[i习作temp] issue179 貌似比较少见的题目 [复制链接]

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电梯直达

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发表于 2009-10-17 00:36:30 |只看该作者 |倒序浏览

ISSUE179 - "What most human beings really want to attain is not knowledge, but certainty. Gaining real knowledge requires taking risks and keeping the mind open-but most people prefer to be reassured rather than to learn the complex and often unsettling truth about anything."

Which one to choose in real learning, the knowledge being proved firmly or that still with some blind spot? I think both of the two is really important in study and are playing a different part separately.
Before discussing about the two different attitude of studying, I want to try to analyze the author's reason for the conclusion that people seems to prefer those knowledge being firmly proved firstly. I think it is possible the result of the nature of human being: the requirement of certainty. It is somehow just like more people prefer trains or automobiles to ships or aeroplanes when having a trip, for people is the kind of animal living on the land and used to be ensured the safety by the ground. No matter how many studies are telling that taking a fight is much safer than taking a train, the born phobia of uncertainty will hardly be wiped out.
By understanding the fact being discussed before, I think it is also nature for people to have greater tendency in attaining knowledge which has already be accepted and demonstrated to be the truth. It is another fact reflecting human's nature of keen on certainty. For example, people are easily accepting the theory of Classic Mechanics, for it can be observed by one's own eye and almost everything around or even the earth itself is following the law. But it will be more difficult to understand Quantum, for the most significant concept is uncertainty. People are more willingly to live in the feeling of everything is just taken care of. And the story about a grandfather even younger than the grandson is so hard to believe that although the Relativity has been proved for thousands of times to be true it is still hard to accept. The same situation can also be found in hospitals. Patients are more willingly to take the medicines of a long history rather than the new ones even though the newest authentic reports have claimed that the latter are more powerful. All of these situations are just a result of the fear of uncertainty, and in almost everyone's mind, certainty somehow equals to safety. That is why people will have a hostility of new things and theories.
But I think actually the zealotry of certainty may harm development of society, for certainty can be understood as staying still in some cases. Imagine a world with nothing new at all. I am sure the world will be so boring that people are doing the totally same thing every single day and even a century has actually no difference of one day. The world will never be improved anymore for there will be no improvement at all. What a terrible picture! As to my observation, it is indeed new ideas and inventions changing the world into what it is today. If Thomas Edison had never made the first electric light, the nights today would still be illuminated by candles. Without Watt's steam machine, the world will be still riding on horses; and if there was no Eniac, the first computer invented in the year of 1964, the world would be probably calculating the world by slide rulers still. In fact, as to observe carefully, we will find the most important people in human’s history to guide are those with distinguish minds. What is interesting, the word of distinguish, with the meaning of excellent, means different at the same time. It reflects the fact from another angle that uncertainty makes break through. Trying something that nobody else has ever tried will open another door of entering the hall of understanding the world.
Certainty and uncertainty are just like the two sides of one coin; they are the complementary to each other and either of which cannot be ignored in our life. The feeling of certainty makes people feel comfortable and the life stable, while the uncertain risks are keys to a higher step. People should try to strike a balance between the two.

其实我有点困惑，看了书上的参考翻译，题目里的CERTAINTY翻成结论，本题目就是讲有关独立思考的问题。
我第一眼看了以后觉得是讲个确定还是不确定的问题，是按这个思路写的。
要是考试时候真的碰到有歧义的词该怎么办呢？
还有，这篇文章，希望大家多多拍砖啊~~