It could
be said that almost no discoveries are accidental because
human beings are always looking for something, whether it
is peace of mind or the answer to the origins of life itself.
Humans are a curious lot – always questioning their surroundings
and looking for answers. However, it cannot be denied that
many times, although it is not necessarily the usual situation,
we find the answer to a question when we were looking for
the solution to a problem, rather than the answer to that
particular question.
To begin
with, history is chock full of examples of “accidental”
discoveries that have played tremendously important roles
in human development. While there may be an argument about
whether such discoveries were truly accidents or not, one
cannot deny that many discoveries were based on a series
of fortuitous events that were not necessarily what the
researcher had planned. However, it is difficult to ascribe
to pure accident many of the most famous “accidental” discoveries.
It is
true that there have been many inventions and discoveries
credited to discovery by accident. Velcro, nylon, x-rays,
polyethylene, vulcanized rubber and sugar substitutes have
all been discovered more or less by chance, or at least
by an unplanned series of circumstances. One of the all-time
greatest “accidental” discoveries in this category would
have to be that of penicillin. Alexander Fleming, a Scottish
scientist, found that a bacterial sample that he was studying
had become contaminated with mold, which inhibited the further
development of the bacteria. Although the discovery of the
drug penicillin itself was an accident, Fleming had previously
researched the development of antibiotics during World War
I. Additionally, more than three thousand years ago, Chinese
people used moldy soybean curd as a poultice for boils and
other skin infections. Warm earth, containing mold and other
fungi, was also used by some cultures as a first-line treatment
against infection thousands of years ago. Even though the
final naming and refinement of the ultimate drug that we
now know as penicillin was discovered by “accident”, it
was more than a mere accident that led to its discovery.
Similarly,
one can look at the “accidental” discovery of vulcanized
rubber. An experimenter named Charles Goodyear had become
interested in the substance of pure rubber, which could
be used for many things but still had problems in its natural
state. It would become brittle in cold weather, and melt
in hot weather, which made it unacceptable for use in most
climates. Mr. Goodyear began conducting many experiments
on the substance, combining the pure rubber with many different
chemicals. However, it was a fortuitous event that led to
his greatest discovery. One experiment led him to combine
sulfur with the pure rubber, whereupon he accidentally dropped
the mixture onto a red-hot stove. Rather than melting, the
substance formed into a disk-like object. It maintained
its ability to stretch even when he put it outside into
the cold winter air. Although Mr. Goodyear had been trying
for five years to fix the problems with rubber, he “accidentally”
discovered the process of vulcanization, which gives rubber
strength, elasticity and durability.
Both
of these examples are among the most widely cited “accidental”
discoveries that have made great contributions to modern
society. Although the actual sequence of events that led
directly to the discovery could be deemed accidental, it
was the search for answers to a particular problem that
led the scientists or researchers to look in that general
area anyway. While we may not find the answer to exactly
the question we were originally concerned with, it is in
the pursuit of knowledge in a particular area that we will
usually find the answer to the question at hand.
(615
words)
参考译文
最重大的科研发现都是随机偶然的：往往存在着这样的情况，当我们在寻找某一问题之答案时，我们碰巧获得了另一个问题的解答
