issue36几年来第一次用英语写作文,希望大家多多多指教

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The greatness of individuals can be decided only by those who live after them, not by their contemporaries.
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By researching from barbarism to the civilizaition, along with the emergence of many great people, there is a permanent and heated debate over the issue whether the greatness of indiviual should be decided by their contemporaries or by persons who live after them. Albeit the speaker asserts that it is the latter that judge the value of great people, however, the final judgement should depend on a case-by-case basis.

When it comes to the science, I concede that it is quite difficult to evaluate the significance of one theory without long term reserch. As the main purpose of science, in my view, is to explore unknown yet real objects, therfore, one theory must stand up with reality evaluation. With the futher observation to the mysterious world and accumulation of more facts, some theories which were thought to be true may be proved false. For a long period, people believed that the heavier a material was, the faster it would fall to the ground. It was Galileo, the man who experimented and who climbed the Leaning Tower of Pisa and droped various weights, generalized his experiment to the free ball theory which overthrew Aristotle's prejudice after nearly two thousands years. On the other hand, owing to the ignorance of the contemporaries,those hypothesis which were considered absurd are likely to be certified by facts. Paragons such as Einstein's theory of relativity and Copernicus's geocentric theory, respectively, come immediately into mind.

In the realm of art, great achievments is also hard to be recognized immediately. Some people may argue that art can be judged at face value. However, the capacity of judgement is influenced by various factors, such as religious force, culture background and  pesonal education. Many of the greatest artists who we admire now died in obsruity. The most convicing example is Van Gough, the Dutch postimpressionism painting in the ninetieth century. Two of his still life paintings have recently broken down all the records selling for 50 million dollars, while he sold only one paitings in his entire career. Why couldn't Van Gogh sell his paintings? The reason is rather easy. Because at Van Gogh's time, realism played an important role in art and, therfore, it's hard for people at that time to accept the conception of postimpressionism. Another example is Igor Stravinsky, who is now seen as the musicial couterpart of the painter Picasso. When his 'rites of spring' first performance in the orchestra, the Parisian audience, however, rioted. In short, the signifance contribution made by the artists can't be recognized by their contempraries-only by people who fellow them.

However, when it comes to the politics and economics, the statement goes the extreme. As politics serves to solve practical problems and crisis, the action of a politician, which has to do with the temporal situation and environment, is easy to be comprehended and perceived by his contemporaries, who wil be more competent to appraise it than the persons studying it from the historical textbook. For instance, Roosevelt's New Deal dealing with the great Depression in 1930s worked well and the economy of America recovered rapidly in the coming years. Thus, President Roosevelt was considered one of the great leaders in American history not only by historians nowadays but also by his citizens at that very time. Such exceptions commonly exist in the two fields, where one's greatness is better observed by contemporaries.

All in all, from what has been discussed above, we can safely draw the conclusion that in aspect of science and art, it is,  to some extent, unreasonable to value the greateness of people without a history respective, and that in other aspcets, especially in politics, opinion of contemporaries is more rational and cogent.

[ 本帖最后由 iq28 于 2007-6-26 02:14 编辑 ]