To be sure, no lesson provides an authenticity and durability as that gained through first-hand experience. However, if the world's destiny hinged upon the inevitability of personal experience learned through tangible performance, there would undoubtedly be a continuous recycling of mistakes, misadventures, and catastrophes throughout history. As a result, societal advancement would be limited to the knowledge gained and exercised in a lifetime. Imagine every generation being left to repeat essentially the same process in a perpetual state of affairs. In the 1993 movie Groundhog Day, the protagonist (Bill Murray) had to repeat the same day over again, scores of times, in order to gain enough information to break out of an inexplicable cycle…
“The scientific enterprise is all about failure; I mean, you learn so much from failure. And you learn almost nothing from success.” This scientist is stating that one cannot gain any knowledge without failing. This is not true. Once one obtains success one now knows exactly what to do to achieve success, thus opening doors and further experiences for them. The novel “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot, due to the success of tissue culture researcher Dr. George Gey can further dispute this quote. His success in tissue culture led to further discoveries, and became one of the most important breakthroughs in modern medicine. The world was able to learn from his success.…
- It is important to make experiment replicable because some results from one experiment can be…
Experience is the source of knowledge whether they're bad or good. It gives us confidence, courage, and strength. It is how life teaches us to love and forgive each other. In fact, experience is the worst teacher because it gives us the test before presenting the lesson.…
We don’t have to directly experience something to learn from it. We can learn from watching others experience or get punished.…
As humans we make mistakes, but the real power is learning from our mistakes. Often we can learn from others mistakes that way we don’t have to feel the pain ourselves to understand why we shouldn’t do something or be a certain way. Also we can learn from history and past mistakes that lead them into bad times and disputes. From literature we learn morals and lessons through the characters position. “We live with our archetypes, but can we live in them?” rightly said by Poul Anderson.…
“Good people... are good because they’ve come to wisdom through failure”. This quote from William Saroyan means that wise people acquire their insight from experiences, especially unsuccessful ones. I agree with the quote and the idea of people being knowledgeable because of the hardships and journeys they had endured. The two novels Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston and The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger both support the idea of gaining wisdom through experience.…
What happened in our past we cannot change, and it is from our past that gives…
Everyone is born into different circumstances and face different obstacles over the course of their life, yet just because some may be born into worse circumstances, doesn’t mean that should determine how they end up in life. Philip Bartlett said “I see now that the circumstances of one's birth are irrelevant; it is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are.” However, trying to go past what one’s been taught in their entire life couldn’t be an easy feat. A prime example would be Jeannette Walls in The Glass Castle and Shaka Senghor in his TED Talk Why your worst deeds don’t define you.…
I found the quote in my epigraph to be very accurate; how can one become old and wise if they aren’t first “young and stupid”? Kids, teenagers and young adults tend to go against their parents’ words of wisdom to do what they believe will be fun, change their beliefs in politics and religion, and believe the idea of thinking they know everything, but they really don’t. I know this from experience, and a common example is when asking for permission to go do something stupid because everyone else is doing it, parents often say “If everyone jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?”, even though it is tempting to say yes, we answer no because us young people really know that our parents are actually correct. When young people become older and…
Throughout life you are subject to hearing inspirational proverbs such as, “live life to fullest” or “you don’t know what you have until it is gone” but, as they are used so mundanely and you tend get older they to lose their punch. However, it is amazing how much effect a simple proverb can have until it relates to you on such a personal level. Some say that real people don’t get hit by lightning and suddenly realize that they should live their lives differently. I say bologna.…
In spite of an expression of defeat, what is the predominant emotional tone of the poem?…
“If it doesn’t work the first time, try again.”Disappointments make us work harder. For example, Albert Einstein failed his first entrance exam to college,in 1895. He later on became one of the most well-known scientists who’ve ever lived. Disappointments drive you to work harder, and strive for more. If Albert Einstein hadn’t tried again, he would’ve been just another number to the population.…
I remember Ms. Webb, my history teacher in high school would always say, “youth is wasted on the young”. Back then I didn’t think much of anything when she uttered those words. As the years steady pass I seem to relate more to Ms. Webb’s perceptive saying.…
Our expectations have played a huge role in the observations we make within our daily lives, ranging from insignificant everyday things down to the last detail of a scientific experiment, even if we don’t realize it. The results that we desire and expect have influenced our observations to the extent that it is impossible to prove our observations correct without unbiased testimony from another person. This in turn, has caused us to observe only the outcomes we desire, neglecting results that do not match with other experimental data, and results that do not fit in with our common sense perceptions.…