issue48 [SJTU-ETB6 10G] 第3次作业

dacgileUID: 2367722

ISSUE48 - "The study of history places too much emphasis on individuals. The most significant events and trends in history were made possible not by the famous few, but by groups of people whose identities have long been forgotten."
WORDS: 487          TIME: 01:00:45          DATE: 2007-8-3 20:52:06

Who is the one that made the historical events and trends possible? The statement asserts that the ones are people rather than famous few. I tend to disagree with the statement. From my point of view, however, significant events and trends in history were made possible by the cooperation of key individuals and people.

To begin with, the reason why we call these famous few the key individuals is that they have played a key role in history. Key individuals sometimes determined the process of certain dominations in society, such as science and art. In term of science Galileo is a persuasive example. His experiment which was conducted at the leaning tower in Pisa on falling balls terminated the ruling time of Aristotle's philosophic idea-- the one that heavy ball falls faster than light one. Another instance on art-- exactly literature-- is about a poet in Tang Dynasty-- China, and the poet is Li Bai, one of the greatest poets in Chinese history, who give Chinese poems a huge prompt to its zenith. It is obviously that not only Galileo but also Li Bai are individuals who really promotion the history with only single-handed responsibility.   

Admittedly, equally influential at times are certain groups of people. There always exist situations that individuals could not do all by themselves but people as a whole could make it. For example, history and correlated courses unlimitedly tend to assign the author of Iliad and Odyssey to Homer-- an ancient Greek individual. However, real historical studies committed by historians treat the author not to be Homer but rather to the ancient Greeks. The two poems are considered as the feats of the Greeks who suffered from the Trojan War and the after war times and recorded their feelings in the form of poems. As a result, the two heroic epics Iliad and Odyssey became the precursors of western literature.

However, only asserting that the history is created either by individual or by people is not objective. From empirical evidence we can clearly see that history is generally created by the collaboration of key individuals and people. Key individuals are the ones who can lead the events and trends while people are correspondingly the power to propel them. Both good and bad effects are determined by how the leadership is. In America, Lincoln is the greatest leader who was advocated by people and then led the whole nation to preserve the Union during civil war. While in Germany, Hitler is the one who fired the World War II and led the whole Germany to commit a slaughter of Jews.

In conclusion, without key individuals, the visions of future are limited; without people, the fruition of those visions can hardly be achieved. With a delicate consideration described above, we can safely arrive at the conclusion that both key individuals and people are consequential to the history and that the study should emphasize them together.

[ 本帖最后由 dacgile 于 2007-8-3 21:04 编辑 ]