【单选题】

I was talking recently to a friend who teaches at MIT. His field is hot now and every year he is inundated(淹没) by applications from would-be graduate students. "

A、lot of them seem smart," he saiD、"What I can’’t tell is whether they have any kind of taste." You don’’t hear that word much now.And yet we still need the underlying concept, whatever we call it. What my friend meant was that he wanted students who were not just good technicians, but who could use their technical knowledge to design beautiful things. For those of us who design things, these are not just theoretical questions. If there is such a thing as beauty, we need to be able to recognize it. We need good taste to make good things. Instead of treating beauty as an airy abstraction, to be either blathered about or avoided depending on how one feels about airy abstractions, let’’s try considering it as a practical question: how do you make good stuff If you mention taste nowadays, a lot of people will tell you that "taste is subjective." They believe this because it really feels that way to them. When they like something, they have no idea why. It could be because it’’s beautiful, or because their mother had one, or because they saw a movie star with one in a magazine, or because they know it’’s expensive. Their thoughts are a tangle of unexamined impulses. Like many of the half-truths adults tell us, this one contradicts other things they tell us.After dinning into you that taste is merely a matter of personal preference, they take you to the museum and tell you that you should pay attention because Leonardo is a great artist.What goes through the kid’’s head at this point What does he think "great artist" meansAfter having been told for years that everyone just likes to do things their own way, he is unlikely to head straight for the conclusion that a great artist is someone whose work is better than the others’’.
A、far more likely theory, in his Ptolemaic (托勒密) model of the universe, is that a great artist is something that’’s good for you, like broccoli, because someone said so in a book. Saying that taste is just a personal preference is a good way to prevent disputes. The trouble is, it’’s not true. You feel this when you start to design things.Whatever job people do, they naturally want to do better. Football players like to win games.CEOs like to increase earnings. It’’s a matter of pride, and a real pleasure, to get better at your joB、But if your job is to design things, and there is no such thing as beauty, then there is no way to get better at your joB、If taste is just personal preference, then everyone’’s is already perfect: you like whatever you like, and that’’s it. As in any job, as you continue to design things, you’’ll get better at it. Your tastes will change.And, like anyone who gets better at their job, you’’ll know you’’re getting better. If so, your old tastes were not merely different, but worse. Poof goes the axiom that taste can’’t be wrong. Relativism is fashionable at the moment, and that may hamper you from thinking about taste, even as yours grows.But if you come out of the closet and admit, at least to yourself, that there is such a thing as good and bad design, then you can start to study good design in detail. How has your taste changed When you made mistakes, what caused you to make them What have other people learned about design Once you start to examine the question, it’’s surprising how much different fields’’ ideas of beauty have in common. The same principles of good design crop up again and again.Good design is simple. You hear this from math to painting. In math it means that a shorter proof tends to be a better one. Where axioms are concerned, especially, less is more. It means much the same thing in programming. For architects and designers it means that beauty should depend on a few carefully chosen structural elements rather than a profusion of superficial ornament. (Ornament i