Dear Ladies and Gentlement,
I would be vastly glad if you could check my essay for rightness.
Many Thanks
True or False? Analysis of "Entropic Homogeneity Isn't Why
No One Hits .400 Any More"
From the beginning of our existence, it is still not clear: do we deteriorate or evolve? Have we transcended the evolution or dwelt identical as 500, 1000 or 2000 years ago? Stephen Jay Gould, American paleontologist, biologist and author of Life's Grandeur, argues consistent divergence between past and present achievements. While Gould uses pathos to identify his readers and convince them, his strongest point is his use of overwhelming logical proofs.
Gould begins his essay employing baseball as main purpose to present a reader difference between past and present. It serves Gould as priceless source of proved and obvious details: dates, records, and achievements. He uses it as an example because it evokes in his readers simple interest and curiosity. Throughout 20th century, it had changed a lot, and therefore, contains plenty of data now. Baseball, as he states, "has been a bastion of constancy in a tumultuously changing world, a contest waged to the same purpose and with the same basic rules for 100 years...Yet while styles of play and dimensions of ball parks have altered substantially, baseball today is the same game that Wee Willie Keeler and Nap Lajoie played in the 1890s."
Main point is that Gould sets himself as an object to narrate a reader the reality of such extraordinary issue. In addition to the baseball, author appeals to precise details: statistics, variance and standard deviation, because these formulas and their data effectively persuades reader in author's credibility. He explain all these measurements and numbers gradually, thereby not confusing his audience with all these mind-blowing staff. Author states that "numbers affirm this ineluctable improvement for sports that run against the absolute standard of a clock." These calculations gave author to understand the difference between past and present, as in (7) paragraph: "When we contrast these numbers of past and present, we encounter the well known and curios phenomenon that inspired this article: great players of the past often stand further apart from their teammates." He appealed to strategic device called enumeratio, to a point with exact details from baseball. For instance, author differentiates between sport records in near past and unintelligible present; he claims that "No one has hit .400 since Ted Williams reached .406 ... in 1941".
Author regularly appeals to ethic, strengthening his credibility. Gould argues "20-year excursion" of the averages. He interprets Bill James' Historical Baseball Abstract and attributes to crucial changes in baseball rules that upset this decadal balance: "Trick pitches - the spitball, shine ball, and emery ball - were all banned. More important, umpires now supplied shiny new balls any time the slightest scruff or spot appeared". Thereby author appeals to Mr. James and gives us to understand that these changes also mattered in such constancy. In addition, using ethos, Gould argues "the .400 hitters of old relatively better, but absolutely worse (or equal)." Gould exactly states that averages are "often meaningless" thus shifting to variation: "Copious and continuous variation is us".
However, in (17) paragraph Gould again appeals to emotion of beating about the bush ("But enough general pontification. The necessary item for this study is practical not ideological"). Because he could not have pointed precise problem beforehand, he expresses that in one sentence: "We've failed to grasp this simple solution because we don't view variation as reality itself, and therefore don't usually study it directly."
Further, Gould continues appealing to ethos (in the beginning of (18) paragraph) and to logos (from (19)) discrediting myth of ancient heroes. He explains how "The myth can be exploded directly for sports with absolute clock standards." using declining variation term. He provides such details about it as "...this decline produces a decrease in the difference between average and stellar performance...", "variation is the key to our puzzle." and subsequently argues that "...modern leaders don't stand so far above their contemporaries". After, he explains deeper in two ways why variation.
According to his words, first reason describes "approach to the outer limits of human capacity". He convinces that "creatures have outer limits set by evolutionary histories" and give us accurate details, for example, "Maximum life span isn't increasing...Increase in human height has finally began to level off". His strong details using plots and his own personal examples from his studies make the reader to believe in his appeal to ethic. Ultimately, he proves that "disappearance of .400 hitting is a sign of improvement, not decline" because "The relative standards of baseball have masked this trend; hitting has greatly improved but we still measure its average as .260 because pitching has gained in concert". However, second reason mainly complements first one, having even the same point (author mentions that in (24) paragraph). Main idea of second reason is to show that "scores of subtleties hadn't yet been developed". After Gould exemplifies several gradual changes in rules, how they were in the past and now. For example, "Gloves were a joke in those early days - just a little leather over the hand, not a basket for trapping balls." in the past and now "Every pitch is charted, every hit mapped to the nearest quare inch. Fielding and relaying have improved dramatically." Therefore, author states "all these improvements must rob great batters of 10 or 20 hits a year - more than enough to convert our modern best into .400 hitters".
Gould appeals to his Vanity Fair article, to consolidate his credibility. He mostly discusses the same point ("the extinction of .400 is... a mark of increasingly better plays") as before. Several proper details are demonstrated here including his personal statistical experiment and details that prove irrelevance of .400 to decadal improvement. In addition, he appeals for logical explanation (logos) that has major persuasive effect on readers.
However, Gould frequently appeals to logos as well as to ethos. Logical explanations let author build concatenation of specific events that affected achievements in the past and in the present. For instance, when he explains decline in variation, he says "Paradoxically, this decline produces a decrease in the difference between average and stellar performance. Therefore, modern leaders don't stand so far above their contemporaries." Also, according to (37) paragraph, he offers to detail trends dividing them into some categories consisting of sports, science and music and clarifies why he does so. Further, in paragraphs (38) through (40) author proposes general framework for understanding trades: "This theme transcends sports (or any particular example), and our model should include mind work as we as body work. I suggest three rough categories..."According to his words, it is created for us "for understanding trends.../and/...this theme transcends sports". In addition to logos, he deepens into consideration of each of category, consisting of science, music and sports performance, examines them and giving distinct details why we have each of them.
Gould appeals to pathos, because he shares his own opinion and thoughts about current world, its achievements and records. He completely proves that we live in "excellent" world, giving us some advices such as "not to lament the past" and "remember that the possibility for transcendence never dies".
Generally, we can say, that author organized his article resorting to conversational and calm tone (sometimes we can notice questions in the end of paragraphs and subsequently answers to them) and providing his readers with sufficient (even abundant) amount of proved details. Mostly he appealed to logos, then to ethos and lastly to pathos. In the end, he gives several advices about present thus inspires the reader. However, main thing is that he completely accomplished his purpose: he discredited the "ancient hero" myth and proved the transcendence of the present world exploiting slew details, creating an argumentative tone and appealing mostly to ethic and logic.
