接下来的几天给大家整理了历届gre考试阅读真题及解析，下面这篇是1995年4月gre考试阅读真题SECTION A部分。复习gre考试阅读的时候，gre考生应该以往年的真题为复习材料，从真题中总结阅读规律和特点才是制胜法宝。
Influenced by the view of some twentieth-century feminists that women’s position within the family is one of the central factors determining women’s social position, some historians have underestimated the significance of the woman suffrage movement. These historians contend that nineteenth-century suffragist was less radical and, hence, less important than, for example, the moral reform movement or domestic feminism—two nineteenth-century movements in which women struggled for more power and autonomy within the family. True, by emphasizing these struggles, such historians have broadened the conventional view of nineteenth-century feminism, but they do a historical disservice to suffragism. Nineteenth-century feminists and anti-feminist alike perceived the suffragists’ demand for enfranchisement as the most radical element in women’s protest, in part because suffragists were demanding power that was not based on the institution of the family, women’s traditional sphere. When evaluating nineteenth-century feminism as a social force, contemporary historians should consider the perceptions of actual participants in the historical events.
17. The author asserts that the historians discussed in the passage have
(A) influenced feminist theorists who concentrate on the family
(B) honored the perceptions of the women who participated in the women suffrage movement
(C) treated feminism as a social force rather than as an intellectual tradition
(D) paid little attention to feminist movements
(E) expanded the conventional view of nineteenth-century feminism
18. The author of the passage asserts that some twentieth-century feminists have influenced some historians view of the
(A) significance of the woman suffrage movement
(B) importance to society of the family as an institution
(C) degree to which feminism changed nineteenth-century society
(D) philosophical traditions on which contemporary feminism is based
(E) public response to domestic feminism in the nineteenth century
19. The author of the passage suggests that which of the following was true of nineteenth-century feminists?
(A) Those who participated in the moral reform movement were motivated primarily by a desire to reconcile their private lives with their public positions.
(B) Those who advocated domestic feminism, although less visible than the suffragists, were in some ways the more radical of the two groups.
(C) Those who participated in the woman suffrage movement sought social roles for women that were not defined by women’s familial roles.
(D) Those who advocated domestic feminism regarded the gaining of more autonomy within the family as a step toward more participation in public life.
(E) Those who participated in the nineteenth-century moral reform movement stood midway between the positions of domestic feminism and suffragism.
20. The author implies that which of the following is true of the historians discussed in the passage?
(A) They argue that nineteenth-century feminism was not as significant a social force as twentieth-century feminism has been.
(B) They rely too greatly on the perceptions of the actual participants in the events they study.
(C) Their assessment of the relative success of nineteenth-century domestic feminism does not adequately take into account the effects of antifeminist rhetoric.
(D) Their assessment of the significance of nineteenth-century suffragism differs considerably from that of nineteenth-century feminists.
(E) They devote too much attention to nineteenth-century suffragism at the expense of more radical movements that emerged shortly after the turn of the century.
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 by 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 that 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 of cognitive processes and inferior to verbal or mathematical thought. But it is paradoxical that when the staff of the Historic American Engineering Record wished to have drawings made of machines and isometric views of industrial processes for its historical record of American engineering, the only college students with the requisite abilities were not engineering students, but rather students attending architectural schools.
If courses in design, which in a strongly analytical engineering curriculum provide the background required for practical problem-solving, are not provided, we can expect to encounter silly but costly errors occurring
