Overview
I have endeavored to ask for something fair, manageable, and reasonably focused. So, I have decided to ask a series of ten (10) questions, requiring approximately seventeen (17) substantive paragraphs in response. By “substantive” I mean paragraphs that avoid padding and fluff and manage to get to the point (instead of talking around it). They all require the exercise of interpretive and critical care. The very last one, number ten (10), is a little more open-ended and thus in need of a little more thoughtful speculation.
particular, you might see Eiseley’s essay as an attempt to concretize Krishna’s suggestion in the Gita that we can render our lives meaningful by seeking some sort of union with an impersonal cosmos, be this cosmos immanent nature or else some sort of transcendent “supernature.” Moreover, the stuff we have looked at concerning meaningfulness as somehow emergent from a process of personal narrative construction clearly comes into play here. Think of Eiseley’s essay as an illustrative attempt to discern meaningfulness in the natural universe through a critical description of the place he occupies within it.
Note that the copy of “The Judgment of the Birds” presently in the folder now has numbered paragraphs to make cross-referencing between questions and text easier. Also, note that each of the essay questions has a recommended length assignment (given in terms of a suitable number of paragraphs).
All of these questions concern the paper by Loren Eiseley that I have recommended you look at and think about for the last week or so, “The Judgment of the Birds.” This exam is an exercise in critical application. What this means is that, even though it doesn’t make explicit reference to many of the materials we have covered so far in this course, it still deals with them. In This Essay is concerned with the article presented above ("The Judgment of the Birds," by Loren Eiseley), focused on the idea that meaning is a function of narrative construction and union with an impersonal cosmos. It consists of ten questions about this article that I would like you to address. Think of Eiseley's essay as an illustrative attempt to discern meaningfulness in the natural universe through a critical description of the place he occupies within it.