Posted by Linqi Wu on October 30, 19102 at 23:16:45:
Many people assert that to recognize the limits of our knowledge and understanding will hinder our acquiring new information and facts. I agree with them insofa as overemphasizing the limitation is a block for accessing original ideas. However, in my view, while we are pursuing abundant new information, we should not ignore the importance of realizing limitations. I will provide the several following reasons to surpport my opinion.
In the first place, new facts and information added to our knowledge deepen and broaden our understanding of the unkown. They play a key role in enriching materials for our thinking and researching in academic area or professional field. Moreover, the benefit those information produce are ,in my view, both perceptible and profound. In the physical science, it aids human beings not only further to ackowledge the whole natural world in which they live but also inventing numerous inplements which are advantageous for their life; in the social science field, it promotes a tendency toward sufficiently ackowledging our history , enriching social ideology, and even creating democatic civilization.
In the second place, recognizing the limits of our knowledge and understanding help us aimnessly and efficiently study new information. As we know, as the developing of our teconology, more and more new materials were displayed before us. Yet, confronting with these sufficient new information, how does one distinguish the information which is really useful in promoting our study aimnessly and efficiently. Certainly not by accepting all without choosing . Thus, we should at least know the limitations about what we have know. Inaddition, only in the case of recognizing the limitations of our knowledge and understanding, do we find the essential point and even seek for the new information initiatively instead of receiving it passively. As a consequence, to study purposefully is more accessible to success.
Admittedly, overemphasizing the limit may hinder our effort to explore new frontiers of knowledge. Overemphasizing the limit, like overstressing the disadvantage of a person, tends to confuse others¡ª¡ªdistorting their confirmation of achievement that they already had, enhancing their circumvent of their research and even delegating their confidence of success. All these mentioned above are harmful to any academic area or professional field.
In conclusion, it must be explained that these three reasons sometimes interwind to form an organic whole and thus become more persuasive than an one of them. So based on the above discussion, it is not difficult to conclude that the importance of recogonizing the limitations of our knowledge and understanding is equal to aquiring new facts and information. However, we should avoid overemphasing this importance in our study.