"为我所用"小组第三次作业issue41

rienziUID: 2402391

求求诸位牛人了，
偶就剩五天了，
一直在闭门造车，
求求你们给看看偶能得多少分
还有应该在哪里着手改进，
求求你们了 :handshake




TOPIC: ISSUE41 - "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."

WORDS: 621          TIME: 00:45:00          DATE: 2008-4-11 21:56:35



    The statement presents an idea which is devious to the normal view of relationship between mainstream science and nonmainstream science, which is often called pseudoscience. It alleges that the several nonmainstream areas of inquiry as has been enumerated play a vital role in society by satisfying human needs. In my point of view, those nonmainstream areas of science can take some positive effects in human society but it is too exaggerated to describe them as vital.
    To begin with, those nonmainstream areas of science can do something good to humankind. This assumption stands on the idea that science can not solve all the problems in our world, at least now. Given this idea, when people can not solve an important problem through science, they will go to those nonmainstream areas of science which always take the function of alleviating the pain of those people. For example, cancer can not be cured by modern medical science. When a person gets severe cancer, his family always can not anticipate that he will survive for long. They are tortured by sorrow. Then, those nonmainstream areas of science can take effect as predicting that the patient will surely survive cancer because he his fate determines it or something. In this case, the whole family can believe the prophecy and maintain a good mental condtion to wait for the death of the patient, even though they do not believe it will happen. In this case, normal form of science can not relieve the pain of the family and those nonmainstream areas of science takes the right effect. Thus, we can tell that nonmainstream areas of science are do taking some positive functions in our world.
    To the opposite, the statement that nonmainstream areas of science like astrology are playing a vital role in our society is not reasonable. We can only affirm their mental functions to people, who are in despair, to relieve pains of sorrow. But, they can not reconstruct the physical world as the normal science has. Sometimes, these nonmainstream areas can cause fatal fallacies to lead people who believe them to a horrible situation. One example is Hitler, the dictator of Germany who had launched the Second World War. From some records we know that he believes astrology and had done predictions from this pseudoscience to lead his war. We can not make the conclusion that the failure of Germany in World War II is caused by astrology, but we can tell that the wrong belief of it had taken some negative effects in the war. Another negative effects of nonmainstream areas of science is the existence of some modern religions in which people worship evil. Sometimes, the leaders of those evil religions use the nonmainstream areas of science to predict something bad and lead their servants to do harm to humankind. This kind of example is not difficult to be made. Thus, we can see that nonmainstream areas of science can not be described as vital role of our society.
    As long as the development of science can not predict everything or solve any problem in this world, the nonmainstream areas of science will not be annihilated by history. In fact, in my view, science can not reach the final aim to predict and solve anything. Sometimes, some result is unreversable.
For example, death. Thus, the existence of the nonmainstream ones is reasonable. We can take them as a drug to relieve the pain of despair of our society, but we can not take them as vital role.
    Given the discussion above, the statement has rightly reveal the positive function of nonmainstream sciences in our world, but it is wrong to allege that they are playing a vital rold in our society.

[ 本帖最后由 rienzi 于 2008-4-12 09:16 编辑 ]