TOEFL iBT Writing for an Academic Discussion Are major discoveries more often the result of collaborative effors or individual genius? - revised -

Lesson 29   Are major discoveries more often the result of collaborative efforts or individual genius??

 

 

☆Let’s Think

1.  What is the difference between discovery and invention?

Note: While inventions are creations of something new,

discoveries are findings of something that had existed all the time.

 

2.  Name examples of major discoveries. Are they results of collaborative efforts or individual genius? Why?

 

 

☆Hints for Points

Collective efforts

1.      Two heads are better than one.

 

2.      These days, novel prizes of science are often shared by a group of scientists. Very often, major discoveries occur as a serendipity to a member of a group of researchers who are doing the same researches.

 

3.      Today’s important discoveries are products of strenuous efforts financed by those in power. Governments and big businesses support scientific projects for profits and power. Atomic energy, DNA, semi-conductors workable at room temperatures, iPS cells, Higgs boson, and gravitational waves are all crucial scientific discoveries that were made systematically with huge subsidies and through the collaboration of a large number of people in the related fields after some geniuses constructed the theories.

 

4.      No genius can discover anything without cumulative knowledge as an asset of humanity. Columbus’s discovery was based on the theory of Galileo Galilei, and Galileo’s theory was impossible without observations by unknown ancient thinkers.

 

Individual genius

1.      Historically, major breakthroughs have been attributed to individual researchers, who were often ridiculed by the neighbors who didn’t understand what they were doing.

 

2.      Chance discoveries would have been overlooked had it not been for a genius. Numerous people had seen the same phenomenon as Newton saw, but no one else discovered gravity. Only Flaming had the insight to find penicillin when he saw common molds in his laboratory. Few people still understand Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. He solely came up with the idea although helped by a mathematician in calculation.

 

 

☆Sample Response Structures

【Thesis】As long as a mind is a product of knowledge accumulated by a group of people or all humans, major discoveries are results of collaborative efforts rather than a genius in a broader sense of meaning.

【Supporting Details】First of all, thoughts are in sync with language, and the language the thinker uses has been made by the people of the individual’s ethnicity. Also, the pieces of knowledge the individual puts together to reach the “Eureka!” moment are the results of the efforts of other individuals. The finding that apes are social animals was made by a Japanese team, and the groundbreaking discovery is attributed to their Asian cultural background that, unlike the Western culture, sees humans as part of nature that share their lifestyles with other animals.

【Counterargument-treatment】Of course, it is genius that leaps to the insight that leads to the final stage of a discovery, but what makes the genius is not just the genius themselves.

【Conclusion】Thus, major discoveries are made by countless number of people. (169 words)

 

【Thesis】People intuitively regard major discoveries as products of prodigy, and I think they are right because key to breakthrough is in unconventional areas that most people other than geniuses aren’t interested in or stay away from.

【Supporting Details】Breakthroughs need unconventional ideas of extraordinary minds that see something remarkable in what ordinary people see nothing special. Historic major discoveries were made by such names as Galileo Galilei, Issac Newton, and Albert Einstein, who were then unknown and even treated as failures or touched when they were working on what was later going to be a discovery of the century. Other less extraordinary spotting like the discovery of the oil well in America was treated at first as a folly of the person who alone dug the ground.

【Counterargument-treatment & Conclusion】Putting aside the cumulative knowledge that the breakthroughs were based on, significant discoveries are made by the gifted that their contemporaries never took them seriously, and therefore a major breakthrough is achieved not by a group of people but by a solitary giant. (167 words)

 

Write your draft on this topic. Give feedback to other people’s drafts, asking questions and making suggestions.

 

 

DRAFT