Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill.original_ [181]
In the following passage from a student’s paper on Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, the student clearly recognizes that he needs to do more than summarize what Darwin says, but he seems not to know any way of conversing with his source other than indicating his agreement and disagreement with it.
The struggle for existence also includes the dependence of one being on another being to survive. Darwin also believes that all organic beings tend to increase. I do not fully agree with Darwin’s belief here. I cannot conceive of the fact of all beings increasing in number. Darwin goes on to explain that food, competition, climate, and the location of a certain species contribute to its survival and existence in nature. I believe that this statement is very valid and that it could be very easily understood through experimentation in nature.
This writer’s use of the word “here” in his third sentence is revealing. He is tagging summaries of Darwin with what he seems to feel is an obligatory response—a polite shake or nod of the head: “I can’t fully agree with you there, Darwin, but here I think you might have a point.” The writer’s tentative language lets us see how uncomfortable, even embarrassed, he feels about venturing these judgments on a subject too complex for this kind of response. It’s as though the writer moves along, talking about Darwin’s theory for a while, and then says to himself, “Time for a response,” and lets a particular summary sentence trigger a yes/no switch. Having pressed that switch, which he does periodically, the writer resumes his summary, having registered but not analyzed his own interjections. There is no reasoning in a chain from his own observations, just random insertions of unanalyzed agree/disagree responses.
Here, by contrast, is the introduction of an essay that uses summary to frame the conversation that the writer is preparing to have with her source.
In Renaissance Thought: The Classic, Scholastic and Humanist Strains, Paul Kristeller responds to two problems that he perceives in Renaissance scholarship. The first is the haze of cultural meaning surrounding the word “humanism”: he seeks to clarify the word and its origins, as well as to explain the apparent lack of religious concern in humanism. Kristeller also reacts to the notion of humanism as an improvement upon medieval Aristotelian scholasticism.
Rather than leading with her own beliefs about the source, the writer emphasizes the issues and problems she believes are central in it. Although the writer’s position on her source is apparently neutral, she is not summarizing passively. In addition to making choices about what is especially significant in the source, she has also located it within the conversation that its author, Kristeller, was having with his own sources—the works of other scholars whose view of humanism he wants to revise (“Kristeller responds to two problems”).
As an alternative to formulating your opinion of the sources, try constructing the conversation you think the author of one of your sources might have with the author of another. How might they recast each other’s ideas, as opposed to merely agreeing or disagreeing with those ideas? Notice how, farther on in the paper, the writer uses this strategy to achieve a clearer picture of Kristeller’s point of view:
Unlike Kristeller, Tillyard [in The Elizabethan World Picture] also tries to place the seeds of individualism in the minds of the medievals. “Those who know most about the Middle Ages,” he claims, “now assure us that humanism and a belief in the present life were powerful by the 12th century” (30). Kristeller would undoubtedly reply that it was scholasticism, lacking the humanist emphasis on individualism that was powerful in the Middle Ages.