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作业十八:
Issue157"There is no such thing as purely objective observation. All observation is subjective; it is always guided by the observer's expectations or desires."
作业提交时间:2007年11月19日24:00以前
Partially agree
1 There are subjective observations in our daily life.
2 Subjective observations is essential for daily life and art etc.
3 There are objective observations in scientific research.
In this paper, the claim that all observation is subjective and always guided by the observer’s expectation, while appearing in some respects, is an overstatement at best. In my viewpoint, there are both objective observation and subjective observation existing in the real world.
First, there are lots of subjective observations surrounding us. In our daily life, toward the same object, people of different inclinations have different subjective impressions and different judgments in most case. Here is a story about an elephant and several blind men. All of them have to judge what an elephant is alike by their observations. After the careful work, one thinks the elephant is a pillar because he has touched the leg of elephant, the second person insists the elephant is a big fan resulting in his touching of the ear, and the third person considers the elephant is a high wall owing to his touching on the body of the elephant. The result is so different because their differing observing angles. And it is no truer than when we talk the feeling about happiness, pain, pessimist, optimist, historian, programmer, and social problem. Consider the hardhat’s work. Most of us consider that his life is too hard and tedious to work with bricks and the hardhat is unpleasant to do this job but has no other choices. Nonetheless, when I ask the hardhat how he feels about his tough work, to my surprise, the hardhat is very proud and gives me an expressive answer that he feels good to play with the bricks because he is building an edifice as a masterpiece and he also make his family’s members live better due to his hard work.
In addition, the actual situation of society can improve and develop due to the passion, desire and commitment of society. All of us have our expectations and desires, we have been working hard to live more comfortable and by these processes, the society makes big progress. And especially, the passion and desires are essential elements for artists because they are always their resources of inspiration. Consider the great musician Beethoven who was blind in his last years of his life, but he still remained gracious passions and composing desires, and a Beethoven symphony is the last word on human endurance. Certain arrangements of color and movement satisfy us over a long period of time, like the ballet Swan Lake, for instance, or Impressionist paintings.
However, when relevant to science such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, history, the facts exist in objective observation and they may be ignored but can not be altered. For example, in history the Earth-centered theory had been developed by an astronomer named Ptolemy, who lived in Alexandria, Egypt. After 1600 years later of Ptolemy, Copernicus came up with a different idea by careful observation about the motion of planets. He was sure that the Sun is the center of our solar system and that Earth and the other planets go around the Sun. He was right, of course. Today, we think of Copernicus as the founder of modern astronomy. And the scientific observation is wrong at sometimes but it can not be wrong all the time. So in science research, we always try to do objective observation to get near to the truth, and we should equip ourselves with the correct theories to eliminate the feints, utilize the advanced apparatus as much as possible, retry the results by standard methods to avoid the misplay by accident, and have the careful and factualistic attitude.
In sum, when it comes whether there is such thing as purely objective observation, I still insist that there are both objective observation and subjective observation. In our daily life and some imprecise subjects such art, music and poem, we should have make observation with passion and desires and when doing scientific research, we should make our observation as objective as possible. |
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