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发表于 2005-3-24 16:53:28
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Issue87 超高频。修改稿
Issue81
"In any field of inquiry, the beginner is more likely than the expert to make important discoveries."
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Some people assert that the beginner is more likely to make great discoveries than the expert in any realm of inquiry. In my view, this statement is unilateral. Both beginner and expert can gain important achievements.
Admittedly, the beginner has some intrinsic advantages to make momentous discoveries. The newcomer into a particular field, who does not hold the conventional viewpoints, is not limited by the existed doctrines and framework. Usually, the beginner has the courage to exploit the virgin soil of this domain that has never been entered. Sometimes the beginner could find a gold mine. Louis Victor de Broglie, who was an aristocrat and a master of literature, suddenly was interesting in quantum theory at his 27 yeas old, and began to study physics for a Ph. D degree in 1919. In quantum theory, de Broglie was a thorough beginner and after five years' study he did still know few or little about it. When he writing his Ph. D thesis, de Broglie guess that any elementary particle, besides photon that Einstein mentioned before, has wave-particle dualism and offered an equation. This opinion, which was never dared to think about by physicists, burst like a shell over the realm of quantum theory after 2 years. Finally de Broglie gained 1929's Nobel Prize of physics and his theory of wave-particle dualism became one of foundational theories of quantum physics. This example is used to point out that though a few beginners can make important discoveries indeed, it needs very insightful thinking and enough luck, to some extent.
However, beginner has his inherent disadvantages, too. Novices who are just starting to learn or do something have not be well trained by systematical education and could not understand the whole field deeply, which would obstruct them to get significant achievements. The institute of mathematics in Chinese Academy of Science receives hundreds of letters from amateurs every year, each of them claims that he has proved Goldbach's conjecture. But the mathematicians find that most of these demonstrations lack the elementary knowledge of the number theory, and none of so-called demonstrations can be verified. After all, the lucky geniuses like de Broglie are fewness in the world. Ordinarily, most productions are still made by expert.
In this era of rapid science and technological change leading academic disciplines to become more and more specialized, even if an expert can only research through a narrow direction. The expert in one field is probably a beginner in another realm, and many experts enter into the unacquainted domains as "beginners", who possess two-sides merits of both expert and beginner. This kind of "beginners" who usually accepts good training, can make use of their former knowledge to the new domain, and not be restricted by the existent boundaries, so they are able to make significant discoveries frequently. Thomas R. Cech, whose original major is chemistry, turn to study for a Ph. D degree of life science. During first faculty, he researched the rRNA processing with his former chemical background, and found that group I intron, a type of RNA, can catalyze its self-splicing reaction. It broke the inrooted idea that only protein can be catalyst of biochemical reaction and caused Cech to win the 1989’s Nobel Prize of chemistry. As a beginner in biology, Cech could break through the rooted limit; without the chemical background, he was not able to explain the mechanism of the catalytic RNA and accomplish the achievement finally.
In sum, it is presumptuous to assert that in "any" field of inquiry, the beginner can more likely make important discoveries than the expert. The advantages of beginner are courage and creativity, as well as the expert's mastery. Whatever beginner and expert want to gain significant achievements must combine these merits together. |
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