Collaborative Journals: Gould’s Nonmoral Nature

Collaborative Journals: Gould’s Nonmoral Nature

1. What is Gould’s thesis about non-moral nature. Locate it in the text.

a. “If God is benevolent and the Creation displays his ‘power, wisdom and goodness,’ then why are we surrounded with pain, suffering, and apparently senseless cruelty in the animal world?”

b. More of a meditation upon this question; never resolves a definite answer

2. Explain in detail how Gould uses one of the three appeals successfully?

c. Uses Logos (Logic) to communicate his ideas with his audience. He used factual evidence from the 19th century to support his argument. For instance, wasps are acting upon instinct to determine their behavior, and people would say that there are moral problems with these instincts. The essay itself is uses primary examples and factual evidence to explain his point. In addition he presented his ideas in a professional manner

3. How does Gould create nods to the opposition- that is- those who believe evolution is part of a benevolent creator’s plan?

d. Gould acknowledges that evolution was part of the beneficent creators plan by citing that nothing between an intellectual knowledge that wasps should not be described in human terms and literary or emotional inability to avoid the familiar categories of epic and pains. In addition, “[the practitioner] shared only the theme of priori doctrine- they knew that God’s benevolence was lurking somewhere behind all these tales of apparent horror.”

e. From this point on in the essay Gould offers quotes from other authors, such as Charles Darwin or Henry Huxley, who either support or negate Gould’s argument

4. In pages 639-642 in description of the behaviors of the wasps, Gould deliberately uses anthropomorphic language to describe the behavior of the insects. Why does he do this? What exactly is he try to demonstrate and what is the effect on the audience?

f. “In using inappropriate anthropocentric language in this...