James Donelan
The Purpose and Content of Writing 2
Writing 2, the only course required of all undergraduates at UCSB, notonly provides students with a fundamental understanding of academic writing,but also helps them with their reading and critical thinking skills. Thecourse also recognizes the differences in reading, writing, and criticalthinking among the sciences, social sciences, and the humanities. We, theinstructors of Writing 2, also help students more fully integrate theirwork in different courses into a more general understanding of the world.
Although our main objective is to teach skills, no course can succeedwithout content. Recently, several Writing 2 instructors have decided tobase their courses on a single theme; I have chosen "World War I and Modernism."We will investigate this theme as a turning point in scientific, political,and cultural history, when European and American society experienced asudden loss of faith in fundamental ideas and institutions, a loss fromwhich they never recovered. As we near the end of the twentieth century,this sense of loss, now called "Modernism," remains central to our worldview; our era is only post-modern in that irony has been added to its skepticism.This class will explore how Modernism manifested itself in physics, inthe conduct of World War I itself, in the psychological effect the warhad on its participants, and finally, in the poetry and narrative of theera.
In addition, this particular section of Writing 2 uses an interactivewriting program, Norton Connect.Net, for all assignments. The program enablesyou to receive an assignment, write a response, submit it, and communicatewith me or any of the other studentsall electronically. I have found theprogram to be an extremely effective teaching tool, providing faster, simplercommunication with students and more opportunities for the improvementof writing. To begin using it, you need to buy the user manual in the UCenBookstore. This manual contains an individual license for the program whichwill enable you to work anywhere you can find a Windows-compatible PC withaccess to the Internet and a copy of Microsoft Word. Everyone enrolledin the class will also receive a priority access pass for the UCSB computerlabs, most of which are already equipped with the program. I will providedetailed instructions and assistance with using the program and installingit on your home computerthe program is easy to use and no special expertisewith computers is necessary to do well in the course.
Taking Writing 2
Getting Started. Developing your writing requires steady workover time. You should therefore begin working as soon as possible. Go tothe UCen Bookstore and Graphikart immediately and buy the book, the program,and the reader. You will need your own copy of all three. Get an accesspass from Instructional Computing as soon as you can; IC representativeswill be distributing them in the Phelps Courtyard. Then figure out youroverall schedule, and make time in it to read and write each assignment.
The Readings. No one can write effectively without knowing thetopic area well. The required readings will provide you with the basisfor the topics you will explore in writing. However, each unit will requireadditional library research, and you will also be required to be competentreaders of your colleagues work. Completing a reading assignment thereforeentails more than a cursory glance a few minutes before class. As the courseprogresses, I will give you specific instructions on how to approach eachreading assignment, and you will develop an awareness of how each discipline,as well as each writer, gives readers subtle instructions for understandingthe material well.
The Writing Assignments. One central objective of the courseis to teach writing as a process, rather than as just a product. The coursecontains three main, graded writing assignments, one for each discipline,along with preliminary writing materials from which you will develop themain assignment. In each unit, you will begin by responding, briefly, tospecific questions about the readings which will lead you to the developmentof a topic for the main assignment. Then you will write a prospectus, orshort proposal, a working bibliography, an outline, and a rough draft.The purpose of these assignments is to help you develop the skills andprocedures used by experienced writersnone of it is meant merely to keepyou busy or just to determine whether you did the reading. By completingthese steps, you break the task of producing the main assignment into smaller,more manageable parts, each of which will be examined and discussed.
Class Discussion and Participation. Both electronic and face-to-facediscussions are essential to this class. No one writes well in isolation,and you will improve your writing more easily if you know what others seein it and what others have done with the same assignment. The class willbe divided into groups of five students each who can read each othersessays and provide comments and assistance through the Connect program.The groups will also meet in person, so that we can see the people behindthe comments. Learning how to make useful, constructive comments not onlyhelps others in your group, but enables you to see similar areas for improvementin your own writing.
We will also discuss the readings, writing techniques, research methods,and many other topics in class. Your attendance and participation keepyou informed, engaged, and involved in the progress of your writing, andenable me to answer any questions you have. It is in your interest notto miss class.
The Science Unit
The science unit introduces you to some fundamental concepts of physicsdeveloped at about the time of the Great War or shortly thereafter. Theunit begins with two essays by Thomas Kuhn, a historian of science,who explains two major ideas that will help you connect the scientificmaterial to its historical context. The first, "normal science," refersto the standard practices of a scientific community; the second, "paradigmshift," describes the process by which a major scientific revolution takesplace. Not all scientists agree with Kuhns description of scientific revolutions,but he provides a useful starting point for understanding how scientificdiscoveries fit into cultural and social history. I will briefly describethe other authors of the articles in the science unit below.
Richard Feyman (1918-1988)
Dr. Feynman, a Nobel laureate in physics, acquired his fame as muchfor his sense of humor and engaging teaching style as for his contributionsto physics, which were considerable. Educated at the Massachusetts Instituteof Technology and at Princeton University, Feynman worked on the ManhattanProject and created a set of equations for describing the paths of quantumparticles as well as a method for diagramming them which now bears hisname. While teaching at the California Institute of Technology, Feynmandelivered a series of lectures for first-year students, from which theexcerpts in the reader are taken. The first excerpt, "Basic Physics," outlinesthe field of physics and describes the principles and values associatedwith scientific investigation. Read it carefully as an illustration ofwhat a scientist thinks of his work and how it should be conducted. Thenext selection by Feyman, "Quantum Behavior," will give you an overviewof how scientists approached the challenge of understanding the behaviorof subatomic particles. Toward the end of the science unit, you will read"The Relation of Physics to the Other Sciences," an interesting, yet somewhatbiased evaluation of other scientific fields from a physicists perspective.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Stephen Hawking gives the main outlines of Einsteins extraordinarylife in your reader; here, I will emphasize the context in which he wrotethe selections that appear in the reader. Einstein, perhaps the most famousscientist of the last two centuries, began his career in obscurity, asa postal clerk in defeated Germany. The distrust of institutions and previouslystable principles characteristic of Modernism became part of Einsteinspsyche early in his life, as he witnessed the mindless destruction of theGreat War, the no less devastating economic problems of Weimar (post-WWI) Germany, and the rise of Nazism. The excerpts from Relativityrepresent his attempt to explain his discoveries "to those readers who,from a general scientific and philosophical point of view, are interestedin the theory, but who are not conversant with the mathematical apparatusof theoretical physics." The essay entitled "E=mc2" has a moreserious purpose: to covey to lay readers the scientific theory behind theatomic bomb, which releases so much energy that "it brings with it a greatthreat of evil." Einstein, a life-long pacifist, had nevertheless beenso concerned about reports of a Nazi nuclear weapons program that he wrotea letter to President Roosevelt encouraging him to begin the US program.Ironically, the Germans were nowhere near success, and the US did not completeits bomb until after the Germans had surrendered. Einstein worked steadfastlyuntil the end of his life to prevent the atomic bomb from ever being usedagain.
Stephen Hawking (1942-)
Professor Hawking is the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics (actuallya physics professorship) at Cambridge University, occupying the same positionthat Sir Isaac Newton did in seventeenth century. Other physicists holdProfessor Hawking in nearly as high regard as his predecessor for his workon cosmology (the study of the cosmos, that is, the entire universe), blackholes, and the relationship between large-scale phenomena, such as planets,stars, and galaxies, and extremely small-scale quantum phenomena, suchas quarks and neutrinos. While making his remarkable discoveries, ProfessorHawking decided to write a book for lay readers in order to make enoughmoney to send his children to private school. The result, A Brief Historyof Time, became an international best-seller, explaining the fundamentalprinciples of modern physics and cosmology in sharp, clear prose. We willread excerpts from this book, and also see the film based on it. The filmcontains biographical material as well, showing Professor Hawkings remarkableability to adapt to the limitations imposed on him by advanced ALS, alsoknown as Lou Gehrigs disease.
General Reading Strategies
Keep in mind as you read that you have two goals: to understand thecontent, and to assimilate the principles of scientific writing. The followingsuggestions will help you achieve these goals:
- Read around the text, as well as in the text. A brief look at themajor divisions, parts, and overall structure of a text will help you understandand remember difficult material more easily. Scientists generally followvery clear patterns in their writing, telling their readers exactly whereand when they define terms, explain general principles, and give examples.Headings, paragraph breaks, lists, and transitional sentences often indicatewhat function each statement or paragraph has in the overall argument.
- Stop, re-read, and consider important statements. Often the mostimportant statement in a text will be deceptively brief; Einsteins famousequation, for instance, is only a few letters long. Scientific texts aregenerally very concise, and key terms can go by quickly. Follow each stepcarefully.
- Take notes as you read, listing main ideas, questions, problems, andunknown terms. The act of taking notes in itself will make you a moreengaged reader, and these notes will help you assimilate ideas and overcomedifficulties more easily later on.
- Look at diagrams carefully, examining each element and what it represents.Physicists often say that drawing the diagram is 90% of the work in solvinga physics problem. Stephen Hawking has also remarked that he tends to solvethe most complex problems by looking at their geometry. Even simple diagramscan contain a lot of information and illuminate difficult passages in thetext. Take your time with them.
- Think about what you have read, and think of examples of how each ideaworks. Make the ideas you have read your own by imagining them in practice.
