Assignment #1

Part One:
A claim is a statment that is of an opinion and must be proven by evidence to become accepted. Support answers the question of “why should I accept your claim?” and it includes evidence and explanation. Evidence is the imformation needed to prove ones claim, it can include many different things such as expert witnesses, facts and data, examples, and experiences. An explanation is often the evidence put into words, basically it explains every detail and fact about the evidence.

Part Two:
1) What is your immediate response to Crichton’s argument? How does it make you think and feel? Why? As you read the article, did anything stick out to you? His argument was well constructed, it contained everything needed in an accpetable argement. Personally I think that his argument has change the way I will think aboutthis enviromentalism, simply based on the facts that he presented in his article. His facts on the DDT campain really hit home for me because farmers that live around Lake Apopka, near my home, used DDT for a really long time and now the lake is full of chemicals and is currently being cleaned as part of a many year project.

2) What is Crichton’s tone? How does he feel about the topic, and how is he trying to make the reader feel? What is his purpose in trying to make the reader feel that way? Circhton’s tone in this article is very assertive and strong. He is putting all of the facts out on the table for everyone to read and he is trying to make everyone see that he is correct and agree with him.

3) What is Crichton’s main claim? Be precise. Does he make any supporting claims? I think that Crichton’s main claim is the enviromentalism is based too much on religion currently, and should be based only on science.

4) How does Crichton support his claim? What evidence (facts, statistics, reasoning) does he use, and what explanations does he provide? Evaluate the evidence: how well does his evidence support his claim? He supports his claim by comparing many of the past cultures to many of the present day societies. He hits on topics like cannabilism, mass murder and also scientic aspecs of it like plague death rates, and children under the age of five contracting illnesses.

5) What reason does Crichton give for not citing his sources? Do you accept this? Does not citing sources help or hurt his argument? He states that he didn’t cite his sources because “convictions of a religion are not dependent on the facts, but rather are matters of unshakable faith” (Crichton). I do not accept it “as it”, but if he were to acknowledge or cite his so called prestigious science journals, then maybe I would consider this to be acceptable.

6) Is Crichton’s argument strong? Why or why not? Depends on how you look at it I guess, I would have to say it could have been stronger. He could have added more facts to support his claims, but I also think that if he would have cited his sources then it would have been a stronger argument.