Read the following dialogue in pairs and then act it out using modifications.
| Interviewer: | What do scientists know about multiple incarnations? |
| Scientist: | Nothing, as far as I know. What makes you think we would know anything about it? |
| Interviewer: | Is there any reason to believe that it couldn’t be studied scientifically? |
| Scientist: | I don’t know. I don’t see offhand how such a study could be done, but I’ve never really thought about it. |
| Interviewer: | Has anyone ever tried? |
| Scientist: | I don’t know. There could have been any number of failures that were not reported, but I suppose if someone had studied it successfully we would have heard about it. |
| Interviewer: | How? |
| Scientist: | That’s a good question. I wonder what it would take to get the results of such a study published in one of our journals… |
| (long pause) | |
| Scientist: | I don’t know. I have no idea. But I personally am not particularly interested in that question, so my opinion is probably not worth much. Have you tried to find scientists who are interested? |
| Interviewer: | We tried, but couldn’t find any; actually we did find a few who said they thought the concept was fascinating, but no one was interested in doing scientific research on it. |
| Scientist: | Well, I’m afraid you’ll have to add me to that list. Maybe you and your friends should consider taking science courses. |
7. Make up a short dialogue to the following situation:
You are talking to professor Borisenko, an expert in nanoelectronics. Under his direction various research programmes have been completed. You want to get some information about the development of nanotechnology and its possible uses.
8. Read the text below to find the answers to the following questions:
| a | What do we call science? |
| b | What do different branches of science investigate? |
| c | How do scientific discoveries influence our lives? |
1. Science is a systematic study of anything that can be examined, tested, and verified. From its early beginnings, science has developed into one of the greatest and most influential fields of human endeavor. Today different branches of science investigate almost everything that can be observed or detected, and science as a whole shapes the way we understand the universe, our planet, ourselves, and other living things. Science develops through objective analysis, instead of through personal belief. Knowledge gained in science accumulates as time goes by, building on work performed earlier. Some of this knowledge—such as our understanding of numbers—stretches back to the time of ancient civilizations, when scientific thought first began. Other scientific knowledge—such as our understanding of quarks (the smallest known building block of matter)—dates back less than 50 years. However, in all fields of science, old or new, researchers use the same systematic approach, known as the scientific method, to add to what is known.
2. During scientific investigations, scientists put together and compare new discoveries and existing knowledge. In most cases, new discoveries extend what is currently accepted, providing further evidence that existing ideas are correct. Scientists utilize existing knowledge in new scientific investigations to predict how things will behave. For example, a scientist who knows the exact dimensions of a lens can predict how the lens will focus a beam of light. Sometimes scientific predictions go much further by describing objects or events that are not yet known. An outstanding instance occurred in 1869, when the Russian chemist Dmitry Mendeleyev drew up a periodic table of the elements arranged to illustrate patterns of recurring chemical and physical properties. Mendeleyev used this table to predict the existence and describe the properties of several elements unknown in his day, and when the elements were discovered several years later, his predictions proved to be correct.
3. In science, important advances can also be made when current ideas are shown to be wrong. A classic case of this occurred early in the 20th century, when the German geologist Alfred Wegener suggested that the continents were at one time connected, a theory known as continental drift. At the time, most geologists discounted Wegener's ideas, because the Earth's crust seemed to be fixed. But following the discovery of plate tectonics in the 1960s, in which scientists found that the Earth’s crust is actually made of moving plates, continental drift became an important part of geology. Through advances like these, scientific knowledge is constantly added to and refined. As a result, science gives us an ever more detailed insight into the way the world around us works.
4. For a large part of recorded history, science had little bearing on people's everyday lives. Scientific knowledge was gathered for its own sake, and it had few practical applications. However, with the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century, this rapidly changed. Today, science has a profound effect on the way we live, largely through technology—the use of scientific knowledge for practical purposes. Some forms of technology have become so well established that it is easy to forget the great scientific achievements that they represent. The first automobile, dating from the 1880s, made use of many advances in physics and engineering, including reliable ways of generating high-voltage sparks, while the first computers emerged in the 1940s from simultaneous advances in electronics and mathematics. Other fields of science also play an important role in the things we use or consume every day. Research in industrial chemistry has created a vast range of plastics and other synthetic materials, which have thousands of uses in the home and in industry. Alongside these achievements, science has also brought about technology that helps save human life. As a result, the majority of people on the planet now live longer and healthier lives than ever before.
5. However, scientific discoveries can also have a negative impact in human affairs. Over the last hundred years, some of the technological advances that make life easier or more enjoyable have proved to have unwanted and often unexpected long-term effects. Industrial and agricultural chemicals pollute the global environment, even in places as remote as Antarctica, and city air is contaminated by toxic gases from vehicle exhausts. The increasing pace of innovation means that products become rapidly obsolete, adding to a rising tide of waste. Most significantly of all, the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas releases into the atmosphere carbon dioxide and other substances known as greenhouse gases. These gases have altered the composition of the entire atmosphere, producing global warming and the prospect of major climate change in years to come. Science has also been used to develop technology that raises complex ethical questions. This is particularly true in the fields of biology and medicine. Research involving genetic engineering, cloning, and in vitro fertilization gives scientists the unprecedented power to bring about new life, or to devise new forms of living things. At the other extreme, science can also generate technology that is deliberately designed to harm or to kill. The fruits of this research include chemical and biological warfare, and also nuclear weapons, by far the most destructive weapons that the world has ever known.