Task 7: New theories (ii)
Choose from sentences A, B and C the new theory which replaced the standard theory.
| Sentence A: The Chinese were the first people to circumnavigate the globe and their maps were available to the early European explorers. |
| Sentence B: The blood circulates round the whole body in two systems - one taking up oxygen from the lungs and the other taking the oxygen to all parts of the body. |
| Sentence C: The continents are not fixed but drift on tectonic plates. Where the plates collide earthquakes and volcanoes occur. |
Standard theory: Until the second half of the twentieth century people believed that the continents were fixed.
Concrete facts: New instruments for underwater exploration showed great rifts down the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Through these rifts magma from the Earth's core erupts, so causing the oceans to expand.
1 |
Standard theory: It was believed that the heart pumped the blood in a pattern of ebb and flow.
New facts: William Harvey in the seventeenth century conducted experiments measuring the passage of the blood through the heart. These experiments proved the theory of the circulation of the blood proposed by Ibn Nafis, an Arab scholar of the thirteenth century.
2 |
Standard theory: European explorers and traders were the first to circumnavigate the world.
New facts: Chinese records show that Chinese explorers of the early fifteenth century were the first to explore and map all the oceans and continents and to circumnavigate the globe.
3 |
