Science
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Paz, Octavio
"Can you conceive, can you appreciate or fit into your ideas what can be the meaning of the world without a living thing on it?"
Richard Feynman, The Meaning of it All, (1963). page 11.
Writing with reference to what you know about the physical universe requires
- writing from authorities in the texts.
- examining competing arguments.
- texts to analyze.
"A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream."
At the midterm, you are asked to present a 3 to 5 minute summary of what you have written based on your writing. Your essay comparing your worldview with what you know about science from the readings this term is a crucial step in self-reflection, that is at the core of learning according to the the Greeks, Augustine, Descartes, and our common university traditions since 1900.
Your essay should reflect on what you are learning and the verbal summary of that writing should reflect how you think the world works, in relation to how the physical conditions of existence actually behave according to the authors you have read.
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This requires that you compare your beliefs, to what the authors have said is discoverable about reality.
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Writing from texts is important for grounding your assertions in the findings of others.
Columbus | Mayr | Thomas | Wilson | Hardin | Darwin | Margulis | Steingraber | Carr | Keller | Watson
options | formatting | stories
You have three variants you can write about based on your readings:
- What is your worldview?
2. How does the world work?
3. Are natural functions at risk of failing and how does or will that affect you and other people?
options | formatting | stories
Write a five page narrative (double spaced, 27 lines to a page in 12 point font) based on the readings and your beliefs about the material world. Discuss how you distinguish certainty from uncertainty when confronted with evidence of new, different or difficult ideas.
Include an abstract, notes, bibliography and references.
options | formatting | stories
[world-view or worldview (noun) ]
{German, weltanschauung} a comprehensive interpretation or image of the universe and humanity.
Encarta® World English Dictionary © 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing.
The believable and prevailing images a people, culture, or individual possess about the world in contradistinction to the way in which existence may actually function.
Examples:
1. A speeding car at an
intersection --whose driver fails to see the light turn from amber to red and is under the impression the light is green-- proceeds to strike an oncoming vehicle that was turning in front of them.
(Here, there is more than a clash of worldviews, it is an accident pending!)
2. In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
We all know he discovered the Caribbean and South America, but Christopher Columbus, himself, thought otherwise. He instead claimed they landed in the Asian east Indies and died convinced he was sailing among the islands of Indonesia and the South China Sea.
Historically the concept of worldview is invoked to distinguish between.
a). what people in subsequent eras know to be and
b). what people in a previous period have believed to be true.
Master of Liberal Studies overview
For your thoughts: 
“ Humans are a species that tell stories
“ they live their lives around stories that give meaning and understanding. The telling of stories is not a simple act, as writer Susan Griffin explains it, but "a way of narrating events that gives the listener a path through those events that leads to some fragment of wisdom."
“… by such transmission, consciousness is woven."
Gary C. Bryner, Gaia's Wager, (2001), p. 177.
writing | accurate writing | worldviews
- The importance of writing, called written discourse?
- A list of five suggestions to always use when writing?
- What is important to do in an essay?
- Advice to writers on why frequent writing is necessary.
- Free writing and how it is a good habit to develop.
- The importance of texts in expressing your ideas and concepts.
- Is there some sort of standards by which my writing is graded?
