SAT II Writing ~12 (timed essay - 20 minutes)
"There is nothing new under the sun"
The statement 'there is nothing new under the sun' desrives the notion that no matter how different things might seem, because they are all created from the already existing materials on earth, they cannot be new. However, this is a very mistaken idea. Just because the origin or the source is old, it does not mean that something totally novel cannot come out as a product.
In chemistry, students study the periodic table where there are over 100 elements listed. Of all the elements, there are about 20 extremely rare elements that were created quite recently by combining two different elements. Although they were created from elemtns already known, those elements showed distinct characteristics, such as the boiling point, color, etc., distinc enough to be considered new elements and put into the periodic table. This shows how "new" can indeed come out of "old."
Humans all over the world have same body features; two hands, two feet, one head with two eyes, a nose and a mouth. However, it is startling how the ideas that come out of those identical bodies vary so much, and make so much difference in the world. Hitler and Gandhi were merely two human beings. Nonetheless, nobody can say that their ideas of Anti-semitism and non-violent resistance respectively, were same, or not new.
Even when given the same conditions, it is a nonsense to expect the results to be the same. Strikingly new elements from old elemtns, and ideas so dramatically different as to drive the world in two opposite diretions from the brains of two biologically identical human beings, serve as examples. It is this newness originated from oldness that makes the world we live in keep going, despite the same conditions that have been given fro thousands of centuries.