There is a stating that the mistake is the mother of success. Could people only make discovery or progress through mistakes? I am afraid that I do not quite agree with such an assertion.
While in my perspective, mistakes are not necessary to make discover or progress, although in most circumstances it is more efficient to discover new things or to progress through mistakes. Admittedly, mistakes could help us make progress because it is the mistake that tell us what is wrong and hence make improvement or progress.For example, many students might have the same feeling that we learn new things through the mistakes we made in our homework, and this is one of the reason that teacher ask us to do home exercises. By carefully analyzing the mistakes in the homework, many important ideas or methods which might be ignored before would come to the key point to solve such problems and therefore students could learn and make progress in such way, It is similar in many other realms such as sports or government, just to name a few.
We could frequently see that one sports team make progress through the analysis of the games that it loses, Hence, mistakes do help people to improve themselves by analyzing the reasons that resulted in the mistakes. What’s more, it is more obvious in realms such as science, The way in which people make discovery and progress in science is to prove the assertions made before wrong, Numerous discoveries have been made through such a process.To illustrate it , think about the discovery of the Theory of Relativity made by Einstein who prove the principles established by Sir Isaac Newton were incorrect through various experiments and then established his own prominent theory. Were he not find the deficiency in the theories of Newton, he could hardly be able to find his own theories. Moreover, the physicist Lutherfer also improved the model of the atomic by observing some blemishes in the model made by his teacher, In those examples, it is clear that mistakes are crucial to discoveries and progresses in science.
Moreover, the reason why I say that it is more efficient to learn through mistakes is that mistakes, which might cause losses and punishments, could cast deep impression in people’s heart and thereby people tend to memorize the mistakes and avoid making them again. And avoiding making mistakes itself is a progress. I remember that when I was young, as an example, my father told me not to touch the pots on the cooker.However, I did not follow what he said at all and once I touched one , The result, obviously, is that I got hurt by doing this and therefore, I could remember the disaster result by touching such things and after that I never dare to do this again.
Nevertheless, did I not touch the pots, I would never remember this so deeply. Similarly, teachers in schools might punish students who make mistakes to do more homework or to stand in the class, The reason for they do so is that the teachers think that through the mistakes and the punishments, students could improve themselves, which, I have to say, is an efficient method.However, it is not so absolutely that without mistakes no discover or progress could be made. One convincing example is in the field of mathematics Any progress or discovery in mathematics is just the result of trying to solve the same problem form a different perspective for any established thing in mathematics could not involve any mistakes. As long as the prove is right, no mistake could be found there while the condition that the process of prove is incorrect should be left for the worries of the school teachers.
Therefore, different from the science, mathematics progress does not need to come from the mistakes, Another plausible example is in such fields like arts. As we know, it is hard to even define what is right and what is wrong in arts, how can we make mistakes In such a field? If we could not make any mistakes, does that mean that we could make no discovery and no progress in art at all? The answer is crystal to be NO. From Homer to Shakespeare, from Da Vinci to Van Gogh, all these people contribute a lot to the progress of the arts.The point is the real thing that matters in arts is the special angel that one artist try to interpret the world and from this comes all the creativity and inspiration instead of trying to prove somebody else is wrong.
Therefore, mistakes are not necessary to make discovery and progress to become true in arts. In conclusion, although mistakes could help people to make discoveries or progress more easily, it is not necessary in all realms. Believing that the only through mistakes can there be discovery or progress and merely pursuit of mistakes in order to make progress is irrational and sometimes might be dangerous.
