Terry
Could you explain to me what " 'put the telescope backward'" means?
In perceiving changes, we tend to regard the most recent ones as the most revolutionary. This is often at odds with the facts. Recent progress in telecommunications technologies is not as revolutionary as what happened in the late nineteenth century - wired telegraphy - in relative terms. Moreover, in terms of the consequent economic and social changes, the internet revolution has (at least as yet) not been as important as the washing machine and other household appliances, which, by vastly reducing the amount of work needed for household chores, allowed women to enter the labour market and virtually abolished professions like domestic service. We should not 'put the telescope backward' when we look into the past and underestimate the old and overestimate the new. This leads us to make all sorts of wrong decisions about national economic policy, corporate policies and our own careers.
2017年9月12日 10:46
回答 · 4
2
When we look through a telescope in the intended way, the things we look at appear larger than they appear with the naked eye. The telescope "makes things larger."
It is also possible to look through the telescope backwards--to put our eye at the large, objective end and look as something through the small, ocular end. With some telescopes, this makes things look small and far away. Looking backwards through it, the telescope "makes things smaller."
"Look backwards through the telescope" or "see through the wrong end of the telescope" is a common metaphor for "see things as smaller than they really are."
In this passage, the writer warns that we should not "underestimate the old and overestimate the new." To "look backward through the telescope" at the old would make the old look smaller than it really is.
2017年9月12日
还未找到你的答案吗？
把你的问题写下来，让母语人士来帮助你！
