D) |
made clearer. |
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5. |
Man's means of communication is |
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(A) |
similar to bird song. |
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(B) |
more exact than that of other animals. |
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(C) |
like the calls of mammals. |
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(D) |
identical with the dances of insects. |
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6. |
Which of the following is not " a mechanism
of storage" ? |
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(A) |
The human brain. |
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(B) |
The computer. |
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(C) |
Writing. |
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(D) |
Oral language. |
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7. |
Which of the following is not one of the
"inherent advantages" of man ? |
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(A) |
A large brain. |
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(B) |
Binocular vision. |
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(C) |
Sophisticated tools. |
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(D) |
Versatile forelimbs. |
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8. |
One achievement unique to man is |
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(A) |
the creation of civilizations. |
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(B) |
his successful adaptation to his environment. |
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(C) |
his acquisition and transmission of information. |
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(D) |
his development of a means of communication. |
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9. |
What is the "new intellectual discipline"
referred to in the last paragraph ? |
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(A) |
Modern civilization. |
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(B) |
Modern scientific method. |
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(C) |
Man's adaptive behaviour. |
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(D) |
Man's intelligence. |
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10. |
Which sentence best summarizes the main
theme of the passage ? |
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(A) |
Man is the only animal in the world that has developed
language and civilizations. |
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(B) |
It is man's unique combination of advantageous
characters, especially his brain, which has enabled him to attain
supremacy in the world. |
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(C) |
Animals and plants are definitely inferior to man. |
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(D) |
Of all the animals in the world, man is supreme. |
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