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[B]"Such nonmainstream areas of inquiry as astrology, fortune-telling, and psychic and paranormal pursuits play a vital role in society by satisfying human needs that are not addressed by mainstream science. "[/B]
We are living in an era of ever increasing rapid development of science and technology. Everyday there are many scientific discoveries and technological innovations taking place, which have great impact on our way of life. In the process, while mainstream science develops fast and is gaining more and more important position in the field of inquiry, such nonmainstream ones still have their own market among the society. It is somewhat true that they satisfy human needs that are not addressed by their counterpart, this role cannot be a vital one.
Recall the history of the development of science, though quickly, there are certainly some kinds of limitations at a specific time. Such mainstream science, such as astronomy, while there are not sufficient past records of various phenomenon happened and lacking of accurate observation instruments, probably cannot cover all the disciplines in the field. For example, when there was no convincing explanation about how solar eclipse happened, the ancient Chinese people referred that the part of the Sun suddenly disappeared was eaten by a dog living in the universe. This is absolutely absurd according to knowledge we have gained now, but it does indicate that mainstream science has certain limitations in that it cannot effectively explain some affairs, and this, in turn, give way to the presence of those nonmainstream areas of inquiry.
Therefore, when people meet something that cannot be successfully interpreted by mainstream science, they retort to the nonmainstream ones. People need acceptable explanations to things that are happening around them all the day, and if this cannot be achieved, they may even feel upset. For example, there was a period of time in the history, that people thought that the flaring fire in the night in the cementry was the "ghost fire". And when the mainstream science could not explain this phenomena, people were likely to accept this nonmainstream point of view since even it sounded horrible, it in fact gave some sort of explanation, and therefore met the people's need to know what was about certain phenomena while mainstream inquires could not provide.
However, such role played by those nonmainstream science should be take care of. Although they can satisfy human needs that are not addressed by mainstream ones for those individuals, they are actually damaging the whole society. Because they never show the right aspects of things, they don't indicate the right direction of current development of mainstream science, and what's even worse, they sometime distract people from the correct way of living. For example, when someone encounters continuous failures in his life, such like unemployment, divorce, or natural disasters and so on, he would likely feel depression and go to someone announces that he can tell one's fortune. The "oracle" may tell the person that it is just his fate, he cannot deny it but to accept, the potential effect may include suicide. However, this is not the right attitude that everyone should take when facing difficulties in our lives. Psychologists would likely to tell him that there is no such kind of thing, such as fate or destine that intrinsically decide the path of one's life, but one's attitude that always being optimistic and look very ahead to try to change the current frustrating situation and finally live a better life will help to overcome the obstacles. In this sense, the role of such nonmainstream science are playing is not vital, but fatal.
Therefore, we should keep in mind the notion that the nonmainstream science are actually doing harm to the society. Take the person mentioned in the previous paragraph, if the man accepts what the "oracle" says about his life, he would probably feel that there is no hoping left in the rest of his life, and some kind of tragedy is likely to take place. Someone may say one person is not worthy of that attention, but what if there are tens, hundreds, or even thousands? No one under such circumstance will think it's not worth mention. For the society, an important of its responsibility is to tell its citizens that such nonmainstream areas of inquiry don't give any practical assistance, they are just trying to pull people out of the right direction.
Along with the development of the mainstream science, we are likely to know more about ourselves, our societies, our Earth, and finally the very universe. What we can expect is that along with new discoveries, there will also be something that mainstream science cannot render a convincing explanation at some time and therefore, the presence of such nonmainstream science will likely to continue. However, we should bear in mind that they are actually doing harm to the society, evening meeting some needs of human beings.
这篇感觉烂了。当初第一眼看题目就觉得有点难。大家帮忙砍啊! |
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