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这是不限时写的,粗略算了一下可能有一个多小时呢,
刚开始,所以限时可能写不出来太多东西.提纲是以前想好的.
题目
"The greatness of individuals can be decided only by those who live after them, not by their contemporaries."
正文
There had been so many great individualists, including scientists, writers, artists and philosophers, who had people’s affirmation in their of own field of study long after they had passed away; while there also had been enormous numbers of distinguished individualists alike who had achieved accomplishment and obtained great fame while they were still alive. Therefore, whether the greatness of human individuals are decided by people who live after them or by those of their own time remains a controversial topic in discussing about great people’s recognition. As far as I’m concerned, this complicated question can never be solved by an agreement on its answer for it need a close case-by-case analysis.
In the scientific field, great scientists’ achievement on their specialized studying field may always involved long time of hard work and close examination so that the identification of these achievement tend to be difficult to ordinary people who know very little about the methods and basic rules of these fields. Furthermore, the process of testifying these scientific conclusions, sometimes will take years to complete. It is not difficult to find historical examples to illustrate this. Calileo, one of the most distinguished scientists ever in the world, had lived an ignoble life and disdained by the people of his society whose values are dominantly affected by the Pope. Bruno, who had claimed his support to Copernicus’ theory in the cosmos, was cruelly burned at stakes for his skepticism to religion. With the development on technology and civilization, these people finally turned out to be the greatest thinkers and scientists long after their death and even today their great talents and courage in insisting truths are widely praised in our modern society.
While in the field of art, like music, painting, and sculpture and so on, the practitioners of these fields are somehow luckier than the ones of science. Unlike people devoting to science who ought to invest large amount of energy and time to convince people their hypothesis, conclusion and theory, people dedicated to arts just need to show the public how beautiful the music they had produced, how vividly their painting had expressed the visions and how fineness the sculpture had developed by the artists themselves. The greatness of an art can easily judged by face value. And the artists themselves more or less affected by the prevailing aesthetic values in the present society to produce these great creations.
By the analysis above, however, it will be rather superficial to reach the conclusion that people in the scientific world would surely not recognized by their contemporary people and those in art field inevitably receive an immediate affirmation. Exceptions happened in both of the two important fields that greatly influence our social and technological life. Even though it’s hard for scientist to let the world accepts his new theory at once and recognizes his or her contribution, the example of Einstein developing relative theory and gaining worldwide prestige when he was still young existed; even though it’s quite common for people in arts field to get success and gain fame in their living years, there still had been Von Gough’s story told that the genius painter had led miserable life and it was after his death people had truly understood the meaning of his paintings in a very profound and unique way. Therefore, the concept of “greatness” is a rather vague and relative notion that involves people’s judgment, standard, criterion and even existing values. To recognize the individual’s greatness does not depend on a concrete rule. That is to say, we can only “recognize” it but to “decide” it for sometimes it was there and we didn’t reach that far.
In conclusion, there only had been some tendencies but not rules on recognizing the greatness of scientists and artists. People’s capacity of recognizing the greatness, in a large scale, would play more important roles on this issue. It’s not the simple matter of which types of people from the two—the contemporary or the condescending—can decide the greatness. |
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