Issue41 by zephyrqq

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Issue41 Such non-mainstream 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.

完全赞成, 非主流领域在社会中起着非常重要的作用
主体部分为4段
1.非主流领域的研究可以满足人们的某些心理需求
2. 非主流领域的研究曾经是主流科学的一部分，并且促进了科学的发展（占星学与天文学）
3. 非主流领域的研究还有其他主流科学所不课取代的价值：道德教育的功能，为艺术提供灵感，给我们的世界增加神秘和美妙的色彩
4. 非主流领域有其晦暗的一面，但是我们不能因此否认其重要价值。

2008年2月5日10:56:51

Can mainstream science address all problems of our society? And, if the answer is no, how can people deal with those questions which science is unable to answer? Do non-mainstream areas of inquiry, such as astrology, fortune-telling and psychic and paranormal pursuit play a important role in our life? Although someone may despise the pursuit of non-mainstream science, I prefer to agree with the speaker who think highly of it.

One of the virtues of non-mainstream areas, as far as I am concerned, is that they can meet with some of the psychological needs of our human beings. As is know to all, men are born to be creatures with curiosity, who are always eager to know  what will happen to them in the future or whether they can live in another world after their death. Additionally, they have a tendency to be uneasy and worry when they are confronted with something completely uncertain and unexplainable, especially their own destiny. This sense of anxiety and worry even add to their curiosity and their desire to foresee the future and reassure themselves. In spite of the fact that modern science has made the prediction of some natural phenomena- weather, earthquake, tornado and so forth- possible, it’s magic become powerless as soon as people expect it to foretell the future of an individual. Fortunately, areas of non-mainstream inquiry can meet this enduring needs stemmed form human nature. Based on their own systematic principles, these realms equipped with the wonderful “wisdom” to console people, ease their stress and make they feel better by convincing them that future is predictable.

What is more, believe it or not, some of these non-mainstream fields have ever shared some work of today’s mainstream science and to some degree promoted the development of it. Take the inquiry of astrology for example. Believe it or not, at the early stage of human history, astrology and astronomy are inseparable. In ancient China, astrology, which has been viewed as a non-mainstream area presently, was regarded as a mainstream science. The astronomical research institutions then established by government mainly focused on the study of astrology, and almost all the astronomers were astrologers. According the theory of astrology, they based their prophecies on astronomical phenomena. Therefore, they often observed the positions and movements of celestial bodies and recorded them carefully to find omens of something which was going to happen.In this way, they actually contributed significantly to astronomy by keeping a record of numerous celestial phenomena in their own life time, even though their study in astrology might be considered as something like pseudoscience. The case illustrate the point that non-mainstream domains do not deserve being condemned, for the reason that they used to be the attempt of our ancestors to explore the secret of the universe, in this respect, they are the same as science.
  
The importance of non-mainstream areas to society also involves their other values that can not substitute by science. Consider their function of moral education first. Imagine that if a man keeps an open mind to non-mainstream theories, he might fear to do something immoral in the thought that he might have to answer for this behavior latter in his life or in his later life or be punished severely by supernatural forces in another world after his death. On the contrary, even if he is not a noble person, he might prefer to perform some charities in the hope of getting a prize from the God. So non-mainstream areas might help to reduce the rate of crime and make people become more kind to each other. Another value involves their role in almost all kinds of art. The ideas of non-mainstream fields often provide inspiration to the creativity of painting, sculpture, music, as well as literature. By doing this, they embody themselves in aesthetic forms, conveying us a sense of mystery or fantasy or leaving us unutterable longings and agreeable sorrows. If there were no non-mainstream areas, we would live in a world more boring than this one. In a world, mainstream inquiry can not accomplish these moral and artistical achievement of non-mainstream one.

I concede that non-mainstream inquiry sometimes has its dark side. For instance, someone may use fortune-telling to fool people in order to gain money for themselves; while others may even resist science because of the influence of paranormal pursuits. Nevertheless, we should not deny the value of non-mainstream inquiry merely because it may do harm, just as we can not deny the importance of science. Even science has its own negative effect: the ethical crisis roused by the technology of clone, the worldwide pollution as a result of ever-increasing industries, the threaten to thousands of people’s lives caused by the invention of nuclear weapons.

For all these reasons, one does not have to go vary far to see that non-mainstream pursuits plays a indispensable role in our society. They meet the human needs that can not be satisfied by scientific method: they relief us form worry, they educated us to be moral, they also assist the development of science and make our world more interesting by adding mystery to it. It would serve us even better if we can prevent their unfavorable factors.



[ 本帖最后由 zephyrqq 于 2008-3-6 19:31 编辑 ]