I tried… and will try again… until I succeed
Tuesday, 19-May-2009 A famous quotation from Theodore Roosevelt is below: "In the battle of life it is not the critic who counts. Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause. Who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat." How true of it, then, and now, and in the future. While there are many men who knew a great deal of anything, they come short of acting on what they know. That is why, in the world of discovery, the great men and women always blaze the trail to uncover and rediscover many a great things that has been known in the past, what is unknown in the present, and what is the possibility in the future. Even to the point of being branded a heretic. Take the example of Copernicus. During the 16th century, it was the belief that the Earth is the center of the universe. (I mean, don't you see this now, in the 21st century, where people thinks that the world revolves around them?) When he presented his thoughts and discoveries, he was rejected! And why not? " 1543 COPERNICUS LEADS AN ASTRONOMICAL REVOLUTION Using the naked eye, following the pinpricks of light in the night sky, Nicholas Copernicus, born in Poland 19 years before the discovery of America, put forth the radical theory that the earth revolves around the sun, not the sun around the earth. He overturned Ptolemy's entrenched theories and laid the groundwork for today's astronomy. " But he did make his assertions, against all odds, against the currently prevailing school of thought and teachings of Ptolemy. And in doing so, he laid the groundwork for later studies and discoveries: " While residing at the Frauenburg Cathedral, Copernicus made the majority of the important observations that he would use later in calculating his planetary theory. Interestingly, he would later borrow, without credit, many of Ptolemy's observations to supplement his own. In an attempt to unravel the mystery of the daily pattern of motion in the sky above him, Copernicus devised an explanation which provides the essential elements of our modern-day theory. Published the year of his death, 1543, and delivered to him on his deathbed, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium -- On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres -- was Copernicus's great triumph: a mathematical explanation of his theory that was appealing for its relative simplicity. Striving for basic answers to the questions raised by the motion of space, Copernicus arrived at a fundamental conclusion: the earth and all other planets revolve around the sun. It is difficult to conceive today of how radical this assertion was, for the Copernican solar system is as firmly entrenched now as Ptolemy's theory was in Copernicus's day. The very notion that the earth even moved had to be explained, for Ptolemy had asserted that the earth stood still while the other planets rotated around it. Even so, Copernicus stated that the earth revolves around (orbits) the sun and that it completes one full rotation around its axis every day. The very mobility of Earth, then, was another of Copernicus's great contributions and it made up the entire first portion of De revolutionibus. Though Copernicus even used his theory to explain the motion of other celestial bodies, he was never able to prove his assertions mathematically. In fact, his proposal of circular orbits for Earth and the other planets was found to be false and many of his calculations were quite inaccurate. However, his theory aroused significant interest, and the early 17th century brought with it astronomers Galileo and Kepler and finally also the long-awaited proof and refinement of Copernicus's theory. " What do I say then? It was even said that Einstein's preface on his first book was an apology to his teacher, Newton, for he would be disproving his instructor's many teachings. That topic being aside, the point again here is that, while there would be many obstacles, and while there may be many contrary beliefs, the real acid test of our courage is whether we push through or retreat when we are already facing these giants, the mountains of our journey. There is, of course, the very indispensable value of understanding what you are doing, determining the direction where you are headed, weighing the pros and cons, the estimation of your load – whether you are able to carry on when you have hit a flat tire and you have to proceed on your own two feet… alone. There is the value of that indispensable tool. And while it is very true, that "Knowing is half the battle", if you don't act on anything, you also, as logic stands, will not accomplish anything. My children have caught that very thought, and when I go through with them on my 'sermon without text' session, they will be more likely to rhyme with me: "If you do nothing, you will finish nothing; if you study nothing, you will finish nothing; if you graduate with nothing, you will land a job of nothing. You will earn nothing – then you will eat nothing." Finally, here is a suiting quotation to close, but not end, our 'nothing' post: "It is better to have tried and failed than never to have tried at all." At least, to say it out loud, "I tried", "I did my best", and "I will try again"… "until I succeed."
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