GRE考试形式：中国大陆地区、香港、澳门、韩国目前执行分开考试的形式。由机考（分析性写作）和笔试（语文、数学）组成。
Issue 83
91
"Originality does not mean thinking something that was never thought before; it means putting
old ideas together in new ways."
Are people who make the greatest contributions to society those who pursue their personal
intellectual interests, as the speaker asserts? Or are they the ones who focus instead on areas
that are most likely to benefit society? I strongly agree with the speaker, for three reasons.
First of all, by human nature we are motivated to pursue activities in which we excel. To
compel people to focus their intellectual interests only on certain areas would be to force many
to waste their true talents. For example, imagine relegating today's preeminent astrophysicist
Stephen Hawking to researching the effectiveness of affirmative-action legislation in reducing
workplace discrimination. Admittedly, this example borders on hyperbole. Yet the aggregate
effect of realistic cases would be to waste the intellectual talents of our world's scholars and
researchers.
Secondly, it is unusual avenues of personal interest that most often lead to the greatest
contributions to society. Intellectual and scientific inquiry that breaks no new ground amount to
wasted time, talent, and other resources. History is laden with quirky claims of scholars and
researchers that turned out stunningly significant--that the sun lies at the center of our universe,
that time and space are relative concepts, that matter consists of discrete particles, that
humans evolved from other life forms, to name a few. One current area of unusual research is
terraforrning---creating biological life and a habitable atmosphere where none existed before.
This unusual research area does not immediately address society's pressing social problems.
Yet in the longer term it might be necessary to colonize other planets in order to ensure the
survival of the human race; and after all, what could be a more significant contribution to
society than preventing its extinction?
Thirdly, to adopt a view that runs contrary to the speaker's position would be to sanction
certain intellectual pursuits while proscribing others which smacks of thought control and
political oppression. It is dangerous to afford ultimate decision-making power about what
intellectual pursuits are worthwhile to a handful of regulators, legislators, or elitists, since they
bring to bear their own quirky notions about what is worthwhile, and since they are notoriously
susceptible to influence-peddling which renders them untrustworthy in any event. Besides,
history informs us well of the danger inherent in setting official research priorities. A telling
modern example involves the Soviet government's attempts during the 1920s to not only
control the direction and the goals of its scientists' research but also to distort the outcome of
that research----ostensibly for the greatest good of the greatest number of people.
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