英文学习记录4.9-4.13

191.  Through most of human history, people have tried to understand their world through reductive reasoning. That is to say, they have been inclined to take things apart to see how they work. 

演绎推理 Deductive reasoning

归纳推理 Inductive reasoning

还原推理 reductive reasoning

192. Reductionism was the driving force behind much of the twentieth century's scientific research. To comprehend nature, it tells us, we must decipher its components. The assumption is that once we understand the parts, it will be easy to grasp the whole. 

Reductionism 还原论或还原主义

decipher  破译，辨认（难认、难解的东西）  to succeed in finding the meaning of sth that is difficult to read or understand

193. Therefore, for decades we have been forced to see the world through its constituents.  We have been trained to study atoms and superstrings to understand the universe; molecules to comprehend life; individual genes to understand complex behavior; prophets to see the origins of fads and religions.

constituents [kən'stɪtʊrnts]  成分;要素

 prophets  预言家,先知 ;倡导者;

194. This way of thinking induces people to think that they can understand a problem by dissenting it into its various parts. 

induce 引起;归纳;引诱

195. This deductive mode is the specialty of conscious cognition - the sort of cognition that is linear and logical. 

196. The problem with this approach is that it has trouble explaining dynamic complexity, the essential feature of a human being, a culture, or a society. So recently there has been a greater application for the structure of emergent systems. Emergent systems exist when different elements come together and produce something that is greater than the sum of their parts. Or, to put it differently, the pieces of a system interact, and out of their interaction something entirely new emerges. 

197. Emergent systems don't rely upon a central controller. Instead, once a pattern of interaction is established, it has a downward influence on the behavior of the components.

196. The brain is an emergent system. An individual neuron in the brain does not contain an idea, say, of an apple. But out of the pattern of firing of millions of neurons, the idea of an apple emerges. 

197. Growing up in poverty can lead to a lower IQ. When he tried to measure the impact of specific variables, he found there was nothing there. Even tough the total effect of all the variables put together was very clear. 

198. It means you don't try to break down those effects into constituents parts. It's the total emergent system that has its effects.

199. No complex behaviors in free-ranging humans are cause by a linear and additive set of causes. Any important outcome has a myriad of interrelated causes, and each of these causes has a myriad of potential effects. 

free-ranging 自由放牧

 myriad 各种各样的，多种的

additive 加和的

200. There is no way to pin down and clarify the causes of human behavior to trace the sources of this or that behavior. It is of course possible to show correlations between one thing and another, and those correlations are valuable. Causation is obscured in the darkness.

pin down 确定；证实  If you try to pin something down, you try to discover exactly what, where, or when it is.

obscured 模糊不清

201. We live in a unequal and polarized society. 

polarized 两极分化的

202. It is very hard in emergent systems to find the "root cause" of any problem. The positive side is that if you have negative cascades producing bad outcomes, it is also possible to have positive cascades producing good ones. 

203. She couldn't remain in her current environment and just turn her prospects around by force of individual willpower. She would always be subject to the same emotional cues. They would overpower conscious intention. 

prospects 前景; 期望

cue 暗示、提示、信号

overpower 压倒;制服

204. Erica was the second-ranked girl on the team. It was like it was some strange anger person who had hijacked her body. Erica cried into her pillow. She felt a wave of humiliation and shame. Her mother knew what it was like to behave in ways that were inexplicable to yourself.

205. All human beings have inherited from the distant past an automatic ability to respond to surprises and stress, the so-called fight-or-flight response. 

206. Some people even from the earliest age, seem to flee from stress and pain. Some, like Erica, fight. Some newborns started more easily then others. Their heart rate shoots up more than others when confronted with strange situations, and their blood pressure rises. 

207. All kids was born with a certain disposition. Her disposition would evolve over the course of her life, depending on how experiences wired her brain, but the range of this evolution would have limits. 

disposition 性情，性格

208. They are victim to an imagined inner world, which is more dangerous than the outer world they actually inhabit.

209. People who live with that sort of chronic stress suffer cell loss in their hippocampus, and with it loss of memory. Their immune systems weaken. They have fewer minerals in their bones. They accumulate body fat more easily.

210. A study of engineers who worked up to ninety hours a week for six months on an extremely stressful project had higher levels of cortisol and epinephrine, two chemicals associated with stress. The effects of stress can be long lasting. 

epinephrine [ˌepə'nefrɪn] 肾上腺素

211. Self-control is one of the essential ingredients of a fulfilling life.