Quest Faculty Development Workshop #2, Fall 2011

Myths about the QEP solved: Fact Or Fiction? �  After reading and imitating Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Charles Dickens, and

Ernest Hemingway, two TJC students responded, “Mr. Skinner, this is my favorite class.” (Fact)

�  The QEP will take away from class time. (Fiction) �  TJC students don’t read homework assignments. (Fact and fiction) �  TJC students don’t like reading. (Fact and Fiction) �  A TJC student says, “Could we get this in nursing?” (Fact) �  A TJC professor says, “Reading Great Books will help students learn to

think and become better people.” (Fact) �  The QEP will impact every course/ every faculty member at TJC.

(Fiction) �  The students will have to pay for more books. (Fiction) �  The works on the Great Books list are only for students taking advance

courses in Higher Education. (Fiction) �  TJC will have to pay for more books. (Fiction) �  An entire Great Book will have to be read for each Quest course.

(Fiction) �  All Quest courses will implement the program the same. (Fiction) �  The QEP is a temporary initiative that will soon go away. (Fiction) �  The faculty are an integral part of implementing the QEP. (Fact)

Here’s what TJC students have to say about this approach.

The Goals of Reading Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren

Francis Bacon

�  “[t]here is still another goal of reading, besides gaining information and understanding, and that is entertainment” (10).

�  “Some Bookes are to be Tasted, Others to be Swallowed, and Some Few to be Chewed and Digested: That is, some Bookes are to be read onely in Parts; Others to be read but not Curiously; and some Few to be read wholly, and with Diligence and Attention” (151, ll. 22-26).

Thesis: what to read, how to read, and why to read �  Consequently, we best equip students with

the ability to carry out this process when we teach them to read the right books, in the right ways, for the right reasons – in short, the art of reading well. �  “the process whereby a mind, with nothing to

operate on but the symbols of the readable matter, and with no help from outside, elevates itself by the power of its own operations. The mind passes from understanding less to understanding more” (8).

What to Read: Treats, Water, and Meat/Vegetables

The Pyramid of Books

Great Books Good Books

Amusement/ Information

Books of Information or Entertainment �  99% of all books written in the history of

the western world � Worthy only of being “tasted” or read in

part or “skimmed” �  Fosters Mechanical, not organic Growth

Mechanical Growth

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbnLiUtqzu0

The Good Books

� A few thousand books of the millions of books written in the history of the western world

� Worth reading analytically once; that is, deserving to be swallowed, but not necessarily chewed/ digested

�  Fosters organic, not mechanical growth

The Great Books �  Less than one hundred books of those

written in the history of the western world �  Cannot be outgrown or exhausted �  Worthy of reading analytically many times

over �  Analogous to Bacon’s description of those

“Few [texts which ought] to be Chewed and Digested”

�  Fosters organic growth

Organic Growth

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d26AhcKeEbE

How do I Foster Organic AND Mechanical Growth with the Readings in my Classes?

1. Pair your Textbook Reading with a Great Book or a Good Book OR a collection of readings from Great Books and/or Good Books.

“A” Great Books List

� Not meant to be exhaustive � Not meant to exclude other approaches

to defining great books � Not meant to exclude women � Other Lists of Core texts

�  http://www.udallas.edu/academics/undergrad/coretexts

�  http://www.stjohnscollege.edu/academic/readlist.shtml

�  Homer (9th Century B.C.?) Iliad Odyssey

�  The Old Testament �  Aeschylus (c.525-456 B.C.)

Tragedies �  Sophocles (c.495-406 B.C.)

Tragedies �  Herodotus (c.484-425 B.C.)

History �  Euripides (c.485-406 B.C.)

Tragedies (esp. Medea, Hippolytus, The Bacchae)

�  Thucydides (c.460-400 B.C.) History of the Peloponnesian War

�  Hippocrates (c.460-377? B.C.) Medical Writings

�  Aristophanes (c.448-380 B.C.) Comedies (esp. The Clouds, The Birds, The Frogs)

�  Plato (c.427-347 B.C.) Dialogues (esp. The Republic, Symposium, Phaedo, Meno, Apology, Phaedrus, Protagoras, Gorgias, Sophist, Theaetetus)

�  Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) Works (esp. Organon, Physics, Metaphysics, On the Soul, The Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, Rhetoric, Poetics)

�  Epicurus (c.341-270 B.C.) Letter to Herodotus Letter to Menoeceus

�  Euclid (fl.c. 300 B.C.) Elements

�  Archimedes (c.287-212 B.C.) Works (esp. On the Equilibrium of Planes, On Floating Bodies, The Sand-Reckoner)

�  Apollonius of Perga (fl.c.240 B.C.) Conic Sections

�  Cicero (106-43 B.C.) Works (esp. Orations, On Friendship, On Old Age)

�  Lucretius (c.95-55 B.C.) On the Nature of Things

�  Virgil (70-19 B.C.) Works

�  Horace (65-8 B.C.) Works (esp. Odes and Epodes, The Art of Poetry)

�  Livy (59 B.C.-A.D. 17) History of Rome

�  Ovid (43 B.C.-A.D. 17) Works (esp. Metamorphoses)

�  Plutarch (c.45-120) Parallel Lives Moralia

�  Tacitus (c.55-117) Histories Annals Agricola Germania

�  Nicomachus of Gerasa (fl.c. 100 A.D.) Introduction to Arithmetic

�  Epictetus (c.60-120) Discourses Encheiridion (Handbook)

�  Ptolemy (c.100-170; fl. 127-151) Almagest

�  Lucian (c.120-c.190) Works (esp. The True Way to Write History, The True History, The Sale of Creeds)

�  Marcus Aurelius (121-180) Meditations

�  Galen (c. 130-200) On the Natural Faculties

�  The New Testament �  Plotinus (205-270)

The Enneads �  St. Augustine (354-430)

Works (esp. On the Teacher, Confessions, City of God, On Christian Doctrine)

�  The Song of Roland (12th century?) �  The Nibelungenlied (13th century?)

(Völsunga Saga is the Scandinavian version of the same legend)

�  The Saga of Burnt Njal �  St. Thomas Aquinas (c.1225-1274)

Summa Theologica �  Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)

Works (esp. The New Life, On Monarchy, The Divine Comedy)

�  Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1340-1400) Works (esp. Troilus and Criseyde, The Canterbury Tales)

�  Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) Notebooks

�  Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) The Prince Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy

�  Desiderius Erasmus (c.1469-1536) The Praise of Folly

�  Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres

�  Sir Thomas More (c.1478-1535) Utopia

�  Martin Luther (1483-1546) Table Talk Three Treatises

�  François Rabelais (c.1495-1553) Gargantua and Pantagruel

�  John Calvin (1509-1564) Institutes of the Christian Religion

�  Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) Essays

�  William Gilbert (1540-1603) On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies

�  Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) Don Quixote

�  Edmund Spenser (c.1552-1599) Prothalamion The Faërie Queene

�  Francis Bacon (1561-1626) Essays Advancement of Learning Novum Organum New Atlantis

�  William Shakespeare (1564-1616) Works

�  Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) The Starry Messenger Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences

�  Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) Epitome of Copernican Astronomy Concerning the Harmonies of the World

�  William Harvey (1578-1657) On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals On the Circulation of the Blood On the Generation of Animals

�  Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) The Leviathan

�  Rene Descartes (1596-1650) Rules for the Direction of the Mind Discourse on the Method Geometry Meditations on First Philosophy

�  John Milton (1608-1674) Works (esp. the minor poems, Areopagitica, Paradise Lost, Samson Agonistes)

�  Molière (1622-1673) Comedies (esp. The Miser, The School for Wives, The Misanthrope, The Doctor in Spite of Himself)

�  Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) The Provincial Letters Pensees Scientific Treatises

�  Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695) Treatise on Light

�  Benedict de Spinoza (1632-1677) Ethics

�  John Locke (1632-1704) Letter Concerning Toleration "Of Civil Government" (second treatise in Two Treatises on Government) Essay Concerning Human Understanding Thoughts Concerning Education

�  Jean Baptiste Racine (1639-1699) Tragedies (esp. Andromache, Phaedra)

�  Isaac Newton (1642-1727) Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy Optics

�  Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716) Discourse on Metaphysics New Essays Concerning Human Understanding Monadology

�  Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) Robinson Crusoe

�  Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) A Tale of a Tub Journal to Stella Gulliver's Travels A Modest Proposal

�  William Congreve (1670-1729) The Way of the World

�  George Berkeley (1685-1753) Principles of Human Knowledge

�  Alexander Pope (1688-1744) Essay on Criticism Rape of the Lock Essay on Man

�  Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755) Persian Letters Spirit of Laws

�  Voltaire (1694-1778) Letters on the English Candide Philosophical Dictionary

�  Henry Fielding (1707-1754) Joseph Andrews Tom Jones

�  Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) The Vanity of Human Wishes Dictionary Rasselas The Lives of the Poets (esp. the essays on Milton and Pope)

�  David Hume (1711-1776) Treatise on Human Nature Essays Moral and Political An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding

�  Jean Jaques Rousseau (1712-1778) On the Origin of Inequality On the Political Economy Emile The Social Contract

�  Laurence Sterne (1713-1768) Tristram Shandy A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy

�  Adam Smith (1723-1790) The Theory of Moral Sentiments Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

�  Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) Critique of Pure Reason Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals Critique of Practical Reason The Science of Right Critique of Judgment Perpetual Peace

�  Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Autobiography

�  James Boswell (1740-1795) Journal (esp. London Journal) Life of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D.

�  Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794) Elements of Chemistry

�  John Jay (1745-1829), James Madison (1751-1836), and Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804) Federalist Papers (together with the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution of the United States, and the Declaration of Independence)

�  Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation Theory of Fictions

�  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) Faust Poetry and Truth

�  Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier (1768-1830) Analytical Theory of Heat

�  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) Phenomenology of Spirit Philosophy of Right Lectures on the Philosophy of History

�  William Wordsworth (1770-1850) Poems (esp. Lyrical Ballads, Lucy poems, sonnets; The Prelude)

�  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) Poems (esp. "Kubla Khan," Rime of the Ancient Mariner) Biographia Literaria

�  Jane Austen (1775-1817) Pride and Prejudice Emma

�  Karl von Clausewitz (1780-1831) On War

�  Stendhal (1783-1842) The Red and the Black The Charterhouse of Parma On Love

�  George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) Don Juan

�  Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) Studies in Pessimism

�  Michael Faraday (1791-1867) Chemical History of a Candle Experimental Researches in Electricity

�  Charles Lyell (1797-1875) Principles of Geology

�  Auguste Comte (1798-1857) The Positive Philosophy

�  Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) Père Goriot Eugénie Grandet

�  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) Representative Men Essays Journal

�  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) The Scarlet Letter

�  Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) Democracy in America

�  John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) A System of Logic On Liberty Representative Government Utilitarianism The Subjection of Women Autobiography

�  Charles Darwin (1809-1882) The Origin of Species The Descent of Man Autobiography

�  Charles Dickens (1812-1870) Works (esp. Pickwick Papers, David Copperfield, Hard Times)

�  Claude Bernard (1813-1878) Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine

�  Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) Civil Disobedience Walden

�  Karl Marx (1818-1883) Capital (together with the Communist Manifesto)

�  George Eliot (1819-1880) Adam Bede Middlemarch

�  Herman Melville (1819-1891) Moby Dick Billy Budd

�  Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) Crime and Punishment The Idiot The Brothers Karamazov

�  Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) Madame Bovary Three Stories

�  Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) Plays (esp. Hedda Gabler, A Doll's House, The Wild Duck)

�  Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) War and Peace Anna Karenina What is Art? Twenty-Three Tales

�  Mark Twain (1835-1910) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn The Mysterious Stranger

�  William James (1842-1910) The Principles of Psychology The Varieties of Religious Experience Pragamatism Essays in Radical Empiricism

�  Henry James (1843-1916) The American The Ambassadors

�  Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) Thus Spoke Zarathustra Beyond Good and Evil The Genealogy of Morals The Will to Power

�  Jules Henri Poincaré (1854-1912) Science and Hypothesis Science and Method

�  Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) The Interpretation of Dreams Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis Civilization and Its Discontents New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis

�  George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) Plays (and Prefaces) (esp. Man and Superman, Major Barbara, Caesar and Cleopatra, Pygmalion, Saint Joan)

�  Max Planck (1858-1947) Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory Where Is Science Going? Scientific Autobiography

�  Henri Bergson (1859-1941) Time and Free Will Matter and Memory Creative Evolution The Two Sources of Morality and Religion

�  John Dewey (1859-1952) How We Think Democracy and Education Experience and Nature Logic, the Theory of Inquiry

�  Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) An Introduction to Mathematics Science and the Modern World The Aims of Education and Other Essays Adventures of Ideas

�  George Santayana (1863-1952) The Life of Reason Skepticism and Animal Faith Persons and Places

�  Nikolai Lenin (1870-1924) The State and Revolution

�  Marcel Proust (1871-1922) Remembrance of Things Past

�  Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) The Problems of Philosophy The Analysis of Mind An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits

�  Thomas Mann (1875-1955) The Magic Mountain Joseph and His Brothers

�  Albert Einstein (1879-1955) The Meaning of Relativity On the Method of Theoretical Physics The Evolution of Physics (with L. Infeld)

�  James Joyce (1882-1941) "The Dead" in Dubliners Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Ulysses

�  Jacques Maritain (1882- ) Art and Scholasticism The Degrees of Knowledge The Rights of Man and Natural Law True Humanism

�  Franz Kafka (1883-1924) The Trial The Castle

� Arnold Toynbee (1889- ) A Study of History Civilization on Trial

�  Jean Paul Sartre (1905- ) Nausea No Exit Being and Nothingness

� Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn (1918- ) The First Circle The Cancer Ward

How do I Choose a Book or Selections from Books?! �  Use the Syntopicon

�  The Syntopi-what? ○  The Syntopicon is “literally, a collection of the

topics which are the main themes of the conversation to be found in the…[Great Books of the Western World Collection]” (xii).

○  “The full title of this work – The Great Ideas, a Syntopicon of Great Books of the Western World – thus indicates not only that its structure consists of terms and topics, but also that it functions as a guide to the great books from which its terms and topics are drawn” (xii).

The Topic “Animal”

The Topic “Animal”

The Topic “Animal”

2. If you chose a single book, read it analytically. If you chose a selection of books, read them syntopically.

What is Analytical Reading? �  The Essence of Active Reading: The Four Basic

Questions a Demanding Reader Asks: �  1. What is the book about as a whole?

�  a. Determine the leading theme of the book, and how the author develops this theme in an orderly way by subdividing it into its essential subordinate themes or topics

�  b. The First Stage of Analytical Reading, or Rules for Finding What a Book is About (see p. 95) ○  i. Classify the book according to kind and subject matter. ○  ii. State what the whole book is about with the utmost

brevity. ○  iii. Enumerate its major parts in their order and relation,

and outline these parts as you have outlined the whole. ○  iv. Define the problem or problems the author is trying to

solve.

What is Analytical Reading? �  2. What is being said in detail, and how?

�  a. Discover the main ideas, assertions, and arguments that constitute the author’s particular message.

�  b. The Second Stage of Analytical Reading: Rules for Interpreting a Book’s Contents ○  i. Come to terms with the author by interpreting his key

words. ○  ii. Grasp the author’s leading propositions by dealing

with his most important sentences. ○  iii. Know the author’s arguments, by finding them in, or

constructing them out of, sequences of sentences. ○  iv. Determine which of his problems the author has

solved, and which he has not; and of the latter, decide which the author knew he had failed to solve.

What is Analytical Reading? �  3. Is the book true, in whole or part?

�  a. Depends upon answering the first two questions; an obligation

�  4. What of it? �  a. Determine the book’s significance. Why is it important to know these

things? Given this new enlightenment what is further implied or suggested?

�  B. The Third Stage of Analytical Reading: Rules for Criticizing a Book as a communication of Knowledge I. General Maxims of Intellectual Etiquette ○  i. Do not begin criticism until you have completed your outline and your

interpretation of the book. (Do not say you agree, disagree, or suspend judgment, until you can say “I understand.”)

○  ii. Do not disagree disputatiously or contentiously. ○  iii. Demonstrate that you recognize the difference between knowledge and

mere personal opinion by presenting good reasons for any critical judgment you make.

�  II. Special Criteria for Points of Criticism ○  i. Show wherein the author is uninformed. ○  ii. Show wherein the author is misinformed. ○  iii. Show wherein the author is illogical. ○  iv. Show wherein the author’s analysis or account is incomplete.

What is Syntopical Reading?

�  i. Surveying the Field: Preparatory to Syntopical Reading �  a. Create a tentative bibliography of your

subject by recourse to library catalogues, advisors, and bibliographies in books.

�  b. Inspect all of the books on the tentative bibliography to ascertain which are germane to your subject.

What is Syntopical Reading? �  ii. Syntopical Reading of the Bibliography Ammased in Stage I

�  a. Inspect the books already identified as relevant to your subject in Stage I in order to find the most relevant passages.

�  b. Bring the authors to terms by constructing a neutral terminology of the subject that all, or the great majority, of the authors can be interpreted as employing, whether they actually employ the words or not.

�  c. Establish a set of neutral propositions for all of the authors by framing a set of questions to which all or most of the authors can be interpreted as giving answers, whether they actually treat the questions explicitly or not.

�  d. Define the issues, both major and minor ones, by ranging the opposing answers of authors to the various questions on one side of an issue or another. You should remember that an issue does not always exist explicitly between or among authors, but that it sometimes has to be constructed by interpretation of the authors’ views on matters that may not have been their primary concern.

�  e. Analyze the discussion by ordering the questions and issues in such a way as to throw maximum light on the subject. More general issues should precede less general ones, and relations among issues should be clearly indicated.

3. Compare the notes from either your Analytical or Syntopical Reading to the Textbook and Departmental Guidelines for your course. Look for overlap in the form of agreement and disagreement.

4. Attend the Faculty Development Workshops and Meet with me to talk about how to Integrate the Organic readings into the Mechanical requirements for the course.

Joan Bruckwicki and Jeremy Light: Understanding Imaginative Literature