GRE写作Issue模拟题:The Importance of Science and Art

Often, perhaps because of the controversies that surround the art world and the great faith which we place in science, we assume that the purpose of the former is to alarm and the purpose of the latter is to relieve us. While this is sometimes true, myriad counterexamples demonstrate that both science and art are both meant to upset and reassure us at the appropriate moment. Let us take science first. While science often soothes man's oldest fears about his mortality by producing life-extending medicines and eliminating risks in his environment, it still must act as an alarm. A good example is global-warming. While there are many in the scientific establishment who continue to deny that man is responsible for global warming, the vast majority of environmental scientists have taken it as their responsibility to warn us of the threats our industry poses to our environment, and through it, our own survival as a species. In this case the purpose of science is clearly not to reassure us; it is to alarm, upset, and mobilize—in short, to frighten people into the realization that inaction could prove disastrous. Thus we can see that science's value is in reassuring us when it discovers solutions, and upsetting us when it discovers problems. Meanwhile, it is true that art also has the undeniable effect of upsetting us, at times. Much of the controversy over the government funding of art in the United States is centered around the fact that so many in the public find certain kinds of art obscene or overly graphic—in other words, upsetting. And certainly, when art upsets us, like Goya's horrific portraits of war are meant to do, then it can lead us to question in a positive fashion our assumptions about the world. Nevertheless, art also reassures us, by providing us a place in which to enjoy beauty and tranquility. In particular, Asian art and Western Minimalist art are meant not so much to stir the passions as to provide a sense of sublime serenity in the soul—anyone who has listened to a gentle Bach aria in a major key knows this. The final chords of such a piece of music assure us that everything is right in the world, that all the dissonances introduced earlier in the music have been resolved in the end. Movies and books with happy endings function on much the same principle. Art plays the role of the barbarian sometime, causing us to question our beliefs, but it also civilizes us by reinforcing our notion of moral and aesthetic ideals. Thus we cannot generalize that the value of art is to upset or to reassure—often it is both, acting in combination. Therefore, it would be erroneous to assert that art and science have only one function. We must recognize that science and art both point out problems, and they both provide solutions. As civilized beings, we have the luxury of two great allies to reassure and upset us at the moment when each of those two effects is most desired.