issue1,急求拍

paleyUID: 2816688

TOPIC: ISSUE1 - "We can usually learn much more from people whose views we share than from people whose views contradict our own; disagreement can cause stress and inhibit learning."

The stater asserts that we are more apt to learn from people who hold the commonground with us than those persist heterodox views and thus disagreement would inhibit learning. His argument is that disagreement could cause stress, this sounds reasonable and inner-logical at the first sight, as could also gain support from our daily experience. It may be really true that we feel nervous when confronted with troublesome disagreement, however, I do not consider disagreement would obstruct learning on the ground that disagreement would made us delve into the derivation of disagreement and attain the final truth after contraversy.

Firstly and basically, it often comes to our experience that we are more ready to tell our ideas in an agreeing environment. For agreeing may bring agreeable feelings,
and agreeable feelings hint us that we could express our ideas freely with no risk being joked or involved in an endless debate. That's the inner character of humanity, and we each human member shares it. An obvious example is that infants imitate his parents’ behaviour and learn his parents' tongue. Just as an famous saying tells "birds of a feather flock together", since they flock together, they learn together. On the other hand, we may sense animosity from disagreeing opinions, which serves to be obstacle for communication. For cognitive disagreement usually lead to oral argument, and oral argument often develop into physical conflict. Since most people do not like being involved into a conflict with an unfamiliar person for an unrelevant issue, few people would choose to show their idea once they sensed the hostility in the environment.

Secondly, however, disagreement plays a critical role in promoting our learning rather than demoting it. Disagreement means we maintain different views to one subject or we provide different access towards one goal. Thus we would have more choices and rational discussion would help us obtain the optimal one. If there is no disagreement, debate would never take place, in which case, wrong ideas could never be corrected and progress would never be made. Besides, disagreement could trigger interspection which would sharpen our mind and perfect our personality. Would all beings in the world take the same color, there will be no color, but if we each take a different chroma, we could make a combination of delicate rainbow together. If all human beings in the world hold the same ground, the world then must be a monotune one. One philosopher says that, if we each have an apple, there are still two apples after exchange, but if we have two ideas, we could possess more knowledge after exchange, for ideas can born ideas.

Thirdly, disagreement may lead to unpleasing debating, unpleasing debating still provides us much knowledge to learn. In this condition, we at least have known that there are different opinions on the earth, and how the different voices may sound like. Stress is the normal product of heat debate, if stress comes can final agreement be far behind? History of science development could prove it to us that great theories came from the discussion between scientist who hold different ideas. One famous instance is the historical debate between Newton and Huygens over the essence of solar. They are both great physical scientists, one holding solar being wave while the other particle, what a contradicting disagreement occurs. A heat discussion took place between them, and finally great theory was reached that solar takes the characters of both wave and particle, so it is wave and particle at the same time. Similar stories also took place between Einstein and Bohr in the growth of quantum mechanics. In the history of science development, the contribution of discussion caused by disagreement could not be neglected.

In conclusion, opinion from people we agree with may sound more acceptable. However this would not add new substance to our original thoughts. Disagreement, in the opposite way, may make us feel nervous but it is also the very time creative ideas are born. So I hold the view that disagreement would not inhibit learning, in contrast, it will call for debate, which in turn would bring us more knowledge.