Inquiry Questioning, Reading, Writing

by Bloom, Lynn Z.; White, Edward M.; Borrowman, Shane

• ISBN13: 9780131823716
• ISBN10: 013182371X
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-01-01
• Publisher: Pearson

Summary

This cross-curricular composition book emphasizes the idea of writing as thinking. Maintaining its core theme that good questions are at the heart of good writing, this Second Edition is organized around six thought-provoking questions intended to motivate contemplation and inspire prolific writing:1) How do I know who I am?; 2) How do we know what we know?; 3) What principles do, and should, govern our personal lives?; 4) What are human rights and responsibilities?; 5) What can we learn from the past?; 6) What will the future be like?The reading selections in each chapter offer a variety of approaches to the chapter question, with representation from many different social perspectives.A host of new readings have been added, including selections that relate to current issues such as war and terrorism, business ethics, computers and artificial intelligence.For professionals with a career or interest in writing, teaching, journalism, editing and/or publishing.

Table of Contents

(NOTE: Each chapter begins with an Introduction, Rhetorical Issues, and Questions for Discovery and Discussion, and concludes with Questions for Reflection, and Writing.)
Introduction.
1. Identity: How Do I Know Who I Am?

What Is My Physical Self?

Maxine Hong Kingston, On Discovery. Natalie Angier, Estrogen, Desire, and Puberty. Nancy Mairs, On Being a Cripple. Shelby Steele, The Age of White Guilt and the Disappearance of the Black Individual.

Who Am I in Relation to Others?

Frederick Douglass, Resurrection. Mike Rose, I Just Wanna Be Average. Joan Didion, On Self Respect. Eric Liu, Notes of a Native Speaker. Gloria Anzaldua, Beyond Traditional Notions of Identity.

How Do Language and Literacy Affect My Identity? Amy Tan, Mother Tongue. Eudora Welty, Listening. Richard Wright, The Power of Books. Richard Rodriquez, Aria.

2. Thinking: How Do We Know What We Know?

What is the Process of Thinking?

Susanne Langer, Signs and Symbols. Plato, The Allegory of the Cave. Isaac Asimov, Those Crazy Ideas. Frank Conroy, Think About It. Anne Fadiman, Under Water. What Are Some Ways of Understanding Nature? Charles Darwin, Understanding Natural Selection. Stephen Jay Gould, Evolution as Fact and Theory. Jane Goodall, First Observations. Michael Pollan, Overriding Darwin: Genetically Engineered Potatoes. How Can We Explain What We Know? Thomas Kuhn, The Route to Normal Science. Deborah Tannen,Conversational Styles. Benjamin Lee Whorf, An American Indian Model of the Universe. Perri Klass, Learning the Language.
3. Ethics: What Principles Do—and Should—Govern Our Personal Lives?

What Governs Ethical Behavior?

Jeffrey Wattles, The Golden Rule—One or Many, Gold or Glitter?Benjamin Franklin, Arriving at Moral Perfection. Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics. Peter Singer, The Singer Solution to World Poverty.

What Are Some Operative Principles of Work and Play?

Howard Gardner, Good Work, Well Done: A Psychological Study. Barbara Ehrenreich, from Nickled and Dimed. Atul Gawande, When Doctors Make Mistakes. Deborah Fallows, Why Mothers Should Stay Home. Charles M. Young, Losing: An American Tradition. How Can We Meet the Challenge of Creativity? Jacob Bronowski, The Reach of the Imagination. Linda Hogan, Hearing Voices. Ursula LeGuin, Where Do You Get Your Ideas From? Alexander Calandra, Angels on a Pin. Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens.
4. Values: What Are Human Rights and Responsibilities?

What Are Fundamental Human Rights?

Wole Soyinka, Every Dictator's Nightmare. Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Declaration of Sentiments. Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address. Sojourner Truth, Ain't I a Woman.

What Values Govern the Common Good?

Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience. Martin Luther King, Jr.,Letter from Birmingham Jail. Lewis H. Van Dusen, Jr., Civil Disobedience: Destroyer of Democracy. Terry Tempest Williams, The Clan of One-Breasted Women. John McPhee, Los Angeles Against the Mountains.

How Can Value Conflicts Be Resolved?

Deborah Tannen, The Roots of Debate in Education and the Hope of Dialogue. Robert Wuthnow, Making Choices: From Short-Term Adjustments to Principled Lives. Nelson Mandela/Frederik Willem de Klerk, The End of Apartheid Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speeches (1993). Ursula Franklin, Silence and the Notion of the Commons.
5. Reinterpretation/Contexts: What Can We Learn From the Past?

How Does Family Heritage Affect Who We Are?

Barry Lopez, Searching for Ancestors. Pauli Murray, The Inheritance of Values. Scott Russell Sanders, The Inheritance of Tools. Cynthia Ozick, A Drugstore Eden. Scott Russell Sanders, Under the Influence: Paying the Price of My Father's Booze.

How Can We Live in Harmony With Nature?

Leslie Marmon Silko, Landscape, History, and the Pueblo Imagination. Henry David Thoreau, Where I Lived and What I Lived For. Rachel Carson, The Obligation to Endure. Sandra Postel, Troubled Waters.

How Can We Interpret and Understand the Past?

Stephen Hawking, Our Picture of the Universe. Italo Calvino,All at One Point. Frances Fitzgerald, America Revised. Linda Simon, The Naked Source.
6. Predictions: What Will the Future Be Like?

How Can We Think About Technology and Gender Roles in the Future?

Anne Fadiman, Mail, American Scholar 2000. Paul de Palma, http.//www.when_is_enough_enough.com? Robert S. Weiss, Marriageas Partnership. Lettie Cottin Pogrebin, Why Feminism is Good for the Jews.

Will War and Terrorism Shape Our Future?

Margaret Mead, Warfare Is Only an Invention—Not a Biological Necessity. Czeslaw Milosz, American Ignorance of War. Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God. Wendell Berry, Thoughts in the Presence of Fear. Pope John XXIII, “Disarmament” from Pacem in Terris.

Will a New Utopia be Possible in the 21st Century?

W. French Anderson, Genetics and Human Malleability. Leigh Turner,The Media and the Ethics of Cloning. Kofi Annan, The United Nations in the 21st Century, excerpt from Nobel Peace Prize Speech. Karen Armstrong, Does God Have a Future?

Excerpts

The title of this book,Inquiry,reflects the process at its heart. In Inquiry, a wide variety of writers are searching, from a wide range of academic and social perspectives, for answers to important questions. The book, in fact, is filled with questions: Questions define and organize the chapters, questions stimulate thought before and after the readings, and questions call for connections at the chapters' ends. Inquiry is, by definition, a process of asking questions and trying out answers. Active reading demands the same kind of process. So does writing. Our hope is that students using this book will produce writing that is worth reading, because it will be writing based on inquiry. Long after the completion of the course usingInquiry,the process of inquiry, so central to reading and writing, should remain with the students. Organization Good questions are at the heart of good reading and writing. Thus, this book focuses on key issues for writers by posing six major questions of perennial interest: Identity: How do I know who I am? Thinking: How do we know what we know? Ethics: What principles do--and should--govern our personal lives? Values: What are human rights and responsibilities? Reinterpretations/Contexts: What can we learn from the past? Predictions: What will the future be like? These questions differ significantly from many questions we commonly ask, because they have no right answers. The questions are intended to stimulate critical thinking, to encourage thoughtful examination of what others have to say, and to help develop independent ideas. Each chapter's readings, by significant writers--from Plato to Stephen Hawking, from Frederick Douglass to Leslie Marmon Silko--approach a central question, from many different fields of study and many different social perspectives. Students pursuing the ideas that the questions pose will be considering their own views in light of what these other writers have had to say. The central question of each chapter is subdivided into three more specific subquestions. Thus, Chapter 1--Identity: How Do I Know Who I Am?"--has three groups of readings centered on the following subquestions: (1) What is my physical self? (2) Who am I in relation to others? (3) How do language and literacy affect my identity? The readings grouped under each subquestion present different approaches to the topic, different perspectives and positions. Active readers will need to examine not only the readings, but their own lives for possible answers, perspectives, and parallels. Readings Inquiry by definition is open to many methods of pursuit and many individual perspectives; therefore, we have included a wide variety of authors taking differing approaches to the specific chapter questions. In our choice of readings, we have been particularly attentive to the various discourse communities that make up the American university. Although some readings do not fit neatly into such categories, of course, and some fit approximately into several, almost every student will find some readings in or very close to his or her major field of study. Approximately half of the readings are from the humanities, including philosophical and reflective writing and such literature as autobiography and personal essays. Many of the readings are from the social and behavioral sciences, including anthropology, economics, history, political science, psychology, and sociology. Likewise, the natural sciences are well represented, with readings from astronomy, physics, biology, chemistry, environmental studies, computer science, and medicine. In fact, in preparing this book, we have consulted with our colleagues in a variety of disciplines to ensure cross-curricular perspectives, although we have included only readings appropriate to our audience of undergraduat