issue11 我们的九月小组-----第二十一次作业

maggie-leeUID: 2220892

题目：ISSUE 47 - "Society does not place enough emphasis on the intellect-that is, on reasoning and other cognitive skills."
字数：582          用时：0:45:00          日期：2006-8-16
第一次限时成功，祝贺一下，但是牺牲了质量，而且大大的。

When asked about the intellect, some people claim that the society fails to put adequate emphasis on it, while some people might hold contrary points of view. As for me, on balance I embrace the idea that our society should pay plenty of attention to both intellect and ability of emotion, feeling, since the two aspects might well supplement each other with different advantages.

To begin with, admittedly, we should attach great importance to the intellect in the process of the social development. As we know, the intellect, which is concerning capability of reasoning, deducting, generalizing, and concluding and so on, can help people to grasp the nature of things and further generalize the laws of social development to promote the further prospect in the future. Take the development of science for example, at the initial stage fewer concrete formulas and detailed quantity analysis exist which centered about the experience of people from life or experiment. Moreover, the temporary conclusions need further advancement and improvement through the approaches with reasoning and other cognitive skills.

However, overemphasis on the intellect would be not a sensible choice, as an old Chinese saying goes, “overemphasis is no worse than nothing". And this can be explained by the potential problems which might be brought by the overemphasis on the intellect. For instance, with pure adoption of ways of intellect, people might tend to analyze things happened to them through the previous principles and old laws one by one, which might do harm to the creative and fresh ideas of people. Common sense tells us that the world never stop changing every day, in other words, the useful laws and theories in the past might no longer apply to contemporary issue. Too much intellect of the reasoning and other cognitive skills possibly constrains our minds and thoughts. In addition, some jobs which is regarded as impossible mission has already been explored deeply by clever human beings, such as the rich knowledge of the outer space and the other planets. In a word, at the current stage, the reasoning and other cognitive skills might be limited to equip us with well to probe the unknown fields.

On the other hand, the emotion, perception, and imagination might lend some support to our exploration of the nature and society. Sometimes, the power and function of perception might beyond our expectation. A case in point is the finding of molecular formula of Benzene by a famous chemist. It is said that the chemist felt extremely disappointed in presenting the molecular formula of benzene for a long time since the experiment had not given a satisfactory result. One day, when he was so tired that he got slept in his lab, in the dream he dreamed that a snake bite its tail which give him a good clue to finally discover the molecular formula of benzene. Possibly the story could to some extent explain the unanticipated surprise and discovery which is resulted from perception and feeling.

Nevertheless, we have to accept that the emotion, perception, and imagination etc is not so perfect, though it might be beneficial sometimes. Such drawbacks include that it is not accurate, and generally it could merely reflect the superficial phenomena which tells little about the truth or underlying laws. Further, too much emotion also leads to subjective and unfair judgment which is quite harmful.

To sum up, the society should place emphasis both on intellect and emotional ability, which both of them bring benefits to our society. In addition, they might supplement each other with different superiorities, which is better than single one is exploited.

fanfancy1026UID: 2126743