Issue 99

TOPIC: ISSUE99 - "In any realm of life-whether academic, social, business, or political-the only way to succeed is to take a practical, rather than an idealistic, point of view. Pragmatic behavior guarantees survival, whereas idealistic views tend to be superceded by simpler, more immediate options."
WORDS: 536 TIME: 00:56:34 DATE: 2008-3-20 14:54:17

Whether a practical view or an idealistic attitude people should hold, in my view, varies from case to case. The real world in which we human beings living is complex and changing all the time, and the correct view we tend to hold may be complete different between various realms. With respect to certain realms, especially in theory discussed in natural science, an idealistic may play a positive role; with respect to certain other fields, people may have to conform to a practical point of view.

To begin with, in the realm of scientific theory, an idealistic ideology may benefit those who are bogging down into mud. Ideal thought deeply trusted by scientists would help themselves keep fortitude, persistent, and optimized when these elites of humans encounter an impossible mission. History is replete with examples of scientists motivated by their inner idealistic conviction. Jingrun Chen, a prominent mathematician of China, was considered as a mentally-challenged young man by esteemed experts of his time. However, Chen insisted learning and researching in respect that he had a great idea that he was a normal one and had the ability of survival. Chen did not follow advice given by experts to live a peace life, but assiduously study mathematical. Eventually he succeeds and becomes the international prominence as an expert in math.

Idealistic point of view can also arouse new unique creative theory that might be never thought by former scientist. This is especially true in the field of physics, in which the idealistic viewpoint of so-called "unifying law" pervasively exists among physic theorists. This ideal thought has brought us many profound physic inventions and discoveries. Consider, for instance, Albert Einstein proved the "relative theory" last century, and this attainment was just one of the benefits the ideal concept brought up. In short, idealistic point of view can be reckoned as a chief source of great achievements in the realm of science--such as mathematical, physics, etc.

By contrast, in architectural and engineering fields, a practical viewpoint may work much better than an idealistic one. There is a common characteristic shared by these two fields: what they are chiefly concerned are related to practical work and real world in our daily life. For instance, the most reliable way of communicating among five computers is to connect each pair of them, which means fifteen wires are needed to make these five computers work. However, this idealistic method has never been put into practice in real world, due to the high cost of this avenue. Engineers will be unable to afford the cost if five computers increase to millions computers. Wires will be messed up and people do not have so much money to connect each pair of them. When it comes to architecture, many great styles of building do not come true and turn up in the front of us, since these idealistic ideals lacks feasibility. Therefore, a practical view is superior to an idealistic thought in real-world fields.

In summary, both practical and idealistic viewpoint are useful in their special fields, and neither of these two ideologies should be put in the first place. To the contrary, we should take the distinctions which pervasively exist among various fields into account.