Passages with Solved Precis Something like 30,00,000 acres of crops and pastures in Britain are annually sprayed against weeds and insect pests, and the area grows every year. Is this good or bad? Is it mere labour-saving, is it a substitute for good husbandry, or is it a genuine advance in farming methods? And what will be its effect on us-in terms of health and welfare? It is a fair statement...

Passages with Solved Precis The production and distribution of the modern popular newspaper, which reckons its readers by the million, entails a vast expenditure of money and an elaborate business organization such as only highly capitalised firms can afford. The intense competition for the pennies of the vast reading public and for the patronage of advertisers has caused newspapers with insufficient financial backing to be eliminated or absorbed by their stronger...

Passages with Solved Precis Here then is the first answer to the question, what is the aim of education? Its aim is to know first rate in every subject that we study with a view to achieving it as nearly as our powers allow. If we fix it firmly in our mind we should not stumble through a variety of lessons, lectures and books like a drunk man, only partially aware...

Passages with Solved Precis “Science has all along been a vital factor in the development of human civilization”. Perhaps, no other branch or human thought could produce such an ‘impressive’ and ‘shaping’ influence on man’s social, moral, economic and cultural life as science did. “Conquest of man’s sheer ignorance was the first achievement of science”, said Bertrand Russell. “Man trained and educated by the Great Teacher-Science” said Tagore, “Occupied his place...

Passages with Solved Precis Most people would agree that, although our age far surpassed all previous ages in knowledge there has been no correlative increase in wisdom. But agreement ceases as soon as we attempt to define ‘wisdom’ and consider means of promoting it. I want to ask first what wisdom is, and then what can be done to teach it. There are, I think, several factors that contribute to wisdom....

Passages with Solved Precis The construction of Utopias used to be despised as the foolish refuge of those who could not face the real world. But in our time, social change has been so rapid, and so largely inspired by Utopian aspirations, that it is more necessary than it used to be to consider the wisdom or wisdom of dominant aspirations. Marx, though he made fun of Utopians, was himself one...

Passages with Solved Precis There have been three kinds of ignorance. There is the ignorance of the stupid who are stupid because they do not know. There is the ignorance of the clever who select what they should know and so miss the truth. There is yet a third kind of ignorance which believes that the truth has been found’ and requires no further effort to know. The large mass of...

Passages with Solved Precis “It has been said that poetry imparts pleasure. This has often aroused controversy. Plato banished poets from his ideal commonwealth because in their desire to please, they overlooked the requirements of morality: “They give us to understand that many evil lives are happy and many righteous men unhappy; and that wrongdoing, if it be understood, is profitable, while, honest dealing is beneficial to one’s neighbour, but damaging...