Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill [110]
Evidence is usually suggestive rather than conclusive. The interesting and important questions are to be found not in the facts but in our hypotheses about what the facts mean. Finding solid evidence—the facts—is only part of the problem. The larger question is always interpretive: what do the facts really tell us?
Theories—ways of seeing and understanding things—are what cause us to accept some things as facts. So, for example, once observers and theorists had demonstrated that the sun rather than the earth was at the center of the (then) known universe, people had to reconsider what was and wasn’t a fact. This is why good writing uses evidence to test and qualify claims as well as support them. And this is also why this book argues against the narrow view of evidence as “the stuff that proves I’m right.” Rather than arriving at demonstrably true claims from definite facts, writers more often arrive at plausible theories about evidence. Most thinking about evidence, in other words, is inevitably interpretive and tentative (see Chapter 6, Making Interpretations Plausible).
THE FUNCTIONS OF EVIDENCE
To substantiate claims
To test and \refine ideas
To define key terms more precisely
To qualify (restrict the scope) of claims, making them more accurate
The chapter’s first section addresses two common problems: claims without evidence (unsubstantiated claims) and evidence without claims (pointless evidence). The chapter’s second section then offers examples of the kinds of evidence most commonly encountered in academic writing.
HOW TO MAKE EVIDENCE SPEAK
Select telling pieces of concrete data
Explain clearly what you take the data to mean
Show why the evidence might support the claim
Focus on how the evidence complicates (qualifies) the claim
A. Linking Evidence and Claims
Evidence matters because it always involves authority: the power of evidence is, well, evident in the laboratory, the courtroom, the classroom, and just about everywhere else. Your SAT scores are evidence, and they may have worked for or against you. If they worked against you—if you believe yourself smarter than the numbers on this standardized test indicate—then you probably offered alternative evidence, such as class rank or extracurricular achievements when you applied to college. As this example illustrates, there are many kinds of evidence; and whether or not something qualifies as acceptable evidence, as well as what it may show or prove, is often debatable. Are high school grades a more reliable predictor of success in college than a 600 on the Verbal? What exactly is an SAT score evidence of?
The types and amounts of evidence necessary for persuading readers and building authority also vary from one discipline to another, as does the manner in which the evidence is presented. While some disciplines—the natural sciences, for example— require you to present your evidence first and then interpret it, others (the humanities and some social sciences) will expect you to interpret your evidence as it is presented. But in all disciplines, and virtually any writing situation, it is important to support claims with evidence, to make your evidence lead to claims, and especially to be explicit about how you’ve arrived at the connection between your evidence and your claims (see Figure 8.1).
The relationship between evidence and claims is rarely self-evident: that relationship virtually always needs to be explained. The word evident comes from a Latin verb meaning “to see.” To say that the truth of a statement is “self-evident” means that it does not need proving because its truth can be plainly seen by all. One of the Five Analytical Moves discussed in Chapter 3 was making the implicit explicit. This move is critical for working with evidence. The thought connections that have occurred to you about what the evidence means will not automatically occur to others. Persuasive writing always makes the connections between evidence and claim overt.
FIGURE 8.1
Linking Evidence and Claims.
The first step in learning to explain the connection