Status:: #🌱 Tags:: Links:: <% tp.file.cursor(4) %> ___ # Analytical Reading [[Analytical reading]] is reading to deeply analyze a single book. It's where we start to get to the real good stuff. The cream of the crop. The strawberry shortcake after dinner. Adler explains that there are four essential stages to analytical reading: 1. **Stage 1: What is it about as a whole?** 2. **Stage 2: What is being said in detail and how?** 3. **Stage 3: Is it true, in whole or in part?** 4. **Stage 4: What of it?** Notice how the first question "what is it about as a whole?" incorporates the previous reading level inspectional reading. The essence of inspectional reading is in uncovering what the book is about as a whole. This is what I meant by all the higher levels include the lower ones. Secondly, notice how we don't ask the significance of the book until we know whether the book is true in whole or part. And we don't do that before we understand what is being said in detail and how. The foundation of all of this is what is the book about as a whole. **We do this because we want to maintain a level of intellectual humility.** When analyzing a book, the author doesn't have the privilege of getting to talk back to us as we read. We are solely responsible for interpreting its contents. So it's our duty to give the author the best interpretation we can. However, It's important to note these stages are an ideal. **In a perfect world, you would go through each of these stages with most great books you read.** **However, I understand you're not going to do that.** Writing out the answers to each of these stages perfectly would take incredible amounts of time and energy. You would likely get more value from the book than any you ever got before. But it's difficult. And different books will require different efforts in your analysis. So I follow these stages as a guide rather than as rules. Often I answer the questions subconsciously as I read, or consciously in my annotations or at the end of a chapter. So don't batter yourself if you don't follow these stages perfectly. Instead, be proud your trying to actively read anyways. Most people never learn how to get past elementary reading 🤣. **Let's hop in our Mario Kart and get going shall we!** # The Stages Of Analytical Reading ## Stage 1: What Is It About As A Whole? Stage 1 of analytical reading is literally just inspectional reading. So if you want to learn how to figure out what the book is about as a whole, go check that out! ## Stage 2: What Is Being Said In Detail And How? After figuring out what the book is about as a whole the second stage of analytical reading involves ascertaining what is being said in detail and how. At this point we have done an inspectional reading and are diving into each individual chapter more deeply. This involves four steps: 1. Coming to terms with the author by interpreting their key words. 2. Grasp the authors primary propositions by focusing on the most pivotal sentences. 3. Understand the authors arguments by identifying or constructing them from consecutive sentences. 4. Determine which problems the author has addressed or failed to address. ### Firstly, we must come to terms with the author by interpreting their key words. A term is simply an unambiguous word. The reason we have to do this is because many words in English change meaning based on their context as well as the way the author uses them. The word "game" is a great example. Despite being only a single world, it has more possible terms then almost any other word I can think of. Game could mean: - A set of artificial goals, rules, and feedback voluntarily participated in with a gameplay loop - A video game - A board game - A type of play - And so on and on... This is why it's so important to come to terms with the author. If you don't you will be unable to interpret exactly what they are trying to say. Imagine trying to arguing with someone over the best anime who's definition of anime is comic books and not art made in Japan. Wouldn't be fun... To make matters worse, bad authors sometimes equivocate, change the meaning of the same word in the course of a argument. This is a logical fallacy as it breaks the rule of linguistic consistency. There isn't much you can do about this other then accept the book is likely not a good one. So let's assume your reading a good book. **How do you find key words and come to terms with the author while reading through information?** Here are a few principles: - Mark the words that trouble you. - Look for stresses the author puts on certain words and not others. They may use quotation marks, italics, or even bold to signify the important words. - Authors might straight upstate the importance or specific meaning of a word they will be using in the text. Unfortunately, once you have found the words, there is no other way to determine what they mean other than using the context of the rest of the sentence, paragraph, and book or using a dictionary. Once you have come to terms with the author you can move to the second step of the second stage of analytical reading. ### Secondly, you must grasp the authors primary propositions by focusing on the most pivotal sentences. A proposition is a statement or assertion that expresses a judgment or opinion. Your job as an analytical reader is to locate the sentences with the most important propositions. Not every sentence in a book will contain a proposition. For one thing sentences can possess questions and state problems, but not judgments or opinions. Other sentences express wishes or intentions. Thus many of the sentences in a book will not have propositions. Furthermore, many sentences can have more than one proposition, depending upon the meaning of the words in the sentence. As Adler describes in How To Read A Book "it is possible for the same sentence to express different propositions if there is a shift in the terms the words express. “Reading is learning” is a simple sentence; but if at one place we mean by “learning” the acquisition of information, and at another we mean the development of understanding, the proposition is not the same, because the terms are different. Yet the sentence is the same" (Adler et al., p. 117). **So how do you locate the key sentences and the propositions they contain?** Here are a few principles you can use: - A good book will make them obvious to you - A sentence that includes many of the key words you found when coming to terms with the author is likely a pivotal sentence - The sentences you slow down for because of difficulty in interpretation are often the important ones ### Thirdly, you must understand the authors arguments by identifying or constructing them from consecutive sentences. Notice how I didn't say paragraphs. The reason for this is there are no definitive rules for how to write paragraphs in writing. Some authors have much longer paragraphs. Some shorter. Some paragraphs will have no arguments in them whatsoever. They will include only evidence. **So you can do this third step by find, if you can, the paragraphs in a book that state its important arguments.** However, if the arguments are not expressed in this manner, your task is to construct them by taking a sentence from this paragraph and one from that until you have gathered together the sequence of sentences that state the propositions composing the argument. **Usually you can find the most important arguments posed in the beginning and summarized at the end of a chapter.** Here are a few principles for finding an authors arguments: - Connect together the authors critical propositions - Look for indications of reasons or conclusions. Usually sentences with these include words such as "because, this shows, if X, etc." - Look for critical problems or questions the author asks and then for the answer to them ### Fourthly, determine which problems the author has addressed or failed to address. Once you have grasped the author's terms, propositions, and arguments, you can determine what problems the author addressed or failed to address. Are their satisfying and well argued solutions to these problems? If not, did the author recognize is as such? Once you have done this, congratulations! You have completed the most difficult work of understanding a book. **Now you're finally ready to criticize it.** ## Stage 3: Is It True In Whole Or In Part? The third stage of analytical reading answering if the book is true in whole or in part? We did the previous two stages first because you can't criticize book before you understand it. That means understanding it in its entirety. You will likely let your own biases and beliefs shine through if you don't. **I can't understate this point enough.** Think about how many people falsely criticize a book before understanding it. Often times they don't understand what the book is about as a whole. They don't align terms with the author. They don't understand the key propositions, arguments, and solutions. As a result, they argue against a false interpretation. **Our goal as linked readers is to grow our knowledge as objectively as possible.** Of course, it's impossible not to let some subjectivity come through. But we can minimize it as much as possible along the way. Once we have done the previous two stages of analytical reading there are four things we can say to criticize the author: - The author is uninformed. - The author is misinformed. - The author commits argumentative fallacies - The analysis is incomplete. If we claim the author is uninformed, we believe they don't have all the information necessary to give a *true* analysis. If they had more information they might have come to different conclusions. If we claim the author is misinformed, we believe some of their evidence is false. If they had the true evidence they might have come to different conclusions. If we claim the author commits argumentative fallacies, we either believe they commit logical fallacies, fallacies of person, fallacies of assumption, or fallacies of suggestion. Diving into each of these fallacies is beyond the scope of this lesson, but I would strongly encourage you to check them out as they will make you an argumentative genius! Finally, if we claim the author's analysis is incomplete we suggest that: - They haven't addressed all initial problems. - They haven't fully utilized their resources. - They overlooked potential implications and ramifications. - They missed crucial distinctions relevant to their objectives. If you can't criticize an author in one of these ways, there is nothing else you can do but agree. **You can't say, I see nothing wrong with your argument but still think you are wrong.** Unless, they stole your peanut butter. That is a crime so evil it invalidates all of your subsequent opinions. ## Stage 4: What Of It? Finally, the fourth and last stage of analytical reading is asking, what of it? What was the point of reading the information? What value does it give you or the world? This will be highly subjective. And hopefully you asked this question to some extent before reading. But here are a few of the questions I ask after reading a book to answer this question: - Can I apply this to a project in my life? - Can I use this to improve in my areas of health, work, and relationships? - How can this help me follow my values? - Is there someone that might resonate with this book more? 🎊 **Congratulations!** 🎊 If you can learn to read analytically, you are above the vast majority of readers when it comes to reading skill. As a summary the stages of analytical reading and their associated steps are: 1. **Stage 1: What is it about as a whole?** - Use inspectional reading to uncover this. 2. **Stage 2: What is being said in detail and how?** - Four steps to answering this question: 1. Coming to terms with the author by interpreting their key words. 2. Grasp the authors primary propositions by focusing on the most pivotal sentences. 3. Understand the authors arguments by identifying or constructing them from consecutive sentences. 4. Determine which problems the author has addressed or failed to address. 3. **Stage 3: Is it true, in whole or in part?** - There are four options for criticizing an author AFTER the first two stages are done: - The author is uninformed. - The author is misinformed. - The author commits argumentative fallacies - The analysis is incomplete. 4. **Stage 4: What of it?** - Four questions I ask to answer this question: - Can I apply this to a project in my life? - Can I use this to improve in my areas of health, work, and relationships? - How can this help me follow my values? - Is there someone that might resonate with this book more? Your comprehension of texts will be leaps and bounds above an elementary or inspectional reader which unfortunately, are the levels most people stay at today.