issue47 [0710G ＋U Aug小组] gungun 求拍！谢谢！

SatanicUID: 2362211

TOPIC: ISSUE47 - "Society does not place enough emphasis on the intellect-that is, on reasoning and other cognitive skills."
WORDS: 422          TIME: 00:45:00          DATE: 2007-8-23 17:29:22

When asked whether society places enough emphasis on the reasoning or other cognitive skills, people may find it difficult to come to consensus due to their different backgrounds and conflicting values. As far as I am concerned, I put my partial agreement on this controversial issue and state the opinion that society focuses more in the values than on the intellect.

Admittedly, the history of intellect thoughts recorded from ancient world thousands of years ago. The great ancient philosopher Confucius and his students were focused their study on the cognitive skills, one aspect of intellect. Once he asked his student the question that what knowledge is. After days of meditation, his students had no idea and he concluded his comprehension of knowledge: once you know something, you know it; once you donot know something, you donot know it; -- this is the essence of knowledge. The similar thing happened in the ancient Greece that the poverishimpoverished beggear named Freud was thinking about the cause of things, although sounding reidiculous, and asked and augued with people on the plaza. A European philosophoer once said: reading makes a full man; conference a wise man. Freud's thoughts were formed in the course of arguing with people and led him knowing the essence of the world and turning him to be a distinguished philosopher. Ancient people such as Confusion and Freud thought about the cognition of nature and history of intellect recorded on the advancing of human society.

Although cognitive philosophers were born and philosophical theory was formed and developing, society place much more emphasis on values, the science that are contributing to our daily lives and social developing. The British scientist Issac Newton is a great scientist in the history of physics because of his three classical theory, the law of gravity, the foundation of calculus and the three fundamentalrudimental law in mechanics, and, especially, the last one was honored as a milestone on the developing road of physics. This theory makes the foundation of calculus and modern mathematics which is the basis of other realms like architecture and algorithm, the knowledge of which are transformed into productivity and accelerating the development of modern society.

The invention and inventor are another aspect which society focuses on in the reason that they are the direct impetus of modern productivity. People in old society are in such a seemly embarrassing situation that there were no commuting tools and the only way to move from one place to another is on foot. However this situation was changed by the invention of byciclebicycle and stream engine, the outstanding invention made by Watt in the intuition by watching at the boiling water push up the cover of the pot. The time was greatly receded after the inventing and manufacturing of aeroplane and the time costing from on hemisphere to another reduced to about ten hour which is the human miracle and cannot be imagined by ancient people. Such great development indicates the fast advancing of human civilization which was pushed by the impetus of marvelous inventions and intelligent inventors.

In summary, I partially agree with the conclusion of the author and advocate that society emphasis not only on intellect but science and invention, but it is likely that people will never be able to arrive at the same conclusion on this controversial issue. However, taking into account all the dimensioned discussed in the above analysis might be decisive step out of this dilemma.