【天下无G askme习作】第21次作业，开始有意识纠正自己的废话

askmeUID: 2264776

TOPIC: ISSUE103 - "The study of history has value only to the extent that it is relevant to our daily lives."
WORDS: 608          TIME: 0:45:00          DATE: 2007-2-26

As Bacon, an English philosopher, once said, "History makes men wise.", history has played an important role in explaining changes and providing experience. It, hence, often causes debates and most of them are over the issue: whether it is valuable for us to only study history that relates to our everyday lives. To my view, while some experience from history is out of date, we can benefit from history in most cases.

Admittedly, many experiences from history cannot apply to our daily lives. It is universally acknowledged that nothing would remain the same. Particularly, with technology developing rapidly today, our society is undergoing unprecedented change in many aspects, such as moral, custom and way of life. Thus, what was appropriate in the past might be ineffectual nowadays. For supporting examples, one need look no further than our ancestors. In the ancient time, our ancestors, who earning lives by hunting, consider men with strength excellent for the reason that they are able to gain more food. Nonetheless, nowadays, compared to men with strength, people prefer those with wisdom because the era of technology makes demands on intellectuals. It is the difference in social needs that renders the ancient view ineffectual. In addition, some ideas in history are prejudice. A case in point is that racism in the USA in the past was acceptable. However, today, there is growing awareness of equality among all races so that the prejudice about races becomes out of date.  As a result, when making decision, we should not literally follow what history presents but take into account the resent condition.

However, most of experience from history is available and essential for social development nowadays. Generally speaking, history is a source of knowledge and experience. Inspired by history, people might have a new perspective on the world. Especially, scientists greatly benefit from history. When discovering the theory of gravity, Newton said, “if I have been looking further, it is because I have been standing on the shoulders of giants." This saying is to point out that everything scientists discover is based on the effort of those scientists in the past. Thus, it is history that provides necessary impetus and inspiration for scientists. Were it not for history, science would be on the march in the darkness. Compared to science, artists reap as much from history as scientists. Excellent as Beethoven was, he fulfilled the transition from classical music towards romantic music owing to the musical knowledge of Haydn. In other words, Beethoven attributed his achievement to the history. Thereupon, when properly harnessed, history is a vital source of experience.

Furthermore, not only does history provide experience, but also it favors us guidance in order to avoid mistakes. As we know, while many people succeeded in history, most failed. Although these people cannot exemplify as paradigms, they are able to point out where mistakes and risks are. This statement brings immediately to mind the perpetual motivation machine. Once upon a time, encouraged by the illusion of inexhaustible energy, thousands of scientists, engineers, and amateurs devoted all their lives to this machine. At last, all of them failed. Nevertheless, we can learn from these failure that this machine cannot be realized and spend our money and energy on other aspects. That is to say that failures keep people from repeating failures. With failures in history, we go a long way towards our aims. Accordingly, we should learn from history so as to avoid mistakes.

To sum up, while history makes little sense in some aspects, we are able to benefit from it in proper way. When learning experience and failures in history, we make progress.


TOPIC: ARGUMENT177 - The following is a letter that recently appeared in the Oak City Gazette, a local newspaper.

"Membership in Oak City's Civic Club-a club whose primary objective is to discuss local issues-should continue to be restricted to people who live in Oak City. People who work in Oak City but who live elsewhere cannot truly understand the business and politics of the city. It is important to restrict membership to city residents because only residents pay city taxes and therefore only residents understand how the money could best be used to improve the city. At any rate, restricting membership in this way is unlikely to disappoint many of the nonresidents employed in Oak City, since neighboring Elm City's Civic Club has always had an open membership policy, and only twenty-five nonresidents have joined Elm City's Club in the last ten years."
WORDS: 454          TIME: 0:30:00          DATE: 2007-2-26

Giving some facts and analyses, the argument that the Oak City (OCG) should be available to people living in OC seems logical. However, a careful examination of this argument would reveal that the arguer fails to take into account the benefit from admitting people living elsewhere.

To begin with, the argument falsely rests on the assumption that people who live elsewhere cannot understand the business and politics of the OC. However, this is not necessary the case, nor does the arguer provide any evidence to substantiate this crucial assumption. It is highly possible that by comparing the OC with other cities, people who live elsewhere are able to discover the shortcomings of the business and politics in the OC. For example, in other cities, policies to attract excellent companies are successful so that people living elsewhere could find out the disadvantage in policies in the OC and thus promote the economic level here. Without ruling out this possibility, the conclusion is unconvincing.

Furthermore, even if people living elsewhere do not pay city taxes for the OC, it does not follow that they do not know how the money could best be used to improve the city. It is equally possible that many people who live elsewhere are economic experts, who might have successful experience in other cities. If so, inviting them to discuss local issues could help residents in the OC make best use of taxes to ameliorate the OC. As a result, without weigh the proposal against alternatives, the conclusion is premature at best.

In addition, although there are points of comparison between the OC and the Elm City (EC), many dissimilarities remain. The argument, relying on the assumption that the OC is analogous to the EC, is too weak. Perhaps, the EC is a city full of people working for a short time. If so, most of nonresidents are not interested in local issues and it is unnecessary for them to join any club in the EC. In the contrast, if the nonresidents in the OC are businessmen , they might be interested in join the club to discuss local issues for the reason that most of issues would perhaps have much bearing on their incomes. If so, it is necessary to admit nonresidents in the OC to join the club. In short, only relying such a simply mimicry, the arguer cannot confidently draw any firm conclusion.

To sum up, the conclusion lacks credibility because the evidence cited here lends no strong support to what the arguer maintains. To strengthen this argument, the arguer should provide more evidence regarding the difference between the OC and the EC. To better evaluate this argument, we need more information about the nonresidents in the OC.