Issue4 076G myth 小组第一次作业--Hermes

qhx17UID: 142079

TOPIC: ISSUE4 - "No field of study can advance significantly unless outsiders bring their knowledge and experience to that field of study."
WORDS: 526          TIME: 上午 08:03:29          DATE: 2006-10-15

According to the title of the statement no field of study can advance significantly without the knowledge and experience from other fields. It is natural that people may disagree over such a highly controversial issue due to their different identities and experiences. On balance, I agree with the assertion.

For the first place, knowledge and experience from outsiders provide alternative ways to think the question or different views of the question, and may make possible breakthrough, discovery, and creation. For example, the progress of a cultural anthropologist's knowledge about an ancient civilization depends on several other fields' expertise. It is enhanced not only by the expertise of archeologist who unearths the evidence, but also by the expertise of biochemists geologists and linguists, and so forth. By analyzing the hair, bones of mumified bodies, biochemists can determine the life expectancy, general well-being, and common causes of death of the population. A geologist can help identify the source and age of the materials used for tools and goods buried with the death, thereby enabling the anthropologists to extrapolate about the civilization's economy, work habits, lifestyles, and so forth. Linguists can help to interpret hieroglyphics and enable the anthropologists to extrapolate about the civilization's culture, custom and great events. All these make great efforts in the advancement of cultural anthropology.

For the second place, knowledge and experience from outsiders may help people broaden sight in specified field, and reach greater advancement than before, otherwise he of she would be incompetent for building air castle. Another example that involves the area of astronomy is more striking. Space exploration needs more and more accurate tools for observation and measurement, such as telescope technology, the measurement of celestial distance, masses, volumes, and so forth, the theories of which are supported by astrophysicists, and the products of which are provided by mechanical, electrical and computer engineers. Even business leaders, managers, and politicians might play a role in the space exploration process--insofar as major space projects require international cooperative efforts among the world's scientists in variety fields and governments.

For the third place, knowledge and experience from outsider diverse the special field and appear various cross-disciplines which play important roles in our everyday life and the improvement of the quality of life. As far as we known, biochemistry make a great contribution in human progress. Genome research might eventually enable human to recombinant DNA to avoid those undesirable disease and to prolong human lifespan. In the area of medicine, chemists use chemical methods to synthesis drug, such as Vitamin C, and biologists succeed in man-made blood.

Admittedly, without the special field itself advancement the input of outsider knowledge and experience is amount to nothing. Although special field is inextricably related with other fields, it is required to develop independently.
To sum up, due to the aforementioned reasons, the improvement of the special field itself and the assist of the outsider expertise sometimes intertwine to form an organic whole and thus become more persuasive than any single of them, we may safely arrive at the conclusion that any field of study can not achieve significant advancement without neither itself improvement nor the outsider expertise.