7月20日作文
ISSUE 40
40. "Scholars and researchers should not be concerned with whether their work makes a contribution to the larger society. It is more important that they pursue their individual interests, however unusual or idiosyncratic those interests may seem."
分类：社会
Over immersed, as well as shocked, in the variety of fruits of the progress in the science and technology, folks are more easily to overlook the role of the scientists and their great creativeness. Actually, it is the personal interests, instead of the awareness of the human destiny, dominantly drive the scientists to explore the unknown fields in the different subjects. Therefore, the society should leave broad room of freedom of individual interests so as to promote the diversified ways of thinking, and then the academic world and overall innovative capability of a whole country will flourish.
To begin with, which field or branch of scientific knowledge, especially for the theoretical knowledge, will contribute the society is by far difficulty to be predicted. Therefore, it is ridiculous to simply judge a research from its practical meaning and decided whether it should deserve funding. In history, many games, which used to be regarded as meaningless or time-killing, have evolved into the significant theoretical basis of practical technique. The number theory was no more than the game of those intelligent noble for leisure in the past, has been used to decode the Japanese telegraph since the World War. As well as the most famous equation, e=mc^2, proved by the Einstein, originally, are deemed as having no relation with the any usefulness in a long time, having directly promoted the construction of nuclear bomb and the usage of nuclear power. As the famous mathematician Leonhard Euler’s saying(my paraphrase), the more abstract a discovery it is, the more potential usefulness it have.
Secondly, the some technologies, whose contributions have been emphasized too much beforehand, actually fail to benefit as much as people expected. The bubbles of internet technologies have been taken seriously during the beginning of the 2000s. Tremendous investment was spent on every related industry or firm, however it is relevant with the internet technologies. However, the bear market after several years smashed people’s golden dream——the internet could not produce so much wealth as people thought. As well as the Hi-Fi technology developed by the Japanese television companies in the 1990s, once took advantages in the market and compete with Western made, but was overwhelmingly defeated by the digital TV since 2000s.
Furthermore, more and more evidence proved there is positive relationship between the high intelligence (creativeness) and mental diseases, though not all the mental disordered people contained in this set. The typical idiosyncrasy of those intellectuals, such as social isolated, indifference, fragility, over-sensitiveness etc, somehow reflect their outstanding wisdom. And what have been deemed as the deficiencies of personal characters, now have been corroborated as kinds of mental or psychological diseases. Nikolai Gogol, Vincent Van Gough, Alexandre Dumasfils, Ernest Hemingway, Albrecht Dürer, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Pascal, Hegel, Paganini, Chopin, Balzac, Goethe, Virginia Woolf, Isaac Newton and John Nash Jr. have been harassed by the schizophrenia，which might in turn brought them the ability of relating different things in one thought. And epilepsy have been found among Baron de Montesquieu, Moliere, Bloc, Dostoevsky, Handel, Flaubert. The suffers of irascible mental disease includes Freud, Kant, Levi Trotroy, Levitan, Dickens.
Even Albert Einstein, Ampère, and Copernicus are suspected of being Depression or Eisenmenger"scomplex. Nor can we forget the famous movie, named Rain Man and acted by the Dustin Hoffman, states the amazing ability of calculating in one suffer of Autism. So the society should tolerate but not mock or discriminate the odd behaviors or habits appeared in the intellectuals as well as the common suffers.
To sum up, although some researches are clearly beneficial to the society and could be supported by the direct funding from the government, in most of the cases, the academics is similar with the game of some people. Scholars engaged that because they really got enjoyment but not some motives of altruism. And to some extent, the protection of civil right of society is really conducive to these activities, for the reason that those high intelligent but eccentric have their autonomy to do what they want unless hurting someone. So the more liberty of action for people, the more creativenesses the society owns.
发表于 2010-7-23 19:44:33
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