of a woman who does not
ing bouquet of flowers.
have a child in a society that
values women primarily as
wives and mothers
As this chart shows, the connection between the works goes beyond simply the existence of a mother-and-child pair: in each case the relationship between the mother and the child reflects the argument of the overall work. In the painting about anguish, the mother is in anguish over the child; in the painting about alcoholism, the mother's alcoholism causes the child's death. A connection of this kind
could lead to a very strong synthesis essay that could go beyond the five works here and draw conclusions about the overall theme of mothers and children in art. The introduction to such an essay might look like this:
Mothers and Children in Art
The bond between a mother and her children goes deeper than the patterns of any particular culture; the mother-child bond has a sound basis in evolution and forms one of the few truly universal elements of the human experience. For this reason, strong connections between mothers and children can be found in almost every human society, and depictions of mothers and children can be found in almost every kind of art. This does not mean, however, that the depictions are all the same. Different cultures value different things at different times, and artistic production usually follows along. However, because the connection between mothers and children is universally strong in human societies, artists from a variety of cultures have been able to use this connection as the basis for a variety of different arguments about the human condition.
SYNTHESIZING IDEAS TO FORM YOUR OWN ARGUMENT
One mark of a strong writer is his or her ability to form ideas that draw upon other sources but are neither slavish imitations of, nor uncritical reactions to, other people's opinions. This synthesis process lies at the very heart of critical analysis.
Synthesizing Ideas: A Model from Classical Rhetoric
When you encounter a new idea, you need not accept it as absolute truth or reject it out of hand. In their discussions of invention, ancient rhetoricians identified five different ways that an idea could affect a reader or a listener. One reaction from a reader or a listener is absolute and uncritical agreement, while another is complete disagreement. Ancient rhetoricians recognized that most reactions fall somewhere in between. The other three cases, explored below, illustrate how your reaction to an idea can lead you to synthesize ideas to form your own.
You can simply become informed about an issue
Often, the process of coming up with your own idea requires nothing more than the knowledge that an issue exists and an understanding of the arguments that
compose it. Once you understand how an issue has been defined, you can apply your own experience to make informed judgments about it. It is often valuable to read other people's ideas simply to become informed about the issues that they discuss.
If, for example, you are unaware of the debate among scientists trying to describe human nature as either a biological or a sociological phenomenon ("nature vs. nature"), Edward Wilson's "The Fitness of Human Nature" is probably not going to convince you one way or the other. However, it is enough to give non-specialists a vocabulary for discussing the issues, thereby paving the way for future discussions and arguments.
You can become convinced that an issue is important
Very often people recognize an issue without really understanding its importance or its consequences. This was the case in 1798 when Thomas Malthus wrote An Essay on the Principle of Population. People at the time understood that populations were increasing, but they saw this as a good thing because it increased available labor and kept the price of goods down. Malthus, however, demonstrated with compelling arguments that increases in population would eventually outstrip increases in food supply and cause serious catastrophes for societies that did not control their growth rates.
Malthus's arguments awakened people to the dangers of unchecked population growth and opened a door for people to generate their own ideas about how best to deal with the problem. As it turns out, most modern thinkers who label themselves "Malthusian" advocate solutions to the problem of overpopulation that Malthus rejected—they have taken his ideas and synthesized them with other facts, policies, and values to create their own ideas. Malthus was a devout Anglican minister who believed that contraception was a sin and abortion an unspeakable evil. These beliefs, however, have not stopped Malthus's ideas from becoming the cornerstone of modern arguments favoring wide distribution of birth control and universal access to abortion. Those who hold such views are not being inconsistent; they are simply synthesizing Malthus's ideas about the importance of a problem with their own opinions of how best to solve it.
You can agree with only some points of an argument
Though writers often present their ideas as all-or-nothing propositions, you do not have to accept them as such. Most arguments are composed of different elements that often can be separated from each other and accepted on their own. It is perfectly valid to reject some elements of an argument and accept others.
For example, Garrett Hardin's "Lifeboat Ethics: The Case against Helping the Poor" includes the following assertions:
Overpopulation is a threat to human civilization.
Third-world countries are increasing in population at a rate much faster than first-world countries.
Giving food and other kinds of aid to overpopulated countries simply allows them to continue to increase their populations without paying a price.
Allowing immigration from overpopulated countries into other countries has the same effect as giving food aid to those countries.
Developed nations should therefore close their borders to immigration and stop the policy of giving food or other kinds of aid to overpopulated, underdeveloped countries.
It is possible to accept some of these assertions while rejecting others, and even to agree with Hardin's premises and disagree with his conclusions. One might argue, for example, that food aid is a way to persuade other countries to adopt population control strategies. Or one could present evidence that population decreases when standards of living increase, and that it is in our best interest to raise the standards of living of people in "developing countries" so that they will decrease their own populations naturally. You can combine some of his arguments with your own observations to construct a synthesis that is uniquely your own.
Synthesizing Ideas: A Model from Philosophy
In the early part of the nineteenth century, the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) developed a system for synthesizing ideas that has become known as "Hegelian dialectic." Hegelian dialectic involves three steps, known to Hegel's students as the thesis, the antithesis, and the synthesis. In Hegel's sense of the word, a thesis is a proposition, an antithesis is an opposite proposition, and a synthesis is a third proposition that resolves the apparent contradiction between the two. Here is an example using the works of Mencius and Hsun Tzu that were discussed earlier in this chapter:
Thesis: Human nature is inherently good (Mencius). Antithesis: Human nature is inherently evil (Hsun Tzu).
Synthesis: Neither inherently good nor inherently evil, human nature is inherently self-interested, which can be "good" in some circumstances and "evil" in others.
In the Hegelian model, the interplay between opposites, which is referred to as a "dialectic," occurs constantly, with each synthesis becoming a new thesis that
provokes an antithesis and requires a new synthesis. For example, the "synthesis" statement above can become a new thesis: