CIE100: Common Intellectual Experience - Darwin Writing Prompt (10 Points)

Assignment Goals

The goals of this assignment are:

1. To reflect upon the course texts in preparation for thoughtful discussion
2. To organize thoughts into a concise and cohesive response to a targeted question
3. To consider multiple viewpoints about ideas

The Assignment

Please read the questions below and answer them in a short dialogue between yourself and a figure from, or behind, the text. Aim for the substance of a 1-2 paragraph response, and expect the script formatting to run a bit longer on the page. Quote the text at least once inside the exchange, and let the other voice raise a real counterargument with a quote behind it. Submit your dialogue through Canvas before the start of class.

I’m asking for a dialogue here, but you may substitute any of the other four genres (analytic, letter, dialogue, marginalia+aphorism, or the Four A’s) as long as the quote and the counterargument are both present.

Darwin is the slowest reading on our syllabus. Please look at the roadmap in How to Read Hard Texts in CIE before you begin.

Writing Prompt

1. How does Darwin’s argument for natural selection depend on small differences accumulating across vast stretches of time? Identify a passage where Darwin’s careful, almost cautious rhetoric shows that he understands the stakes of his claim, and discuss what he seems most concerned to persuade his readers of.

2. Where do you see descent with modification operating outside biology: in languages, in memes, in technologies, in traditions? Choose one concrete example and trace its variation, selection, and inheritance. Where does the evolutionary analogy illuminate, and where might it mislead, especially when people apply it to human societies?

Submission

Please submit a word processed or PDF document.

Please refer to the Style Guide for code quality examples and guidelines.