How can a discovery think? I have this at the beginning of a text: 现代科学研究的新发现认为，人体的衰老首先是从大脑开始的。 As far as I know, 认为 means 'believe, think, consider, feel' 现代科学研究的新发现认为， 现代 sets the time to nowaday

Jorge Rodriguez

How can a discovery think? I have this at the beginning of a text: 现代科学研究的新发现认为，人体的衰老首先是从大脑开始的。 As far as I know, 认为 means 'believe, think, consider, feel' 现代科学研究的新发现认为，现代 sets the time to nowadays 科学 + 研究 followed by 的 is a compound adjective 'scientific research 的' 新 is also an adjective for 发现 = discovery Adjectives and time words are unimportant words and may be left out, then I get: 发现认为， How can a discovery 'think'? If they wrote 显明 I could understand, but not 认为。 As a Chinese person, do you find this use of 认为 unusual at all??

Dec 10, 2016 2:49 AM

Answers · 11

Jorge, You might be interested in knowing 新发现 is the Chinese name of a French science popularization magazine (see https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-cn/%E6%96%B0%E5%8F%91%E7%8E%B0). This sheds a different light on your sentence. Thus, 认为 could be construed as meaning something like "supports the idea that" or "maintains that", but I must say my interpretation of 认为 is somewhat stretching the meaning of the word.

December 10, 2016

This sentence actually means ,according to the latest discovery of morden scientific research, some people (the researchers) think..... (根据）现代科学研究的新发现（人们）认为

December 10, 2016

我觉得不应该用“认为”，但是我们也不会说“显明”。最好用“显示” ”和“表明”。其实，在日常生活中或者在一些文章中，有些句子是有问题的，但是只要听的人和读的人能懂，一般就没什么问题。

December 10, 2016

It's very common to use ”认为” here. Except what Claude said, you can also replace “认为” with another phrase ”表明”or “显示”. To me, the three phrases are the same when each is added behind 现代科学研究的新发现. If 新发现 is a magazine or a book, it must be in angel brackets, just like this《新发现》. Here 新发现 simple means a new discovery.

December 10, 2016