| 嘉文博译Sample
Essay
“Failure
is Mother to Success”, a more popular and more widely publicized
version of “Only through mistakes will there be discoveries
and progress”, has been advocated and championed as an
adage of encouragement perhaps since our early childhood,
by people ranging from kindergarten nurses, teachers of
elementary through middle to senior high schools, to university
professors, and even by employer to his employee in the
moving story at IBM involving Watson and one of his vice
presidents. Admittedly, it is totally possible for Paul
Ehrlich, one of the few exceptionally talented scientists
in the world, to discover—perhaps under the encouragement
of his childhood axiom—a syphilis-curing drug (which he
symbolically named “Formula 606” as an indication of his
perseverance, for he failed for the first 605 trials in
developing the drug), thereby making important contributions
to the progress of medical science as a whole. Nevertheless,
it should also be pointed out that it is seriously misleading
to take this apparently encouraging remark as a lifelong
principle and to live by this principle. Imagine how you
would think if you, still committing mistakes in your great
seniority, were approached and admonished with this “motto”
by your grandson, who received it from his father to whom
it was precisely you that had handed it down innumerable
decades ago?
The
process of “making mistakes”, especially when it is connected
with “making discoveries”, strongly implies that a human
agent, presumably a scientist, is engaged in an act of highly
positivistic and empirical scientific research. However,
with life being so transitory, we should keep in mind that
the wealth of scientific knowledge accumulated by the scientists
who precede us can help us effectively and directly head
toward discoveries and progress by bypassing possible pitfalls
and mistakes. The fact that we can exploit existing scientific
findings in a more speedy and fruitful manner precludes
us from the necessity to achieve scientific progress by
resorting to mistake-making as a source of knowledge, as
is advocated by the foregoing argument.
Moreover, the proposition that “only through mistakes will
there be discoveries and progress” induces the illusion
that, as long as researchers keep on undertaking trials
and experiments regardless of efficiency and cost, victory
will be there automatically and inevitably. The proposition
that perseverance will ultimately lead to discoveries and
progress further implies that every scientific effort would
end up in success. There would never be such a thing as
resignation or giving up halfway, as if success can always
be guaranteed by an “anti-failure insurance company.”
But there are instances in which certain scientific missions
have to be terminated eternally because the prospect of
a discovery is indeed bleak. If we allow ourselves to cherish
the blind faith in an ultimate victory, two serious consequences
would ensure thereof. On one hand, those mistake-makers
would comfortably indulge themselves in committing infinite
mistakes, and even blind mistakes. It would scarcely occur
to them to make opportune reflections on their sustained
failures and to seek fresh and more efficacious perspectives
and methodologies. It is pathetic to expect the occurrence
of the final miracle which in actuality might would occur.
On the other hand, this will also give rise to the development
of magnanimous but ill-fated tolerance on the part of the
general public for mistake-making. In this case, the general
public itself live under the illusory misconception that
the perpetrator of constant mistakes would eventually evolve
into a scientific genius, given enough time. It is absolutely
conceivable that, by being exonerated for committing “innocent
and necessary” mistakes, the perpetrator tends to contract
inertia and indolence on one hand and become increasingly
irresponsible on the other, thereby resulting in alarming
physical wastes of materials and resources.
In connection with this consequence is the cost of making
mistakes. Since making mistakes is generally negative, it
carries the implication that a cost must be paid for every
mistake. And when it comes to the point that the cost of
making mistakes significantly dwarfs the possible benefits
that can be derived from a trivial discovery, every sensible
person would come to the conclusion that the practice of
achieving minor discoveries through making costly mistakes
should by no means be encouraged.
It might be assumed that, given the incessant emergence
of changing circumstances and fresh challenges, making mistakes
is ineluctable and hence excusable. This is, at least in
part, an ill-founded pretext for being immature. For one
thing, a person who commits mistakes under each changed
circumstance or commits the same mistake in similar cases
can only be characterized as incapable of maturity. Although
a definite demarcation line between maturity and naivety
can be identified sooner or later in a person’s lifetime,
it is hardly logical to say that a mistake-committing senior
citizen has not completed his evolutionary process of de-naivetization
when he is virtually on his deathbed. Progress, either personal
or social, is absolutely impossible in a state of lasting
naivety.
As
is universally acknowledged, human beings differ from other
creatures in that they are rational. This faculty of rationality
functions by endowing man with the ability to foresee and
to predict, to make full preparations based on past experience
and knowledge for the advent of potential adversities caused
by changed circumstances. The capacity for foresight makes
it possible for man to be prepared in advance for impending
problems, thus eliminating and avoiding mistakes.
The
proposed argument is seriously flawed on two accounts. In
the first place, by the use of the word “only”, it posits
the committing of mistakes as an absolute condition for
accomplishing discoveries and progress, ignoring the foundational
importance of the research performed by those scientists
preceding us in leading to scientific discoveries and progress.
In the second place, the argument is merely negative, based
on the act of being erroneous and even fallacious. A more
plausible and compelling explanation for human discoveries
and progress is man’s intelligence as a rational being,
his long-accumulated experience and knowledge that have
been proved effective through practice, his sound judgments,
his right methodologies in knowing himself and the world
around him, and his correct decision-making in choosing
the proper course of action.
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words) |
