5. The ends of modern centuries have been greeted with both apocalyptic anxieties and utopian fantasies. It is not surprising that both reactions have consistently proven to be misplaced. After all, the precise time when a century happens to end cannot have any special significance, since the Gregorian calendar, though widely used, is only one among many that people have devised.
Which one of the following, if true, could be substituted for the reason cited above while still preserving the force of the argument?
(A) It is logically impossible for both reactions to be correct at the same time.
(B) What is a utopian fantasy to one group of people may well be, for another group of people, a realization of their worst fears.
(C) The number system based on the number ten, in the absence of which one hundred years would not have the appearance of being a significant period of time, is by no means the only one that people have created.
(D) The firm expectation that something extraordinary is about to happen can make people behave in a manner that makes it less likely that something extraordinary will happen.（C）
(E) Since a century far exceeds the normal human life span, people do not live long enough to learn from mistakes that they themselves made one hundred years before.
答案C，看过以前发的贴(没什么人回贴)，但题目和选项都还是没看明白。请NN指教。谢谢作者: lololo 时间: 2004-9-12 10:02
The ends of modern centuries have been greeted with both apocalyptic anxieties and utopian fantasies. It is not surprising that both reactions have consistently proven to be misplaced. After all, the precise time when a century happens to end cannot have any special significance, since the Gregorian calendar, though widely used, is only one among many that people have devised.黑体部分就是原文的reason部分，所以要从选项替换的就是这部分。这部分意思说，世纪末的猜测没有任何意义，应为日历也仅仅是人们众多设计中的一个（言下之意是：如果人们采用另一种日历，也许世纪末会截然不同）那看C：基于十个数字的数字系统，100年并不能看成是很长的时间，因为这个数字系统决不是人们创造出来的唯一的东西（言下之一，如果用另一种数字系统，也许一个世纪会是1000年或10年）注意选项和原文有同意改写，很容易辨认：is only one among many that people have devised.和is by no means the only one that people have created.不知这样讲可否明白？请指教！
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