“Failure is Mother to Success”, a more popular and more widely publicized version of “Only through mistakes will there be discoveries and progress”, has been advocated and championed as an adage of encouragement perhaps since our early childhood, by people ranging from kindergarten nurses, teachers of elementary through middle to senior high schools, to university professors, and even by employer to his employee in the moving story at IBM involving Watson and one of his vice presidents. Admittedly, it is totally possible for Paul Ehrlich, one of the few exceptionally talented scientists in the world, to discover—perhaps under the encouragement of his childhood axiom—a syphilis-curing drug (which he symbolically named “Formula 606” as an indication of his perseverance, for he failed for the first 605 trials in developing the drug), thereby making important contributions to the progress of medical science as a whole. Nevertheless, it should also be pointed out that it is seriously misleading to take this apparently encouraging remark as a lifelong principle and to live by this principle. Imagine how you would think if you, still committing mistakes in your great seniority, were approached and admonished with this “motto” by your grandson, who received it from his father to whom it was precisely you that had handed it down innumerable decades ago?
The process of “making mistakes”, especially when it is connected with “making discoveries”, strongly implies that a human agent, presumably a scientist, is engaged in an act of highly positivistic and empirical scientific research. However, with life being so transitory, we should keep in mind that the wealth of scientific knowledge accumulated by the scientists who precede us can help us effectively and directly head toward discoveries and progress by bypassing possible pitfalls and mistakes. The fact that we can exploit existing scientific findings in a more speedy and fruitful manner precludes us from the necessity to achieve scientific progress by resorting to mistake-making as a source of knowledge, as is advocated by the foregoing argument.
Moreover, the proposition that “only through mistakes will there be discoveries and progress” induces the illusion that, as long as researchers keep on undertaking trials and experiments regardless of efficiency and cost, victory will be there automatically and inevitably. The proposition that perseverance will ultimately lead to discoveries and progress further implies that every scientific effort would end up in success. There would never be such a thing as resignation or giving up halfway, as if success can always be guaranteed by an “anti-failure insurance company.” But there are instances in which certain scientific missions have to be terminated eternally because the prospect of a discovery is indeed bleak. If we allow ourselves to cherish the blind faith in an ultimate victory, two serious consequences would ensure thereof. On one hand, those mistake-makers would comfortably indulge themselves in committing infinite mistakes, and even blind mistakes. It would scarcely occur to them to make opportune reflections on their sustained failures and to seek fresh and more efficacious perspectives and methodologies. It is pathetic to expect the occurrence of the final miracle which in actuality might would occur. On the other hand, this will also give rise to the development of magnanimous but ill-fated tolerance on the part of the general public for mistake-making. In this case, the general public itself live under the illusory misconception that the perpetrator of constant mistakes would eventually evolve into a scientific genius, given enough time. It is absolutely conceivable that, by being exonerated for committing “innocent and necessary” mistakes, the perpetrator tends to contract inertia and indolence on one hand and become increasingly irresponsible on the other, thereby resulting in alarming physical wastes of materials and resources.
In connection with this consequence is the cost of making mistakes. Since making mistakes is generally negative, it carries the implication that a cost must be paid for every mistake. And when it comes to the point that the cost of making mistakes significantly dwarfs the possible benefits that can be derived from a trivial discovery, every sensible person would come to the conclusion that the practice of achieving minor discoveries through making costly mistakes should by no means be encouraged.
It might be assumed that, given the incessant emergence of changing circumstances and fresh challenges, making mistakes is ineluctable and hence excusable. This is, at least in part, an ill-founded pretext for being immature. For one thing, a person who commits mistakes under each changed circumstance or commits the same mistake in similar cases can only be characterized as incapable of maturity. Although a definite demarcation line between maturity and naivety can be identified sooner or later in a person’s lifetime, it is hardly logical to say that a mistake-committing senior citizen has not completed his evolutionary process of de-naivetization when he is virtually on his deathbed. Progress, either personal or social, is absolutely impossible in a state of lasting naivety.
As is universally acknowledged, human beings differ from other creatures in that they are rational. This faculty of rationality functions by endowing man with the ability to foresee and to predict, to make full preparations based on past experience and knowledge for the advent of potential adversities caused by changed circumstances. The capacity for foresight makes it possible for man to be prepared in advance for impending problems, thus eliminating and avoiding mistakes.
The proposed argument is seriously flawed on two accounts. In the first place, by the use of the word “only”, it posits the committing of mistakes as an absolute condition for accomplishing discoveries and progress, ignoring the foundational importance of the research performed by those scientists preceding us in leading to scientific discoveries and progress. In the second place, the argument is merely negative, based on the act of being erroneous and even fallacious. A more plausible and compelling explanation for human discoveries and progress is man’s intelligence as a rational being, his long-accumulated experience and knowledge that have been proved effective through practice, his sound judgments, his right methodologies in knowing himself and the world around him, and his correct decision-making in choosing the proper course of action.
------题目------
Only through mistakes can there be discovery or progress.
------正文------
In the modern society with the rapid development of science and technology, how to continue this progress has more and more complex and controversial. Does the mistakes the only way we can through to make discovery and progress? Different people hold different views due to their respective angles. Insofar as I can think, I tend to agree the speaker that only through mistakes can there be discovery and progress.
To begin with, as a Chinese old saying going, " The mistake is the mother of success." which tells as that the mistake can help us to find the reason of failure, then to process in the correct direction. We may all have this experience, when I solve a mathematic problem, once I get a wrong answer. Next I would ask myself why I commit this error. Is there something wrong with the comprehension to the item?
Or perhaps, whether I use a axiom exactly? Form these question, I would eventually find the correct way to solve this problem and gain a deeper understand of this relative principles and theories. It is just a little example, but though this, we would believe that mistake is really a method which can help us to discovery and make progress.
Furthermore, what we have done in the process, which leads to failure, is also a treasure to enrich the knowledge of human beings. Take my experience for example, last term our laboratory planed to design a new software to deal with the cancer detect. We collect much information about the MI (magnetic image) and CT. Whereas, because of the short of the understanding to the cancers diversity, we failed to design such a software. However, we use the information and the technology we got in the procedure, we developed another software called medical image segmentation, which can help doctors to differ different parts of human body. Moreover, the mistake may sometimes bring us surprise. We need look no further to find the example of Flaming, who discovered the penicillin. Because of his inattention, Penicillin could get the change to kill the bacteria round them. This great miss save millions of people' lives.
Admittedly, there are some other ways, which can also lead to progress. For example, we may exchange ideas with others who hold the different opinions from ours. These different opinions, works like fresh air bring us another perspective to consider the same problem. On one in the world can master a problem comprehensively, what we see is just a corner of a giant iceberg. Everyone has his or her unique culture background, knowledge level, and world value. If we collect all these angles all together, we would make a more accurate decision.
To sum up, mistake is a powerful tool for us to discovery and progress. We should confront it bravely rather than frustrate. We would unstop to achieve one discovery and progress another if we rightly deal with the mistake, although the way to success is full of thorn.作者: boancqu 时间: 2005-3-24 17:41:42
占位，明天交！作者: 深谷幽兰 时间: 2005-3-24 18:01:04
占个座先作者: franksky 时间: 2005-3-24 18:32:40 标题: 交作业
还是超时了，比较郁闷
Issue138 第4篇 让砖头来得更猛烈些吧！
------摘要------
作者：寄托家园作文版普通用户 共用时间：52分8秒 509 words
从2005年2月24日10时51分到2005年2月24日11时52分
------题目------
Only through mistakes can there be discovery or progress.
------正文------
As the title above claims that people make discovery or progress, which present the reason that our society improves. Making mistakes just like falling down while a child first learn to walk, without falling, he may never learn how to walk on the ground, and sometimes, mistakes are necessary to discovery and progress.
In the first place, mistakes promote the progress of scientific technology and inventions. At the beginning, scientists acquire little about science and technology, especially in a completely new area, in such cases, they may fail to get a correct research result except a series of mistakes. But the mistakes are very useful, because the scientists realize which way is not correct through mistakes, thus rule out one possibility. Making mistakes is more common in the area of invention, Edison, for example, as an excellent inventor, he contributed to the world greatly with lights, tape-recorder, movie-maker, and so on. As we all know, he also encountered amount of failures and countless mistakes, take lights as an example, he was confused with the problem that the material could not bear high temperature thus damaged after a few hours. To find better lightening material he tries all kinds of materials that he could find, such as hair, thread, wool, wire, copper, and so on. Finally, he succeeded to find what he needed, therefore, citizens could make better use of electric lights. Currently, scientists even discover more lasting materials and invent different kinds of lights to meet different needs.
In the second place, the governments make out better policies to solve social problems through making mistakes. It is very significant for government to take proper measures to handle problems, but it is not always that the society can benefit from the measures, even cause more serious problems. Five years ago, our local government decided to solve poverty problem, and the committees set a fund in the budget that provide money per month to those live under poverty line. But one year later, there were still many poor in local place, and it seemed that their living condition did not improve even worse. As a result, the government carried out another plan, instead of directly allocate money to the poor, they open a part-time class, which designed to teach them with basic living skills and prepare them for some certain profession, this solution turned out to be effective than the former, for the percentage of poor declined dramatically one year later. Mistakes helps the officials to realize the essence of the rub, therefore, they can make policy according to the situation rather than subjectively.
And also, when people cooperate with people, they learn better how to communicate with people that have different background and distinguished character through mistakes. Naturally, when meet a stranger first time, one know little about his interests, career, favorite food, customs and may offend him without realizing that what may be affront in his culture. Clinton, for example, when he visited an African country, he made a gesture which means "OK" in English, but an offensive word in that country, thus had a bad effect on his character even though he did not realize at all, he would be more careful, when he decided to do such gestures in other countries.
In addition, with one learns more on a specific area, his experience accumulated bit by bit, and then he maybe make less mistakes or no mistakes.
To sum up, mistakes play an important role in the process of scientific progress and social development, however, this does not necessarily follow that making mistakes is the only way to find discovery and enhance progress.作者: 天晴了 时间: 2005-3-24 19:04:29
1 定义mistake为unpredictable fault,
2 抓住unpredictable ，证明由于discovery是unpredictable 的，所以only through mistakes can make discoery
3 由于progress是可以预测的，所以不能用only.
也就最后一次同主题了~之前写过这篇~不怎么~改一下再放上来
鬼哥要帮我看啊~我的预感我会考这个~不知道为什么...
138"Only through mistakes can there be discovery or progress."
1失败总是难免的
2犯错误可以~但是我们需要认真的研究错误~成功往往在失败中找到蛛丝马迹
3稍微让步~里面写了乱七八糟的一些其他东西
这个东西是22号写的~当时写之前一个晚上就在想了~写的时候没有超时~不过要计算上想的时间~......超的好严重中~而且好像还是有点跑了....555这样的状态.....
Issue138: 511 words 45 minutes
Only through mistakes can there be discovery or progress.
"Failure is mother to success", the proverb has propagated by generations, and get the admit of people. In human history, we can find many important discoveries or progress are obtained through the endeavor and incessant failure of ancestors. But we should realize that there are many ways to attain success not only through mistakes.
Admittedly, mistakes play a vital role in the development of human civilization. Since we were in childhood, our parents and teachers told us that through committing mistakes, you can find the right way to success. And in the books, we find many important discoveries and progress are related with failure. The well-known scientist Edison had said that, he known a thousand of ways to be failed in producing the light bulb, at the same time he known the only way to successfully to invent light bulb. Also as a postgraduate in biology, I deeply appreciate the position of failure in research. After many experiments which are failed due to many inevitable accidents or reasons, we find the correct method to accomplish my first step which is only one part of the whole task. The failure can make us maintain practical serious attitude towards what we are doing now, after carefully analysis of failure, we can discriminate the only correct way from many illusions and immature minds or behaviors.
At the same time, we must emphasize that it does not encourage people to commit mistakes actively. If people take action under this mind, the progress of society would be nonsense, and many discoveries are only under the cover of dust of history. We should discriminate the passive mistakes and active mistakes, the former is inevitable but the latter can be avoid by our endeavor and effort.
However, though the failure can facilitate us to progress and discover, we must know that in the world there are many kinds of methods that can promise us to make discovery or progress successfully. According to our experiences and knowledge that are handed from our ancestors, we can avoid unnecessary failure to finish our goal. For instance, under the guidance of knowledge, we can discover the new rules and principles in physics, chemistry and other fields; making circumspect and detailed plans before action can permit our science and technology progress rapidly. In the history of human civilization, we also can find many successful discoveries that correctly avoid the unnecessary failures. Under the direction of former theory in biology and thorough consideration in mathematics and chemistry, Watson and Crick proposed the famous spiral theory about the structure of nuclear acid. Therefore, without committing the unnecessary failure, human also can make great discovery or progress.
To sum up, people do not feel frustrated when they meet failure, because after the well-rounded analysis, they can find the breakthrough of these problems. And what need us more attention is that through our thorough consideration and profound knowledge and rich experience, people also can progress greatly, at the same time avoid committing mistakes.作者: sblbasler 时间: 2005-3-25 07:58:27
position: As German poet Goethe once put it, man errs so long as he strives. In my point of view, the progresses and discoveries are truly through process of trial-and error. However, the title statement could not serve as the pretext of serious mistakes made by people.
b1: the progress of people's growing from childhood to adolescence and from elementary schools to college campus is just a process they make self-development through trial-and error.
b2: the merits of mistakes not only limit in the youth, but also could find in adult world.
b3: Furthermore, in moral and political world, the merits of mistakes are also obvious.
b4: However, the title statement should not be presented as excuse for some serious mistakes and delinquency made by our government authorities as well as the society, since the expense of these mistakes are too high to take.作者: xuding_god 时间: 2005-3-25 22:59:15
参考了孙远的提纲
agree
bi: making mistakes bring out valuable experience
b2: from mistakes we will find a new way to approch the success
b3: we should make mistake intellignetly
连接:https://bbs.gter.net/bbs/showthread.php?s=&threadid=258943 有砖必应作者: deserteagle 时间: 2005-3-25 23:13:33
------题目------
Only through mistakes can there be discovery or progress.
------摘要------
B1:经过失败然后的成功很常见的,举例…
B2:只有通过失败才能成功这个观点是片面的,举例…
B3:只有从失败中学习教训,才能成功
感觉提炼观点,说理不够,希望大家给点建议,谢谢了! https://bbs.gter.net/bbs/showthread.php?s=&threadid=258947作者: 枫丹 时间: 2005-3-26 01:53:48 标题: 感觉有些乱了.不知道算不算跑题?
Position: It is well-known that mistakes play a beneficial rold in guiding our actions in life and science, however, the statament that only through mistakes can lead us to discovery or progress is somewhat overstated and misleading.
A.In the field of personal life, human being has to learn from countless experience, accompanying with a myriad of mistakes.(theory:Skinner; example: our childrenhood and our educational experience)
B.In the field of science, making mistakes usually means getting one step closer to success for making one mistake implies excluding one more failure.(example: Carter invented plane, Columbia Incident好象有点牵强)
C.However, making mistakes is not the solely key element for progress or discovery.(Mrs. Courier discovered radium by accident, and other factors)
Ending:The statement overstates the significance of mistakes. After all, one would not attain accomplishments unless one correct it, otherwise, mistakes will necessarily bring about oppression and failure instead.
In the era of the roaring development of society, people often talk about the mistakes. Are discovery and progress made only through mistakes, as the speaker asserts? In my view, mistakes are common thing, it could let us know our weakness and decrease the distance to success continually, but not all the discovery and progress made should through mistakes.
Admittedly, this world is filled with mistakes that emerged every time. Before we do a thing, we would have a explicitly goal, and then we could do it in our own ways. We can not predict the result of what we did. Success or failure is not only depending on someone’s abilities but also the objective of thing rather than only us. For supporting example, one needs look no further than my personal experience. When I was a child, I am very like planting flowers. I think that as long as I water them everyday, they could have grown very well. In fact, many flowers do not need too much water. But I do not know the characteristic of the flowers which is objective, even if I want them grow better. At last, a lot of flowers died for a few days. In short, mistakes is unavoidable because many things is can not change with our mind.
We often hear that failure is the mother of success. It just tells us that mistakes could promote the development of technology innovative, when we get education and training from mistakes. Consider, for example, how we progress in the scientific knowledge. Our scientific method is essentially a call for progress through trial-and error. Any new theory must withstand rigorous scientific scrutiny. One modern example involves a farm chemical named 666. Researchers who find the chemical failed 665 times. They get moral from every failure, and improve their methods continually. At 666 times, they succeed in researching this farm chemical, and therefore named it as 666.Consequently, provided we have right and active attitude toward mistakes, we could make some discoveries and progress.
However, not all discovery and progress made should through mistakes. For example, from the arts aspect, their progress come from themselves’ understand to the society and natural rather than mistakes. Like the impressionist printers, their prints reveal their resentful to the societies’ a variety of frightfulness phenomenon. The deeper they understand the more important problem they reveal. From the natural science aspects, their progress spring from their empirical observation and exploration to the natural. Darwin finds out the original of the species, through a lot of exploration and observation to the natural.
To sum up, when we encounter mistakes, we should have right and active attitude to it in order to making some progress. However, in some other fields, such as arts and natural science, we could also make progress directly rather that though mistakes. In the final analysis, I fundamentally disagree with the speaker’s assertion.作者: situhuizi 时间: 2005-3-29 09:24:40