雅思阅读全真 Passage 3 · The Myth of the Lone Inventor（高难度）
最高难度，约 850 词学术论证文章。题型：人物观点匹配 / 多选 / 句子完成。建议限时 20 分钟， Passage 3 是三篇一文中最难的。
Reading Passage
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1–13.
The Myth of the Lone Inventor
A. Popular accounts of technological progress revolve around solitary geniuses. Archimedes leaping from his bath, Newton struck by an apple, Edison toiling alone in his Menlo Park laboratory — these images are so embedded in our culture that they have come to define the very meaning of invention. Yet historians of science have spent the last several decades dismantling this myth, and what they have found complicates not only our celebration of the inventor, but the way we organise innovation itself.
B. The work of economic historian Dr Sarah Chen has been particularly influential in this reassessment. Chen examined 150 major twentieth-century innovations, from the jet engine to the iPhone, and found that in nearly every case the breakthrough depended on a web of prior contributions — often by people whose names never made it into the textbooks. Her conclusion is not that individual brilliance is irrelevant, but that it is vastly overrated relative to the collective infrastructure — the shared scientific knowledge, the training systems, the previous generations of failed attempts — on which any single breakthrough rests. "The myth of the lone inventor," she writes, "flatters us but blinds us to what innovation actually costs."
C. Professor James Bell, a sociologist of science, goes further still. For Bell, the celebration of individual inventors is not merely inaccurate; it is actively harmful. He argues that the hero-inventor narrative skews research funding, attracting capital toward charismatic individuals and away from the patient, collective work of teams and institutions. He points to pharmaceutical research, where blockbuster drugs are almost always the product of hundreds of researchers over decades, yet the public conversation about discovery remains fixated on the single "genius scientist". The danger, Bell warns, is that we reward the wrong things: "We celebrate the moment of insight and ignore the ten thousand hours of unglamorous work that made that insight possible."
D. Not everyone is convinced that the lone-inventor myth deserves the blame it receives. Dr Rita Kos, a technology policy analyst, acknowledges that major innovations are collective achievements but cautions against overcorrecting. The narrative of the individual genius, she argues, performs a useful social function: it makes ambition legible. Young people need examples of what an inventive life looks like, and abstract descriptions of "collaborative ecosystems" are far less motivating than a story about one person changing the world. To strip the myth entirely, Kos warns, risks draining the romantic energy that draws people into science in the first place.
E. Professor Alan North, a cognitive scientist, offers a different angle. His research suggests that the perception of the lone inventor is partly an artefact of memory. When we look back at innovations from a distance, the many contributors fade, while one or two names become prominent because of a single dramatic moment — a patent, a public demonstration, a well-timed publicity stunt. North's evidence comes from studies of contemporary scientific teams, where even the scientists themselves misattribute credit: in experiments, co-authors consistently overestimate their own contribution and underestimate others', a bias that only grows with time. The lone inventor, in this view, is not a lie but a cognitive shortcut.
F. The debate is not merely academic. How a society imagines invention shapes how it educates, funds and rewards the next generation. If innovation is best understood as a collective achievement, then investment in open collaboration, shared databases and team-based training is the rational response. If, on the other hand, individual genius is the decisive ingredient, then competitive fellowships, patent prizes and star-culture in universities make more sense. The evidence, Chen and her colleagues argue, points toward the first model — but the story we tell ourselves still stubbornly prefers the second.
Questions 1–5
Look at the statements (1–5) and the people (A–D) below.
Match each statement with the person who expressed it.
People
- A Dr Sarah Chen
- B Professor James Bell
- C Dr Rita Kos
- D Professor Alan North
1. The lone-inventor narrative serves a useful purpose by inspiring young people.
2. The belief in solitary genius partly reflects how our memory simplifies the past.
3. Innovation depends more on shared knowledge than on any single individual.
4. Honouring the individual genius misdirects the funding that innovation actually needs.
5. Removing the myth entirely could remove an important source of motivation.
Questions 6–7
Choose TWO letters, A–E.
Which TWO of the following ideas are attributed to Professor James Bell?
- A. Individual inventors are always unqualified for the recognition they receive.
- B. Funding decisions are distorted by the popular image of the heroic inventor.
- C. Pharmaceutical research is a clear example of collaborative discovery.
- D. Patents should be abolished in favour of collective credit.
- E. Public discussion of scientific breakthroughs should focus on single scientists.
Questions 8–13
Complete each sentence with the correct ending from the list, A–H.
8. Chen's study of 150 innovations concluded that... 9. Bell argues that the lone-inventor myth is harmful because... 10. Kos accepts that innovations are collective but warns that... 11. North explains the prominence of certain names by... 12. The way a society imagines invention affects how it... 13. The final paragraph suggests that current investment strategy...
| A. ...it rewards individuals over the teams that actually do the work. | |
| B. ...all major breakthroughs are the product of solitary genius. | |
| C. ...our cultural stories still lag behind the evidence. | |
| D. ...dramatic moments tend to stand out in retrospect. | |
| E. ...prior shared knowledge played a decisive role. | |
| F. ...the right narrative may inspire the next generation. | |
| G. ...funds and educates the people who will invent the future. | |
| H. ...pharmaceutical research should receive less public funding. |
答案与解析
Which person (1–5)
- C（Kos："makes ambition legible... motivating"）
- D（North："an artefact of memory... cognitive shortcut"）
- A（Chen："collective infrastructure... rests"）
- B（Bell："skews research funding"）
- C（Kos："risks draining the romantic energy"）——注意第 1 和 5 都指向 C，这是真题的常见设计（一人可被选多次）
Two letters (6–7)
B and C（Bell："skews research funding"=B；"blockbuster drugs are almost always the product of hundreds of researchers"=C。A 的 "always unqualified" 太绝对；D 未提废除专利；E 与 Bell 的观点相反）
Sentence endings (8–13)
- E（Chen："depended on a web of prior contributions... shared scientific knowledge"）
- A（Bell："reward the wrong things... reward the moment of insight"）
- F（Kos：abstract descriptions less motivating than story of one person）
- D（North："one or two names become prominent because of a single dramatic moment"）
- G（F 段："how it educates, funds and rewards the next generation"）
- C（F 段："the evidence points toward the first model — but the story we tell ourselves still prefers the second"）
备考要点
- 人物观点匹配：注意第 1、5 题答案都是 C（Kos），真题允许重复选择同一人
- 多选题陷阱：含 "always / abolish / less" 等绝对词的选项（A/D/H）通常排除
- Sentence completion：注意同义替换——"collective infrastructure" ≈ "prior shared knowledge"（E）
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