August 16, 2008

Issue 55

"Failure is the mother of success." Undoubtedly, most people think mistakes contribute to significant discovery or profound progress. However, discovery or progress do not necessary come from mistakes, and mistakes do not always lead to success, either. 

Indeed, though mistakes, people re-think the procedure, improve the skills, or modify the theories. This process is very common in the acdemic field. Usually, scientests and engineers many different kinds of theories trying to explain one phenomena, then they design and conduct experiments to varify the theories. However, the results are not always correspponding with pervious theories, in othe words, it must have some mistakes in the theories. So scientists and engineers begin to modify the theories, making them perfect enough to accord with the observations. Though the "trial and error" process, eventually, they will find the correct apporch to explain. 

Besides, when conducting an experiment, some mistakes also occurs. An abscent-minded scientist may accidentally add a wrong chemical to a solution or incautiously press a wrong bottom. These mistakes usually lead to unwanted but unexpected results, sometimes, a new discovery. For example, a new plastic was discovered because of a cat played in the laboratory, then accidently overturn a cup of plasticizer. The plasticizer mixed with the previous solution, and the two made a undiscovered, hard and tough plastic. That's how mistakes lead to new discovery and progress in the field of science. 

In politics, as well as in science, significant progress comes after mistakes. Whenever a government put a new policy into practice, there may be some voice against it, or the efficiency is not as good as anticipated. The government must listen to these voices and find a way to modify the policy, then avoid the same kind of mistake happens again. Like Mainland China, which embraced Communism in the 1940s', trying to carry out a total Communisim policy. The result, however, was a big economic recession lasting nearly 30 years. From the lesson, China learned that capitalism was better for its developement, therefore become prosperous in the early  21st centurty. That's how mistakes lead to progress in politics. 

However, sometimes mistakes cannot make any progress, which happens when the mistakes causes enormoous loss. Consider a surgeon performing an operation, when he accidentely cut one artery, this kind of mistake will not make any progress at all. Sometimes, discovery does not necessary come from mistakes but from coincidence. For example, our ancestors knew how to use fire because of they saw lightening hit a tree and caused fire. 

In sum, some mistakes do contribute to discovery or progress, but some do not. It depents on the properites of the mistakes. Generally speaking, as long as the person who confront the mistake careful enough, he or she will find something new or think up a new procedure though the "trial and error" process.
 

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Personal Category: AWA Topic: learning / education

Reply
  • 1樓

    1樓搶頭香

    啊啊 我倒底是不是材料系的啊

    例子2:1895年倫琴Roentgen, Wilhelm Conrad倫
    琴正在準備進行陰極射線實驗,卻意外發現一種穿透性
    極強的射線,稱為X射線,不論什麼東西都擋不住,只
    有鉛才檔的住;而且它不同於一般光線,三稜鏡並不能
    使它折射、也不受磁場作用產生偏移。

  • chen37037 at August 16, 2008 04:10 PM comment | prosecute
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