issue36 [清凉夏日二组]

leonnieUID: 2216142

题目：ISSUE 36 - "The greatness of individuals can be decided only by those who live after them, not by their contemporaries."
字数：498            日期：2006-7-27

The speaker assets that a person's greatness can be identified by those who live after them, rather that contemporaries. As for me, I strongly agree with the assertion and my points of view are discussed as followed.

One objective reason for my agreement is that it almost takes decades, or even centuries for a person's greatness to be fully evaluated and confirmed, especially in the theoretical sciences. Oftentimes, before a theory is completely confirmed, it takes a long process to prove and disprove by further knowledge and techniques, not only because the theory is usualy startling sophisticated but also because the limited knowledge of that times. In retrospect, Bruno believed that the Earth revolves around the sun, which encountered criticism by contemporaries while it was testified by the invention of telescope; Darwin put forward the theory of evolution, which was outraged by scientific peers but it is now reverenced as one of the greast intellectual revolutions of human history; Hallay predicted a periodic term of a certain comet, which took 15 years to testify, namely, Hally’s comet. By virtue of the objective reasons of the complexity of theories and the limitation of times, it indeeds requries a long period of time for the public to identify the great works.

Another objective reason involves that elites always go ahead of their times. The reason for that is simple: great persons almost possesss preeminent insight and owns paricular perspectives of their times or even the future, thereby they are inclined to capture the truth and reality of the world, which isalmost  impossible for ordinary people to acknowledge. One apt illustration of that point is Monet, whoes famous work "Sunrise" was not understood by his contemporaries initially since he used a large amount of blue as the major color for sunlight, which made it peculiar and obscure for that time. Yet time demonstrates that this work is invaluable and earns its reputation of Impression. Although Monet was not recognizable in his times, his contributions to the arts establish his unchangeable historical status forever.

Obviously, there are many great persons whose works were treated as unchangeable notions in their times while they are questioned, or even overthrowed by the descendents. History is fraught with such illustructions. Newton’s classical mechanic theories were widely accepted as notions that could be applied in every circumstances, while hundreds of years later, Einstein’s relativism claims that the Newton’s theory has defects and could not be used to explain the phenomenon of microworld. Undoubtedly, the relativism shocks the whole world and breaks the myth of classical mechanic theory. After all, the technology and knowledge of human race develops so fast that every theory might be disproved by further knowledge or advanced techniques. In a word, only those theories which withstand by the times can they possess historical values.

From what have been discussed above, the acknowledgement of great person needs a long period of evaluating and testifying. Otherwise, those so-called greatness might be disproved tomorrow, although they are widly accepted today.