Blog Six

In the essay “Synesthesia”, the author Elizabeth Glinka uses several paraphrases and quotations for the reason that this is a scientific essay and many readers do not acquaint with the definition of Synethesia. For an example, she chooses “Researchers believe that many writers, composers, and artists deemed artistically advanced have created a mental state ideal for expressing a message sensually and lyrically.(Day 22-23)”(P. 74) as one of her paraphrases to illustrate the actual synethesia. The author gives evidence that many scientists believe it is possible that synethesia can be induced. According to this citation, readers can get more objective information about the relationship between aynethesia and the specific group of people. This paraphrase convinced that many artistes, writers, and composers enhanced and created their sense of synesthesia because of their jobs. Moreover, in order to describe the family patterns, Elizabeth quotes “‘while genetics may determine general predisposition, it does not determine the marked individual differences in the subjective experience of synaesthesia’ （Barnettet al. 885)” (P. 75). As researchers try to understand the individual differences of synesthesia by studying genetics, this quotation can perfectly explain what scientists about the connection between genetics and individual synesthesia so far. In light of this sentence, readers can easily comprehend that genetics could determine the predisposition, but it couldn’t determine the the style of different synesthesia.

A distorting mirror

There is an old proverb in China: history is a mirror to caution nowadays people’s decision. This is a classic saying which reminds people to use history as a model to improve our movement, but what if the history is a distorting mirror? How can we distinguish the truth from the disguise mask? History is recorded by human beings, which makes it full of tricks. Even the most professional historians can’t promise that what they wrote down was neutral because of the natural emotional judgments. In China, history always has two types: authentic history and unofficial history. The first style was usually recorded by officers who worked for emperors. Therefore, this kind history usually tended to focusing on the contributions that the king made. On the contrary, unofficial history was more incline to reflect the opinions of ordinary people. Moreover, the winners often possessed the power to write the history, so this style of history just took the bright side of the winner, plus the negative side of the loser. For example, in Chinese history, there were two famous men: Liu and Xiang. They had fought for several years to try to beat each other and become China’s emperor. In the end, Liu won the battle; thus, in a lot Chinese authentic historical recording, Liu was an brilliant emperor, but Xiang was just a strong guy who was selfish and didn’t know how to use his mind and soldiers. However, in other unofficial historical books and later historians’ demonstration, Xiang, who made some fatal mistakes which led his loss, was a real man that gained a lot respect from different fields. The illustration in the history of Xiang and Liu would totally different if Xiang win the final battle. Finally, this coming Monday has a special celebration--Columbus Day, which is a holiday to commemorate the landing on America of Columbus. This is a good chance for us to observe deeply of that period of history again to figure out what the distorting mirror really want to tell and teach us.