有拍必回,ISSUE 117!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

hedengboUID: 2797857

"The depth of knowledge to be gained from books is richer and broader than what can be learned from direct experience."
WORDS: 888
TIME: 00:45:00
DATE: 2010-7-11 9:22:36


Books can be regarded as one of the most important ways of spreading information and knowledge and even the only useful way before any digital products are invented. There's no doubt that they can provide rich and broad knowledge as our experiences have proved that. However, can they provide even richer and broader knowledge than what we can learn from direct experience? In my opinion, this is fairly right in most cases.

When reviewing the history, we can simply find that ever since the first paper or the first book was invented, our progress of culture and social development has accelerated. It is true that books are the one of the best and most significant ways to store the knowledge. When stepping into the library, seeing thousands of books listed on the shelves, we will sure to be astonished about the amount of information they contents-- that it is almost impossible for us to understand or even read about all the things written in every books. The books of different kinds record the history, the science and almost all the treasures in all the fields developed and accumulate in the river of history. And now, with the development of technologies, we have e-books today. In this case, we infer the books to all the written things conveying the information compared with the direct experience we gain from daily lives or by seeing or touching etc. Without doubt it is the books that push the society forward which makes it possible for us to pass the knowledge from one generation to another precisely.

Without doubt, the books are widely used in every fields-- we gain most important knowledge in different fields from the books. For example, when we started to learning some majors in college, we must learn something already knows. It is almost impossible for us to repeat the experiments the scientists once done and proved them to be right. On the other hand, the books are written by wise and brilliant person. They convey their ideas and express them in the books. In this case, without doubt, the truly good books are deep in thought and hence reading them can be regarded as some kind of communication with the wise person in the past or far away.

But what about direct experience as the author mentioned? Aren't they the most important way and almost the only way we gain new knowledge or find the most important discoveries? The gamble theories, the laws of the motion and the economic thesis are all based on the direct experience with some necessary analysis. That's true, all of them inform us that the direct experiences are so important to us that it could be the pioneer of the society and the base of the knowledge we could read in books. But are the depth of knowledge to be gained from them is richer and broader than what gained from books? To some extant, we cannot deny that, not to mention the top fields in different areas need direct experience, as the learner or the ones who what to gain knowledge, the direct experience can be so important because if we could see and touch something directly, we can have deeper impression with them and remember them more easily or even have a better understanding of them. When doing some experiment when we at schools, we might be more interested in finding the explanations and we might be more easily to learn more.

But what we discuss today is the rich and the broad of the knowledge; the importance of the direct experiences cannot prove that they are richer and broader than books. Although in some situation, we might get more information of them. But as individual experience is so little compared to the whole human history, although the direct experience could be more impressive, it is impossible for us to gain as much information as all the predecessors gained. And in most cases, even we see and do the same thing with our ancestors, we may not be so careful and brilliant to gain the even the same amount of information when facing the same phenomenon. When seeing the apples falling down, can you start thinking what caused it? When you appreciating the beauty of the sky full of stars, can you begin to search the mysteries of the universe. When finding that the continents can be put together, can you devote your life to find whether it is a kind of coincident or caused by something behind them. In this case, the books could provide a better way for us to know more about the world we live in and the history we missed although some of them might not be so impressive or not so right. But I don't deny the individuals or groups could do more than our predecessors in some certain areas through direct experience; after all, this is why the society goes forward.

To sum up, I agree with the author that personal experience can hardly peer with the depth of knowledge we gained from books. What we should do is try to respect and appreciate the knowledge the books conveyed and try to do as much as possible to build a rung of the history to enrich the sea of the knowledge of human beings.