Indigenous knowledge has long added to modern science and technology. Conservator Kathryn Etre discusses the preservation techniques she and others use to protect a 7.6-metre Indigenous canoe Globalisation makes it impossible for modern societies to collapse in isolation. Any society in turmoil today, no matter how remote, can cause problems for prosperous societies on other continents, and is also subject to their influence (whether helpful or destabilising). For the first time in history, we face the risk of a global decline. Biotechnology could help address many global problems, such as climate change, an aging society, food security, energy security and infectious diseases, to name just a few. Our council intends to build a map of these global problems, which will show which biotechnologies could help with each global challenge. To do that, we will also take into Human society, ever since it began, has had to abstract material energy from external nature; without these loans it could not exist. Society best adapts itself to nature by abstracting (and appropriating to itself) more energy from nature; only by increasing this quantity of energy does society succeed in growing. Evidence suggests that reliance on the internet and mobile technology is shortening our attention spans. One recent study found that our average attention span has decreased by 4 seconds, down from 12 to 8, which is shorter than that of a goldfish.†. One possible reason for this decrease is the significant increase in options for distraction. In our current state of affairs it is safe and reasonable to assume something exists - be it a universe, pure conciousness, illusion or other designations. If some readers nevertheless claim something does not exist right now, then this question effectively becomes meaningless to them but for us "cogito ergo sum" should suffice. cMrqvcg. At the end of March, Boris Johnson, the UK prime minister, said that the coronavirus crisis had proved there really was such a thing as society. There is no apparent rational basis to his assertion. He seems to have been alluding to a notorious remark of Margaret Thatcher’s to the contrary. Many people have tended to regard Thatcher’s claim that “there is no such thing as society” with moral revulsion, as some sort of expression or defence of individualistic selfishness. This is mistaken. But the claim that there is no such thing as society is common. For instance, many sociologists would be very reluctant to say that they believe in the objective existence of society. That view is associated in particular with the French sociologist Emile Durkheim. He argued that the objects of study in sociology are ways of acting, thinking and feeling, which he called “social facts”. He argued that because they can have a causal effect upon individuals, social facts are just as real and just as objective as natural physical objects and forces. We can be affected by, say, public opinion or inflation as well as by something like gravity. For Durkheim, society is the ultimate “social fact”. Many sociologists would say that, on the contrary, what appears to each and all of us as “social reality” is, to a greater or lesser extent, subjective. It is a product of our own social interactions and the meanings we attach to them. On this account, societies are like the sorts of “imagined communities” that nations are sometimes said to be. The current coronavirus pandemic gives no reason to abandon such a view of societies. For each of us, it might be said that society as it was prior to the lockdown no longer exists and never will again. After the lockdown, we will be faced by different social realities. Who is society? Within social sciences, there are longstanding controversies about the nature of social phenomena and the proper ways of explaining them. The celebrated philosopher of science Karl Popper argued that societies do not exist. According to him, such collective terms refer to concepts, to theoretical entities that we construct to try to explain what actually exists and occurs rather than to existing things themselves. He writes that Even the war’ or the army’ are abstract concepts, strange as this may sound to some. What is concrete is the many who are killed; or the men and women in uniform, etc. This might sound strange. It might even seem unintelligible. It might, as I think, be false. Still, there is no reason to be morally outraged by what Popper says here especially if we do not understand what he means. There is no obvious logical connection between the opinion that society does not exist and any particular political or moral stances. In particular, there is no intrinsic association with it and selfishness or with any opposition to altruism, social solidarity and cooperation. Many sociologists and philosophers prefer the idea of social facts’ to the idea of society. Shutterstock Popper and those who share his view do not say that because society does not exist, we do not or need not concern ourselves with the welfare of other people. In an interview for Women’s Own in September 1987, Margaret Thatcher said Who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then also to help look after our neighbour and life is a reciprocal business … She is not saying that we all should be solely self-regarding. Rather, she says, we have responsibilities towards ourselves, our families and other people. It is other actual people, not a mere abstract entity, who bear the responsibility and the cost of giving us help when we need it. This is hardly an inappropriate moral outlook in the present or in any other circumstances. Does the government have a different one? If so, it should tell us what it is. Thatcher said this There is no such thing as society. There is a living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate. If a politician of whom we approved were to say this in a speech, we would be more likely to cheer than boo. We would ignore the phrase “there is no such thing as society” as an irrelevance if it displeased or puzzled us. If we believe there is no such thing as society, nothing about the reaction to the coronavirus pandemic gives us a reason for changing that innocuous view, despite what Boris Johnson has proclaimed. X. Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks HOW TRANSPORTATION AFFECTS OUR LIFE? Without transportation, our modern society could not 31 ___. We would have no metal, no coal and no oil nor would we have any products made from these materials. 32____ we would have to spend most of our time raising food and food would be 33 __ to the kinds that could grow in the climate and soil of our neighborhood. Transportation also affects our lives in other ways. Transportation can speed a doctor to the 34____ of a sick person, even if the patients’ lives on an isolated farm. It can take police to the scene of a crime within a moment of being noticed. Transportation enables teams of athletes to compete in national and international sports contests. In time of 35 ___ transportation can rush aid to persons in areas stricken by floods, families and earthquakes. Câu hỏi A. establish B. exist C. take place D. happen Lời giải tham khảo Đáp án đúng B Câu hỏi này thuộc đề thi trắc nghiệm dưới đây, bấm vào Bắt đầu thi để làm toàn bài An illustration of an extinct Glyptodon, a huge armadillo-like creature that lived during the last ice age. Image credit Daniel Eskridge/Stocktrek Images via Getty ImagesHumanity's fingerprint can be seen across the planet today, from the towering skyscrapers that define our modern metropolises to the pyramids and other ancient monuments of our past. Human activity also marks our sprawling open fields of agriculture and the roads that link everything together. But what would the world look like if humans had never existed?Some scientists paint a picture of a pristine wilderness and an abundance of species, from the familiar to the not so familiar. "I think it would be a much more vegetated place with a wealth of animals, of large size spread across all continents except Antarctica," Trevor Worthy, a paleontologist and associate professor at Flinders University in Australia, told Live Science. A world without modern humans might also mean that our extinct human relatives, such as the Neanderthals, would still be around. And they, undoubtedly, also would have changed the What's the first species humans drove to extinction? Humans have shaped the world at the expense of many species, from the dodo Raphus cucullatus to the Tasmanian tiger Thylacinus cynocephalus, which we drove to extinction through activities such as hunting and habitat destruction. The extinction rate on Earth today is more than 100 times what it would be without humans by the most conservative estimates and hasn't been higher since the Cretaceous-Paleogene K-Pg extinction event that wiped out about 80% of animal species, including the nonavian dinosaurs, 66 million years ago, Live Science previously reported. In other words, humans hit this planet like an asteroid, and the dust is still settling as wildlife continues to decline."My great, great grandfather was able to observe flocks of thousands of parakeets in the natural landscapes, my grandfather saw flocks of a hundred, my father saw a few and I'm lucky if I can see two in the forests," Worthy said. The human-led decline of nature indicates that Earth would be a much wilder place without us, with some lost giants, such as moas, sticking out more than others. This group of ostrich-like birds, some of which stretched up to feet meters tall, evolved in New Zealand over millions of years. Within 200 years of humans' arrival on these birds' lands 750 years ago, all nine species of moa were gone, along with at least 25 other vertebrate species, including the giant Haast's eagles Hieraaetus moorei that hunted the moas, according to Worthy. Giant moas and Haast's eagles are recent examples of large animals whose extinctions are definitively tied to human activities, such as unsustainable hunting and the introduction of invasive species into new habitats. They are also indicators of what our relationship with large animals may have been like elsewhere. The survival of large animals is critical for speculating about an Earth without humans, as these beasts have such a heavy impact on landscapes. Serengeti EarthA composite image of wildlife on the Serengeti. Image credit ugurhan via Getty ImagesSören Faurby, a senior lecturer in zoology at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, believes humans played a key role in the disappearance of many large mammals going back thousands of years. He led a 2015 study, published in the journal Diversity and Distributions, which suggested that, without humans, Earth would largely resemble the modern-day Serengeti, an African ecosystem teeming with life. Related How long do most species last before going extinct?In this scenario, extinct animals similar to those found in the Serengeti today — including elephants, rhinos and lions — would live across Europe. For example, instead of African lions Panthera leo, there would still be cave lions Panthera spelaea, a slightly larger species that lived in Europe up until about 12,000 years ago. Meanwhile, the Americas would be home to elephant relatives and massive bears, along with unique species, like car-size armadillo relatives called Glyptodon and giant ground sloths, according to Faurby."In a world without humans, there would be a much bigger diversity of large mammals, and if you see a larger diversity of large mammals, you tend to see a much more open habitat," Faurby told Live Science. Elephants and other large animals are pretty determined when finding food and won't stand for unnecessary obstructions. "If you're big enough, then it might be easier to just knock over a tree and eat the fresh leaves on top," Faurby said. But also, if there are a ton of large mammals, there tends to be less wooded vegetation emerging in the first place, he added. The hairy elephant in the roomLarge animals, like elephants, are known as megafauna. During the last ice age of the Pleistocene, million to 11,700 years ago, the world was rich in megafauna, but most died out as the ice age ended, or in the millennia since. For instance, about 38 genera of large animals went extinct in North America at the end of the last ice age, according to a 2020 study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. For the past century, scientists have debated whether natural climate changes or human activities, such as overhunting, was the main cause of these large animals' decline. A 2021 study published in the journal Nature concluded that climate change ultimately wiped out woolly mammoths Mammuthus primigenius and other Arctic-dwelling megafauna that survived the end of the Pleistocene, as the warming climate made it too wet for the vegetation they ate to survive. Humans did, however, hunt mammoths. Scientists who think that humans were probably the key factor in their extinction, like Faurby, argue that mammoths survived climate changes before humans came along and likely could have survived to the present day were it not for the additional pressure humans placed on How would just 2 degrees of warming change the planet? Illustration of woolly mammoths trudging over snow covered hills. Image credit Daniel Eskridge/ShutterstockChristopher Doughty, an associate professor and ecosystem ecologist at Northern Arizona University, models how large animals of the past and present move seeds and nutrients around through eating and defecating. His work suggests that the transportation of elements such as phosphorus, calcium and magnesium, which are critical for life, have declined by more than 90% through the extinction of large animals. Doughty hypothesizes that without humans, elements would be more evenly distributed across the landscape. This would mean more fertile soil, which would cause ecosystems to be more productive. "If the elements are more patchy in ecosystems, the productivity is going to be more patchy," Doughty said. Humans tend to clump elements together through practices such as agriculture and the creation of fenced-off areas, so these areas become less fertile over time compared with wild systems, according to Doughty. Greater fertility means plants can allocate their resources toward more fruits and flowers, so the world could look more vibrant and feed more animals. The climate might also be different, and while it's difficult to say how humans and megafauna may have influenced climatic changes thousands of years ago with evidence obscured by time, it's much easier to judge our impact on Earth's climate today. Through global warming, caused by activities such as the burning of fossil fuels, humans have raised the average global temperature by about degrees Fahrenheit 1 degree Celsius since the beginning of the 20th century. Earth, therefore, would have been at least that much cooler without us. A 2016 study published in Nature concluded that human-caused warming will postpone an upcoming ice age by at least 100,000 years. It wasn't due for another 50,000 years, though, even without the human delay, so it's unlikely that Earth would be in the midst of another ice age today if we weren't are inevitableModern humans Homo sapiens as we are today were not always the only hominins on the block, and removing us from the equation might have opened the door for our Neanderthal cousins. Scientists aren't sure why Neanderthals went extinct around 40,000 years ago, but because they interbred with H. sapiens, parts of their DNA live on in some of us. There were likely multiple reasons for Neanderthals' demise, but we are a main Stringer, a professor and research leader in human origins at the Natural History Museum in London, thinks competition for resources was a factor in Neanderthals' disappearance. "If we hadn't been around, if we hadn't come into Europe 45,000 or 50,000 years ago, I think they probably would still be here," he told Live Science. Related What if Neanderthals had not gone extinct?A male Neanderthal replicate at the Natural History Museum, London. Image credit to Stringer, Neanderthals were leading complex lives in Europe, similar to modern humans, but they had difficulty coping with climate changes and were relatively few in number, with low genetic diversity. This is bad news for any species, as it's a sign of inbreeding and ill health. Neanderthals were likely "already in trouble, and when modern humans got there as well, I think that may have been what tipped them over the edge," Stringer said. But it wasn't just Neanderthals that humans may have held back. Scientists are still learning about at least one more human lineage that lived around the same time as modern humans and Neanderthals the Denisovans. This lineage appears to be closer to Neanderthals than modern humans in genes and appearance, but is distinguishable from Neanderthals by its very large likely interbred with Denisovans as there is evidence of Denisovan DNA in present-day humans living in places such as New Guinea in Oceania — a finding that indicates Denisovans were in Southeast Asia interacting with the ancestors of modern humans that later settled further east, according to a 2012 study published in journal Science. Denisovans also partnered with Neanderthals in Siberia, where the fossilized remains of a Denisovan-Neanderthal hybrid were found, Live Science previously reported. These Denisovan interactions, along with fossil evidence, suggests that they had a larger geographic range than Neanderthals, encompassing a greater variety of environments, and therefore, arguably, were more widely adapted than the Neanderthals. DNA evidence also suggests that the Denisovans probably had greater genetic diversity than Neanderthals did, according to Stringer. "They might have been an even better bet for survival than the Neanderthals." Neanderthals and Denisovans matter, because if one or both of these lineages survived, they could have carved a similar path to what H. sapiens ultimately forged, moving from hunter-gathering when the last ice age ended to developing agriculture. "There's no reason why Neanderthals or Denisovans couldn't have done that eventually, given enough time," Stringer said. They may have overcome any potential intellectual shortcomings, which it's not clear they had, through evolution, he added. So maybe the world wouldn't look so different after all. "And equally, they could be making all the same mistakes we've made ever since," Stringer said. "So, global warming could have still been here, but with Neanderthals or Denisovans driving it, not us. Who knows?"Originally published on Live Science. Stay up to date on the latest science news by signing up for our Essentials newsletter. Patrick Pester is a freelance writer and previously a staff writer at Live Science. His background is in wildlife conservation and he has worked with endangered species around the world. Patrick holds a master's degree in international journalism from Cardiff University in the Most Popular Câu hỏi Without transportation, our modem society could not 21 ........................We would have no metal, no coal and no oil, nor would we have any 22 ........................made from these materials. 23 ........................, we would have to spend most of our time 24 ........................food and food would be 25 ........................to the kinds that could grow in the climate and soil of our neighborhoods. Transportation also 26 ........................our lives...Đọc tiếp Xem chi tiết Read the following passage and mark the letter A, R, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks from 23 to 27Without transportation, our modern society could not 23 ___________. We would have no metal, no coal and no oil nor would we have any 24 ___________ made from these materials. 25 ___________, we would have to spend most of our time raising food and food would be limited to the kinds that could grow in the climate an...Đọc tiếp Xem chi tiết Read the following passage and mark the letter A, R, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks from 23 to 27Without transportation, our modern society could not 23 ___________. We would have no metal, no coal and no oil nor would we have any 24 ___________ made from these materials. 25 ___________, we would have to spend most of our time raising food and food would be limited to the kinds that could grow in the climate an...Đọc tiếp Xem chi tiết Read the following passage and mark the letter A, R, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks from 23 to 27Without transportation, our modern society could not 23 ___________. We would have no metal, no coal and no oil nor would we have any 24 ___________ made from these materials. 25 ___________, we would have to spend most of our time raising food and food would be limited to the kinds that could grow in the climate an...Đọc tiếp Xem chi tiết Read the following passage and mark the letter A, R, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks from 23 to 27Without transportation, our modern society could not 23 ___________. We would have no metal, no coal and no oil nor would we have any 24 ___________ made from these materials. 25 ___________, we would have to spend most of our time raising food and food would be limited to the kinds that could grow in the climate an...Đọc tiếp Xem chi tiết Read the following passage and mark the letter A, R, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks from 23 to 27Without transportation, our modern society could not 23 ___________. We would have no metal, no coal and no oil nor would we have any 24 ___________ made from these materials. 25 ___________, we would have to spend most of our time raising food and food would be limited to the kinds that could grow in the climate an...Đọc tiếp Xem chi tiết Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks from 23 to 27. Fill in the appropriate word in question 26 Without transportation, our modem society could not 23 _____________. We would have no metal, no coal and no oil nor would we have any 24 _____________ made from these materials. 25 _____________, we would have to spend most of our time raising food and food would be li...Đọc tiếp Xem chi tiết Read the following passage and mark A, B, C, or D to indicate the correct answer to each of the blanks. Everyone needs a home where they feel sheltered and safe. Today we live in modern flats and houses, 36 ___________ have air-conditioning to keep us cool, and heating to keep us warm. There is electricity for lighting and supplies of gas or oil for the heating. Hot and cold water 37 ___________ from the taps and dirty water disappears 38 ___________ the drains. Many of our homes...Đọc tiếp Xem chi tiết Read the following passage and mark A, B, C, or D to indicate the correct answer to each of the blanks. Everyone needs a home where they feel sheltered and safe. Today we live in modern flats and houses, 36 ___________ have air-conditioning to keep us cool, and heating to keep us warm. There is electricity for lighting and supplies of gas or oil for the heating. Hot and cold water 37 ___________ from the taps and dirty water disappears 38 ___________ the drains. Many of our homes...Đọc tiếp Xem chi tiết Cập nhật ngày 02-07-2022Chia sẻ bởi Phạm Thanh PhúcWithout transportation, our modern society could not Our modern society could not exist if there is no Our modern society will not exist without having If there were no transportation, our modern society would not exist. D If transportation no longer exists, our modern society will not exist.

without transportation our modern society would not exist