Most people often look for similarities, even between very different things, and even when it it is unhelpful or harmful to do so. Instead, a thing should be considered on its own terms: we should avoid the tendency to compare it to something else.
人們總是在尋找相同點,即使是在非常不同的事物間也不例外,甚至有時候這樣做是無用乃至有害的。實際上,我們應該具體問題具體分析;我們應該盡量避免比較的傾向。
正文:
In the age of accelerating changes, the eagerness to understand things in an effective and equally efficient way is more than ever. Although all kinds of complex techniques, skills and equipments helpful for understanding and studying the objects are easily accessible to people, the basic strategies stay the same as before: one is starting from similarities and the other from distinction. From my personal point of view, only by using the two in proper proportion and order can one achieve his/her goal to understand a thing.
Looking for similarities is a proper starting point. When we first meet something new,we need to clarify its basic attributes, finding similarites with other familiar things and classify it according to those attributes. Classification according to similaties is of great assistance to provide us with an outline, basic knowledge which we can base further investigation upon. Although things in contemporary age represent themselves in various forms and styles, similarities exist in any pair as long as certain perspective can be found. For instance, Bookcase and window are so different that at first glance, one
may not be able to find the similarities, or even such an effort seems to be meaningless. Yet, they are both part of a house, something that must be taken into consideration when decorating or refurnishing the house. Such a comparison would be helpful for us to realize that “buy” and “sell” are two basic operation we can have upon window even though we have no idea what window is made of, how it is produced or what its function is.What’s more, looking for similarities not only refer to the object itself, but the relationship with others. Similar relationships helps people understand things in groups or pairs using the strategy: analogy. Analogy is especially useful when the charactertistics of a relationship rather than the objects themselves are the focus of understanding and when similar relationships are known and objects unknown. For example, if told that the relationship between window and ASVE is similar to that between book and read, one can safely guess that ASVE is the operation people can take on window although ASVE stays an unknown action.