"In any academic area or professional field, it is just as important to recognize the limits of our knowledge and understanding as it is to acquire new facts and information.“
Personally, I hold that knowledge knows no bounds, therefore, on realizing this awkwardness, the only thing man should do is to absorb as much new knowledge as he can for the sake of not lagging behind the pacing steps of our world.
Does recognizing the limits of our knowledge and understanding serve us equally well as acquiring new facts and information, as the speaker asserts?注意這一句經典的反問式開頭了，這是最引人注目的。While our everyday experience might lend credence to this assertion, further reflection reveals its fundamental inconsistency with our Western view of how we acquire knowledge. Nevertheless,雖然是原則上不盡同意但還是提出妥協的辦法，從而顯出作者是critical thinking的，這一點很重要，也是拿分的重頭戲也。a careful and thoughtful definition of knowledge can serve to reconcile the two.
讓我們記一記一些好詞好句：lend credence to this assertion (有足夠的證據)證明這一觀點的正確性;further reflection reveals its fundamental inconsistency with…;Nevertheless, a careful and thoughtful definition of knowledge can serve to reconcile the two.
On the one hand, the speaker’s assertion accords with the everyday experience of working professionals. For example, the sort of "book”knowledge that medical, law, and business students acquire, no matter how extensive, is of little use unless these students also learn to accept the uncertainties and risks inherent in professional practice and in the business world.
Any successful doctor, lawyer, or entrepreneur would undoubtedly agree that new precedents and challenges in their fields compel them to acknowledge the limitations of their knowledge, and that learning to accommodate these limitations is just as important in their professional success as knowledge itself.
Moreover, the additional knowledge we gain by collecting more information often diminishes-sometimes to the point \where\ marginal gains turn to marginal losses. Consider, for instance, the collection of financial- investment information. No amount of knowledge can eliminate the uncertainty and risk inherent in financial investing. Also, information overload can result in confusion, which in turn can diminish one’s ability to assimilate information and apply it usefully. Thus, by recognizing the limits of their knowledge, and by accounting for those limits when making decisions, investment advisors can more effectively serve their clients.
On the other hand, the speaker’s assertion seems self-contradictory, for how can we know the limits of our knowledge until we’ve thoroughly tested those limits through exhaustive empirical observation--that is, by acquiring facts and information. For example, it would be tempting to concede that we can never understand the basic forces that govern all matter in the universe. Yet due to increasingly precise and extensive fact- finding efforts of scientists, we might now be within striking distance of understanding the key laws by which all physical matter behaves. Put another way, the speaker’s assertion flies in the face of悍然不顧，公然違抗the scientific method, whose fundamental tenet is that we humans can truly know only that which we observe. Thus Francis Bacon, who first formulated the method, might assert that the speaker is fundamentally incorrect.
How can we reconcile our experience in everyday endeavors with the basic assumption underlying the scientific method? Perhaps the answer lies in a distinction between two types of knowledge--one which amounts to a mere collection of observations (i.e., facts and information), the other which is deeper and includes a realization of principles and truths underlying those observations. At this deeper level "knowledge" equals "under- standing": how we interpret, make sense of, and find meaning in the information we collect by way of observation.
In the final analysis, evaluating the speaker’s assertion requires that we define "knowledge,’which in turn requires that we address complex epistemological issues best left to philosophers and theologians. Yet perhaps this is the speaker’s point: that we can never truly know either ourselves or the world, and that by recognizing this limitation we set ourselves free to accomplish what no amount of mere information could ever permit.