试题出自试卷《陕西师范大学2009年考博英语真题》

The center task of an empirical science such as economics is to provide general understanding of events in the real world, and ultimately all of its theories and techniques must be instrumental to that task. That is very different from saying, however, that it must be responsive to the contemporaneous conditions and problems of the society in which it is situated.
If the problems of economic life changed frequently and radically, and lacked a large measure of continuity in their essential nature, there could not be a science of economics. An essential element of a science is the cumulative growth of knowledge, and that cumulative character could not arise if each generation of economists faced fundamentally new problems calling for entirely new methods of analysis. The change of problems and methods would also undermine the training of economists; if the young studied under the old, the young could be confident that they were learning things that were rapidly becoming outdated. A science requires for its very existence a set of fundamental and durable problems.
In economics the most fundamental of these central problems is the theory of value. The theory of value must explain how the comparative values of different goods and services are established. Until that problem is solved, it is not possible to analyze for scientific purposes what will be produced and in what quantities, how the resources will be employed in producing the menu of outputs, and how the resources will be valued. Without a theory of value the economist can have neither theory of international trade nor possibly a theory of money. This central problem of value does not change in its essential content if one seeks to explain values in agricultural or industrial societies, indeed, if the problem of value were so chameleonlike as to alter its nature whenever the economic or political system altered, each epoch in economic life would require its own theory, and short epoch would get short-lived theories.
1.The main idea of the passage is that（ ）.
2.Which is a correct statement of theories and techniques?（ ）
3.If every generation of economists had basically different problems,（ ）.
4.The passage supports which of the following statements about the theory of value?（ ）
5.The word “chameleonlike” in the last sentence is closest in meaning to（ ）.