ShmoopTube

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and here's your shmoop du jour brought to you by natural

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history. not to be confused with au natural history. a controversial

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approach to teaching students about our past which presupposes that everyone

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living prior to the century was totally naked. yeah lawyers had a field day with [American founding fathers shirtless]

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that one. all right check out the following passage which we're just going

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to skim because well on our screen is little tiny print. [skim]

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[mumbling]

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alright we're done. the line the course of nature as It is, as it has been and as

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it will be with the object of scientific inquiry whatever lies beyond the bottle

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below this is outside science. contains which of the following. all right

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[mumbling]

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the focus here is not only what the quote says but also how it is said thank you very much.

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this is a staple component of rhetoric called a rhetorical or literary device.

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rhetoric is persuasive speech or writing and rhetorical devices are techniques [rhetorical device options]

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that make what said interesting and convincing. we probably wouldn't consider

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this guy's use of repetition and intriguing rhetorical device. on the

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other hand this tortured student makes it sound much more convincing. repetition

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may be one of the most common rhetorical devices but it's far from being the only

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one .first what's this line saying. well essentially the course of nature is was

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and always will be the object of scientific inquiry. fancy way of saying a

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scientist purpose is to understand and explain nature .the second part means

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that which is not observable and therefore cannot be proven is not

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scientific. now let's throw our writer thinking cap on and interpret these

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techniques. ever heard someone call something a catch-22 ?it means a

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situation is a paradox . well the phrase was coined from a book of the same name

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catch-22. great book you should read it. the book said during World War two is [teddy bear wonders about the meaning of catch-22.]

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about a fighter pilot who wants out of the war. to get out of that combat duty a

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soldier must be mentally evaluated and proven insane and therefore unfit to

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fight. but there's a catch. if a pilot is sane he must fly well. if he's crazy than

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he doesn't have to. so a pilot has to be crazy to fly because it's they're

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dangerous so saying he doesn't want to fly means he's sane. he still has to

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fly. it's an unending circle an unsolvable contradiction, a catch-22. now

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metonymy is a figure of speech. take Julius Caesar please

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the name of a person object or idea is replaced by something associated

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to it. clearly this request was for attention not to address an ear shortage

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problem. Hyperbole is like literally the most extreme literary device ever. this

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exaggeration is intended to emphasize a point. not to be taken like literally.

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parallel ism is a device that helps clarify a point by giving balance. what [Hyperbole explained]

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you see is what you get. consistency is key to proving a point. otology may sound

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similar but it's a more exact repetition kind of like saying repeat that again? ok

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so which rhetorical device fits the best? well this description of science may

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sound like hyperbole but it's no exaggeration. it's simply fact. the decisive

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stands uses straightforward language, no figures of speech metonymy or

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paradoxes. deciding between you two can be tough because both involve repetition.

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remember tautology says the same thing in different ways. meaning d parallelism

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is the better choice. there's some echo here but never anything that reiterates [parallelism defined]

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exact words or phrases. as it is as it has been as it will be demonstrates

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parallelism on two levels .one there's the repetition of as. two is absent and

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will be or present past and future is a persuasive way to emphasize always .the

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author uses parallelize and a third time writing beyond above or below to

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describe what it's outside of science. the one-two-three punch parallelize

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makes for perfect persuasion. sorry we spit on you there. [woman hits a man in the jaw with gloved fist]

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