Welcome to the bright new world of my freewriting again; except this time around, it's a freewrite with purpose. You see....I need to write an essay about two stories. One is called "The Glass in the Field" which talks about a goldfinch, a bird, who slams into a pane of glass left by human workers in the middle of a field and makes his own "hypothesis" on what happened and tells it to the other birds in a bar.
The goldfinch replied, "I was flying across a meadow when all of a sudden the air crystalized on me" ("Glass in the Field" wink Of course, we all know that it was simply glass, but the other birds make interesting comments about what possible things could be it. Finally, the larger birds start laughing at the goldfinch when they start stating their doubts about his story, so the goldfinch dares them to fly through the same exact route that he did. They do, and they all end up getting knocked out cold. Only the goldfinch and the swallow were not the ones knocked out because one had the experience and the other one was too hesitating. I am supposed to parallel this story with Thomas Henry Huxley's "The Method of Scientific Investigation".
Thomas Henry Huxley's speech pretty much states that the mind of a scientist is exactly same as the mind of a non-scientist except that it works in a more methodical and precise scale. The argument he presents is quite good actually, showing the induction and deduction involved for something as simple as groceries or realizing that some person robbed you blind in your home.
I plan to separate this essay into several parts, of course. I will discuss the premise of the essay by first introducing the story, talking about what the writing task is, and finally introducing the method of scientific investigation as the introduction. The latter two's order may be inverted in order to maximize coherency. I am still not too sure about how I should go about this. I know that I am advocating for the goldfinch to be the best scientist out of all them. However, I do not know whether I should start out advocating the bird and then dismissing all the other claims that the other birds have on the title of "best scientist". It seems like a long way to do it, but it might be the best way.
Finally, I will write a conclusion based on these things. Right now. I should get a bunch of quotes from Huxley's paper that I might feel are useful for my writing. Hmm hmm hmm hmm...
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7/8/08 - Essay Focus Cont.
Like I said before, I shall now take several quotes out of the story for my own usage. I will pair them up with another quote from the sotyr itself.
The Method of Scientific Investigation
"You have all heard it repeated, I dare say, that men of science work by means of induction and deduction..." (Huxley 85)
"You have now arrived at a vera causa; -- you have assumed a cause which, it is plain, is competent to produce all the phenomena you have observed. (Huxley 91)
"A goldfinch filying swifty across the field struck the glass and was struck cold...bet them each a dozen worms that they couldn't follow the course he had flown without encountering the hardened atmosphere" ("Glass in the Field" wink
"I was flying across a meadow when all of a sudden the air crystallized on me, said the finch" ("Glass in the field" wink
Only the goldfinch's explanation is a 'vera causa'. From the goldfinch's perspective, he slammed into something invisible, transparent, and hard(the glass) before passing out. The eagle states that it could be water crystallizing, but, as we are assuming that the birds do not know about water vapor and scientific stuff, water in liquid form or ice form is visble because air bubbles form in its creation. The seagull stated that he had a stroke, but the goldfinch stated the air crystallized on him which caused him to pass out. If he were to have a stroke, he wouldn't have stated that he slammed into nothing. On the same note, the hawk's comment wasn't plausible because the goldfinch slammed into something in the path of his flight and would've seen a hailstone in his path. The sparrow though agrees with the goldfinch.
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"'For fifteen years, fledgling and bird, I've flown this country,' said the eagle, 'and I assure you there is no such thing as air crystallizing. Water, yes; air, no.'" ("Glass in the Field" wink
"Our confidence in a law is in exact proportion to the absence of variation in the result of our experimental verifications." (Huxley 8 cool
"We can verify it ourselves at any time; and that is the strongest possible foundation on which any natural law can rest" (Huxley 89)
The goldfinch tells the other birds that 'they couldn't follow the course he had flown without encountering the hardened atmosphere." ("Glass in the Field" wink which is the sign of experimental verification. though it could be argued that the bird simply was annoyed, many advances and discoveries in science were not created for the sake of scientific inquiry; the Space Race of the Cold War is one such example where the Soviet Union and United States rushed to put the first person on the moon, a feat that would have not been done without those circumstances.
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Though one could say that the swallow has similar ideas to the goldfinch and one could argue the point that the swallow listened to the rest of the birds before making his decision, the bird is not a scientist. For one, he did not attempt to use experimental verification and only based his decision on the rest of the birds' comments. As the saying goes, "the plural of anecdote is not evidence" which can be inferred -----. Bleh, off topic.
Anyways, experimental verification is one of the main items of scientific thought.
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I think I'm finished with this freewrite. I think I am ready to write the essay for reals.
