How useful are you finding the paraphrasing practice? Do you have goals of your own and want to practice it more? Or are you more just trying to do assignments and assuming they’ll be useful somehow? Do you think you learned something so far and if so what? Would you want to do another topic soon like brainstorming or do you want to go further with this?
Here’s a method of paraphrasing longer things:
- Brainstorm a list of potentially important points.
- Go through and refute points as inessential until you have few enough points and none of the remaining points seem easy to refute.
- Write the paraphrase using the remaining points (often approximately one sentence per point).
For the refuting part, a method is to go through the list and don’t try very hard to refute them. Just go quickly. See what you can get refuted. Then do a second pass and try a bit harder. If there are still too many, do a third pass and try a bit harder. Repeat with more passes as needed. The basic point is to get the easy stuff done first and not get stuck on any point for long.
Try doing one with this method and see how it compares to doing it how you have been (which I’m guessing is using a more intuitive less flowchart-like approach).
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How useful are you finding the paraphrasing practice? Do you have goals of your own and want to practice it more? Or are you more just trying to do assignments and assuming they’ll be useful somehow?
I have found it useful. I can’t say how much. It’s required me to broaden my attention while reading which feels like a good thing to do. It seems like a good way to combine a few skills into one practise, like: paraphrasing, trying to keep in memory more what I’m reading, and then articulation. It seems like doing a bunch of practise with it till I kind of habitually did it would make me a better reader. Improving my reading comprehension is a personal goal of mine.
I’m interested to see how to apply it to non-fiction stuff which seems more sensitive to details that fiction, and which doesn’t come in scenes like fiction often does.
I think I’m mostly interested in it as a means to improving reading skills. In general I’m quite interested in learning skills that relate to that.
Yes I think so. I think paraphrasing an easy-medium fiction paragraph is something that I can comfortably do now to an okay level. I don’t think I’m making any big errors. I could of course be a lot better and quicker with practise.
I would okay moving on to brainstorming soon, with the intention of coming back to this.
I tried this on chapter 5 of It’s Not Luck by Eli Goldratt.
brainstorm of what happens in chapter:
- julie and alex think about alex’s problem of dave using his car together
- alex is going to europe
- sharon wants a hrc t-shirt
- dave asks to borrow alex’s car for the week he’s away
- alex says he’ll think abou tit
- alex is about to brush off thinking about it when julie reminds him he implicitly made a commitment to dave when he said that he’ll ‘think about it’
- alex is worred dave will drive to mexico
- dave has a junk car that he likes working on more than studying
- it’s dave’s spring break while alex is away
quick first refutation:
julie and alex think about alex’s problem of dave using his car together
alex is going to europe
sharon wants a hrc t-shirt
dave asks to borrow alex’s car for the week he’s away
alex says he’ll think abou tit
alex is about to brush off thinking about it when julie reminds him he implicitly made a commitment to dave when he said that he’ll ‘think about it’
alex is worred dave will drive to mexico
dave has a junk car that he likes working on more than studying
it’s dave’s spring break while alex is away
second pass refutation (previous refutations removed):
julie and alex think about alex’s problem of dave using his car together
alex is going to europe
dave asks to borrow alex’s car for the week he’s away
alex says he’ll think about it
alex is about to brush off thinking about it when julie reminds him he implicitly made a commitment to dave when he said that he’ll ‘think about it’
alex is worred dave will drive to mexico
So last two left are:
- julie and alex think about alex’s problem of dave using his car together
alex is going to europe - dave asks to borrow alex’s car for the week he’s away
Paraphrase based on these ideas:
Dave asks to borrow Alex’s car for the week that he’s away in Europe. Alex has a problem with this, so him and Julie use Jonah’s technique to think about the problem together.
This was cool and not hard. I liked being able to explicitly consider whether some of the things in the last pass of refutation were part of the main point of the chapter.
I chose a section from Feynman’s book What Do You Care What Other People Think? to try something different than fiction. It’s semi-narrated and story-like so I figured it might be not too much of a change from fiction. Feynman speaks in the first person about himself and so I figured I’d paraphrase in the third person (since they’re both about the same thing, him.)
What Do You Care What Other People Think?, Part 1: A Curious Character, The Making of A Scientist:
I HAVE a friend who’s an artist, and he sometimes takes a view which I don’t agree with. He’ll hold up a flower and say, “Look how beautiful it is,” and I’ll agree. But then he’ll say, “I, as an artist, can see how beautiful a flower is. But you, as a scientist, take it all apart and it becomes dull.” I think he’s kind of nutty.
First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people—and to me, too, I believe. Although I might not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is, I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. But at the same time, I see much more in the flower than he sees. I can imagine the cells inside, which also have a beauty. There’s beauty not just at the dimension of one centimeter; there’s also beauty at a smaller dimension.
There are the complicated actions of the cells, and other processes. The fact that the colors in the flower have evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; that means insects can see the colors. That adds a question: does this aesthetic sense we have also exist in lower forms of life? There are all kinds of interesting questions that come from a knowledge of science, which only adds to the excitement and mystery and awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts.
I’ve always been very one-sided about science, and when I was younger I concentrated almost all my effort on it. In those days I didn’t have time, and I didn’t have much patience, to learn what’s called the humanities. Even though there were humanities courses in the university that you had to take in order to graduate, I tried my best to avoid them. It’s only afterwards, when I’ve gotten older and more relaxed, that I’ve spread out a little bit. I’ve learned to draw and I read a little bit, but I’m really still a very one-sided person and I don’t know a great deal. I have a limited intelligence and I use it in a particular direction.
Brainstorm:
richard has an artist friend
the artist thinks that science ruins the beauty of a flower
richard thinks that science only adds to the beauty
bugs must be able to see colours of flowers
when he was younger he focused his time on science, not humanities
as he got older he relaxed more and got into some art and reading
science lets you understnad something like a flower more deeply, like down to it’s cell structure
he thinks his friend is nutty
science doesn’t take away from the mystery and awe of something
he was one sided towards science when he was younger
okay, first pass of refutation:
richard has an artist friend
the artist thinks that science ruins the beauty of a flower
richard thinks that science only adds to the beauty
bugs must be able to see colours of flowers
when he was younger he focused his time on science, not humanities
as he got older he relaxed more and got into some art and reading
science lets you understnad something like a flower more deeply, like down to it’s cell structure
he thinks his friend is nutty
science doesn’t take away from the mystery and awe of something
he was one sided towards science when he was younger
second pass:
richard has an artist friend
the artist thinks that science ruins the beauty of a flower
richard thinks that science only adds to the beauty
when he was younger he focused his time on science, not humanities
as he got older he relaxed more and got into some art and reading
science lets you understnad something like a flower more deeply, like down to it’s cell structure
he thinks his friend is nutty
science doesn’t take away from the mystery and awe of something
Okay, what do I think of this?
- the artist thinks that science ruins the beauty of a flower
- richard thinks that science only adds to the beauty
- science lets you understnad something like a flower more deeply, like down to it’s cell structure
- science doesn’t take away from the mystery and awe of something
Have I missed anything from the paragraph? Re read paragraph. There are some details but I think it’s okay so:
Feynman’s artist friend thinks that science ruins the beauty of a flower. But Feynman thinks science can only add to the beauty. Science lets you understand a flower more deeply, and ask more interesting questions about it. Richard thinks that science doesn’t take away from the mystery or awe of something and only adds to it.
I went back and read the paragraphs again after getting my final un-refuted list because I wanted to see if I’d left anything important out. That wasn’t in the process.
This one was okay and there was more I was unsure about than with the fiction one. Like, whether to write in first or third person.
For chapter 7 of The Goal by Eli Goldratt
initial brainstorm:
alex gets home late at night
dinner in mircrowave
mystery meat
sharon comes in to show alex report card
they sit and talk about it for half an hour then alex puts her to bed
alex thinks about whether to look for a new job or not
he decides to try his best to turn the company around in the next 3 months
he doesn’t know how he’s going to do it exactly
but he knows that he shouldn’t take anything for granted
he knows that he doesn’t have time to study at school, or read a lot of magazines/papers
He only has his mind
he goes to bed and julie is there asleep already
he decides he must find jonah
other people at HQ are looking for jobs
he considers getting a headhunter
he wants his investment with unico to pay off
he doesn’t feel like he owers the compnay or town anything
a new job might mean that him and Julie have to move town and he doesn’t want that
first pass:
alex gets home late at night
dinner in mircrowave
mystery meat
sharon comes in to show alex report card
they sit and talk about it for half an hour then alex puts her to bed
alex thinks about whether to look for a new job or not
he decides to try his best to turn the company around in the next 3 months
he doesn’t know how he’s going to do it exactly
but he knows that he shouldn’t take anything for granted
he knows that he doesn’t have time to study at school, or read a lot of magazines/papers
He only has his mind
he goes to bed and julie is there asleep already
he decides he must find jonah
other people at HQ are looking for jobs
he considers getting a headhunter
he wants his investment with unico to pay off
he doesn’t feel like he owers the compnay or town anything
a new job might mean that him and Julie have to move town and he doesn’t want that
second pass:
alex thinks about whether to look for a new job or not
he decides to try his best to turn the company around in the next 3 months
he doesn’t know how he’s going to do it exactly
but he knows that he shouldn’t take anything for granted
he knows that he doesn’t have time to study at school, or read a lot of magazines/papers
He only has his mind
he decides he must find jonah
other people at HQ are looking for jobs
he considers getting a headhunter
he wants his investment with unico to pay off
a new job might mean that him and Julie have to move town and he doesn’t want that
what’s left:
- alex thinks about whether to look for a new job or not
- he decides to try his best to turn the company around in the next 3 months
- he doesn’t know how he’s going to do it exactly
- but he knows that he shouldn’t take anything for granted
- He only has his mind
- He decides he must find jonah
My paraphrase (it combines a couple of the nodes into one idea: that he’ll have to rely on himself)
After considering looking for a new job or not, Alex decides try his best to turn his company around in only 3 months. He doesn’t know exactly how he’s going to do it, but he knows that he’ll need to rely on himself. He decides to find Jonah.
Tangential: I’d consider saying you’ll do something to be an explicit commitment.
Tangentially, this idea is popular online but I think it’s flawed.
I’d agree that science doesn’t absolutely have to ruin beauty, excitement or awe. (Science does subtract mystery by solving mysteries. There may be deeper layers of mystery but that doesn’t prevent solving mysteries from having a subtractive aspect.) There is no logical necessity for science to do that. But that doesn’t mean science as it exists today is very compatible with or good at those things. Science tends to push people into some conscious thought processes that take them out of certain intuitive modes of thinking. Even if they can still access those intuitions and see beauty and stuff like before, they often can’t do it at the same time as they’re doing scientific analysis. And I do think those intuitions being ruined or suppressed is a real problem related to some of my articles like:
- Don’t Suppress Your Intuition
- Intuition and Rationality
- Intuition and Rational Debate
- Intuition Is Part of Rational Living
I don’t agree with the artist either. Arguing with a flawed position (that may have been paraphrased unfairly btw) helps people gloss over flaws in your claims because it’s easier to judge that you won the debate just because the other side seems bad or worse.
That’s a good additional, optional step.
ok go ahead and try some non-fiction. maybe Popper if that doesn’t sound too hard.
Alright, I’ll try some with Popper.
Excerpt from The Myth of the Framework by Karl Popper
Although I am an admirer of tradition, and conscious of its importance, I am, at the same time, an almost orthodox adherent of unorthodoxy: I hold that orthodoxy is the death of knowledge, since the growth of knowledge depends entirely on the existence of disagreement. Admittedly, disagreement may lead to strife, and even to violence. And this, I think, is very bad indeed, for I abhor violence. Yet disagreement may also lead to discussion, to argument, and to mutual criticism. And these, I think, are of paramount importance. I suggest that the greatest step towards a better and more peaceful world was taken when the war of swords was first supported, and later sometimes even replaced, by a war of words. This is why my topic is of some practical significance.
brainstorm:
- his topic is of practical significance for helping prevent violence and war
- he is anti-orthodoxy, though he understands the value of tradition
- disagreement can lead to violence, but it can also lead to critical discussion and progress
- orthodoxy is the death of knowledge, because the growth of knowledge depends on disagreement
first pass
- his topic is of practical significance for helping prevent violence and war
- he is anti-orthodoxy, though he understands the value of tradition
- disagreement can lead to violence, but it can also lead to critical discussion and progress
- orthodoxy is the death of knowledge, because the growth of knowledge depends on disagreement
I couldn’t really get rid of any of those. I had a feeling that I wanted to try a quicker more intuitive approach so I said it aloud and recorded it. I said:
Tradition is valuable, but orthodoxy is the death of knowledge. Knowledge requires disagreement. Though disagreement can lead to violence, it can lead to critical discussion and understanding. This is why this topic is important.
I think that’s reasonable?
Again from Popper’s TMOTF:
But let me first explain what my topic is, and what I mean by my title, ‘The Myth of the Framework’. I will discuss, and argue against, a myth: a false story that is widely accepted, especially in Germany. From there it invaded America, where it became almost all-pervasive among intellectuals, and where it forms the background of some of the most flourishing schools of philosophy. So I fear that the majority of my present readers may also believe in the myth, either consciously or unconsciously.
paraphrase:
I will discuss a widely believed myth that forms the background of some of the most flourishing schools of philosophy.
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That makes sense because the brainstormed list is short. If you had brainstormed 10+ things, you would have an easier time eliminating some.
it’s ok. what do you think of this?
Knowledge growth depends on disagreement, which orthodoxy suppresses. Disagreement can lead to very bad things like violence, but can also lead to very good things like discussion. Popper abhors violence but still strongly advocates unorthodoxy and disagreement.
True. Why didn’t I brainstorm more things? I brainstormed things only that I thought I remembered from the paragraph. I didn’t re-read the paragraph when I was done remembering and try and put down more ideas that I noticed. I don’t see a reason why I couldn’t have done that. I think perhaps when I’ve been brainstorming these I have other goals like trying to use and improve my working/reading memory.
Yours brings up disagreement in the first sentence which I like and which I didn’t do. I think disagreement is a main theme of the paragraph, so it makes sense to talk about it straight away. You also make clear that violence is bad and discussion is good. You also speak in the third person about Popper where I didn’t. Mine feels less focused(?) or perhaps just less clear what it’s about, than yours. What important things do you see mine as missing that yours has?
Try brainstorming a bigger list for the same paragraph.
If you get stuck, reread the paragraph and see if you can brainstorm more that way. I see benefits of trying initially to do it from memory, but rereading after memory tests is actually also beneficial for helping you check how well you actually remembered stuff.
agree
yeah that’s unimportant either way for what we’re doing. what’s better is a style and context issue.
ok let’s compare
LMD paraphrase:
Elliot paraphrase:
What you left out, that I have, is some evaluations/opinions/interpretations type information.
You have “orthodoxy is the death of knowledge” which comes literally from the original text and doesn’t explain what’s going on (how does orthodoxy kill knowledge?), whereas I wrote what I thought the point was (that Popper didn’t 100% spell out, but I think did imply and intend readers to understand).
Violence being “very bad” is actually in the text. Popper contrasts discussion as an alternative outcome to violence and praises it with “paramount importance” and then relates it to peace. So I think my “very good” evaluation follows Popper closely; I’m not getting speculative there.
I think part of what you did is keep some of the same not-fully-stated implications that Popper had. That’s problematic when paraphrasing because you’re cutting words and therefore reducing the available hints. The implications are easier to follow in the original than the paraphrase. When condensing, if you remove some hints then you’ll have to say the answer/point more clearly to achieve equal understandability to the original.
Your version is 34 words and mine is 37. I focused more on what I thought were the main points and gave them more words. You included two things I didn’t. You were less willing to cut parts as inessential than I was. I cut both of these:
Tradition is valuable
This is why this topic is important.
These correspond to two of the four brainstormed points where you weren’t able to cut any.
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Oh yeah totally. I can see that now.
Okay, I can see that. He doesn’t totally spell out how orthodoxy and disagreement are related; but it’s implied (I didn’t notice this). Yours makes that relationship more explicit by saying that orthodoxy suppresses disagreement.
Okay I think I understand. I had some of the implications that Popper had, but without the hints he gave for understanding those implications. So mine was harder to follow. That makes sense.
Sure that makes sense. In the light of your points I think now that yours is much better than mine (I had expected it would be). Also, I wonder generally how to practise improving my intuitions here? I am guessing that you were able to do your paraphrase largely intuitively and quickly, and probably your explanations of the important differences too? Would a good way to be to use my current intuitions to get an initial answer, and then to apply some more conscious analysis after that, and practise that enough that the conscious analysis part (whatever I’m trying to add to my intuition e.g whether there are important themes, implications that need explaining or evaluations/opinions I’m missing) kinda joins with the intuitive part? It makes sense to me that I’d have to at first include as a conscious step the things I wanted to add to my intuition.
Some things I could ask in that analysis might be:
what is the major theme(s)?
are those themes in an important place in the paraphrase?
does my paraphrase make the ideas I’m including harder to follow? Does it condense away hints needed to understand them?
are there evaluations important to the paragraph I’m missing?
I’m sure there are heaps of things to get better at here, and full list of things I could check would be impractical, but it seems that something like a reasonable checklist of things might be necessary to getting better at this?
OK:
- tradition is important
- the growth of knowledge depends on disagreement
- implied: orthodoxy is opposed to disagreeent
- orthodoxy hinders the growth of knowledge
- a bad thing disagreement can lead to is violence
- a good thing it can lead to is discussion and understanding
- discussion, criticism, are of paramount importance
- replacing swords with words is a good thing in our history
- discussing what to do about disagreement has practical implications for war
- popper hates violence
- disagreement is an important theme
okay that’s what i’ve got from memory now, I’m going to read through and see if there is anything of note I’ve forgotten
- popper is an advocate/adherent of unorthodoxy
- popper says the greatest step towards peace was replacing swords with words i.e by attempting to resolve disagreements rationally and without violence.
- popper admires tradition
Again from Popper’s TMOTF:
Let me say at once that the myth contains a kernel of truth. Although I contend that it is a most dangerous exaggeration to say that a fruitful discussion is impossible unless the participants share a common framework, I am very ready to admit that a discussion among participants who do not share a common framework may be difficult. A discussion will also be difficult if the frameworks have little in common. And it will be the easier the greater the overlap between the frameworks. Indeed, if the participants agree on all points, it may turn out to be an easy, smooth, and rational discussion – though perhaps a little boring.
brainstorm:
- the myth contains some truth
- discussion between those who don’t share a frame work may be difficult
- discussion between those who share only a little may also be difficult
- discussion may be easier with more shared between frameworks, though perhaps boring
- popper considers it a dangerous mistake to consider discussion impossible between those who don’t share frameworks
- implied: it’s dangerous because discussion is a peaceful way to handle disagreement and that mistake discourages discussion (because why attempt what is impossible)?
themes:
myth contains some truth
fruitful discussion
degree of difficulty and degree of overlap of frameworks
dangerous mistake
my paraphrase:
Popper admits some truth to the myth: that a discussion may be more difficult the less the frameworks have in common. But Popper considers it a dangerous mistake to think this makes fruitful discussion impossible where frameworks aren’t shared.
The critical tradition was founded by the adoption of the method of criticizing a received story or explanation and then proceeding to a new, improved, imaginative story which in turn is submitted to criticism. This method, I suggest, is the method of science. It seems to have been invented only once in human history. It died in the West when the schools in Athens were suppressed by a victorious and intolerant Christianity, though it lingered on in the Arab East. It was missed and mourned during the Middle Ages. In the Renaissance, it was not so much reinvented as reimported from the East, together with the rediscovery of Greek philosophy and Greek science.
initial brainstorm:
the method of science was only invented once in history
it died in the west when christianity conquered the greeks
it survived in the arab east
it was mourned in the west during the middle ages
it was not reinvented, but reimported from the east during the renaissance
popper suggests the tradition of criticising the received story and attempting to replace it with an improved story is the method of science
the tradition was invented in greece
re reading brainstorm:
- popper suggests this critical method is the method of science
- the critical tradition was founded by the adoption of a method of critising received stories and replacing them with better ones
themes:
the critical method
its invention
its nature
its history
first pass
the method of science was only invented once in history
it died in the west when christianity conquered the greeks
it survived in the arab east
it was mourned in the west during the middle ages
it was not reinvented, but reimported from the east during the renaissance
popper suggests the tradition of criticising the received story and attempting to replace it with an improved story is the method of science
the critical tradition was invented in Greece
popper suggests this critical method is the method of science
the critical tradition was founded by the adoption of a method of critising received stories and replacing them with better ones
I ended up finding doing passes on the brainstorm difficult, and I tried to just do one intuitively:
Popper suggests that the critical method, namely, the criticising of received wisdom with a view of improving on it, is the method of science. Popper suggests that this method has only been invented once in history, by the ancient Greeks.
So I ended up leaving out the details of its history (that it died in the west and was reimported). I kinda messed up the method on this one a bit.
yes
yes
I think one of the main things I did is read, write and discuss 100x more than you. If you doubled the number of practice exercises you did, then posted the same number on the forum, I think you’d learn more. Tripling would be even better. (For which to post: 50-90% selected with a random number generator to avoid subconscious bias, and the rest selected by you).
However, I don’t know what your bottlenecks are and whether that would work well for you. It’s a concept for consideration not an assignment and not meant to be pressuring. I don’t know what limits you and what changes would improve those limits. Also the biggest way to get more experience is simply to stick with stuff for more years, not to change your approach.
Yes that’s reasonable. It’s definitely good enough for making progress.
In general, you want to do stuff that’s good enough to make progress not be stuck and not have a high failure rate, and do a lot of that.
You’re doing fine. This tutoring from the beginning to now is certainly more organized than my own learning process with Deutsch.
There are many reasonable things to do next. They’re all fine. You can work on developing intuitions for paraphrasing. That’s a very long process if you want to get results similar to mine, but if you just want to make some progress you can accomplish that now. It’s a perfectly reasonable thing to work on. You could also work on something simpler where you can go really fast with a high success rate, and try to figure out what is one small step more advanced than that, so you can work on that with little slow down, and then repeat. And we could also do some more advanced stuff like working on debate, which would go slower and get less quantity of things done, but could also be good as long as you learn some things.
There are lots of good learning paths and your preferences or intuitions about what you want to do should play a significant role in deciding what to do. I can veto things I think are a bad idea, and make suggestions, and bring up key prerequisites that were skipped, but as long as students pick reasonable topics that I think will work fine, then there’s a lot of flexibility. That doesn’t mean they’re all equal. Many things would work OK but customization does help too. I can select some customizations but some are up to you and your self-knowledge about what you like and don’t like, are interested in or not interested in, curious or not curious about, opinions or intuitions like those.
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Popper:
I suggest that the greatest step towards a better and more peaceful world was taken when the war of swords was first supported, and later sometimes even replaced, by a war of words.
One detail you’re missing is Popper talked about a combined war of swords and words. He mentioned words supporting swords, which means both together. He suggested actually replacing swords with words is uncommon (“later sometimes even”).
I remembered this part because I thought it was interesting because it suggests that maybe wartime propaganda campaigns are a positive development compared to wars without propaganda. Propaganda can be viewed very negatively, but can also be viewed as a step in the direction of people judging wars in terms of ideas instead of just military might.
That’s true. That’s weird because I do think I understood what he meant there because I remember thinking about it when I read it. I remember noticing that he wasn’t saying what I expected he was going to say there. I think at the time I thought my brainstormed version was a simpler version but it’s actually just different. My brainstormed version I think is that initial wrong expectation that I had when reading the paragraph.
He’s suggesting that the greatest step toward peace was when sword wars were supported by words, not when sword wars were replaced by word wars (which, you’re right, he thinks is probably rare).
I can see that yeah. Interesting. The fact that a power is trying to convince its army or subjects that their cause is right acknowledges a role for ideas in war.
From TMOTF:
The uniqueness of this second component of the scientific tradition – the method of critical discussion – will be realized if we consider the old-established function of schools, especially of religious and semi-religious schools. Their function is, and has always been, to preserve the purity of the teaching of the founder of the school. Accordingly, changes in doctrine are rare and are mainly due to mistakes or misunderstandings. When they are consciously made they are made, as a rule, surreptitiously – for otherwise changes will lead to splits, to schisms.
edit: forgot the popper quote!
The uniqueness of the critical tradition can be seen in comparing to the traditional function of religious schools
the goal of religious schools was to preserve the purity of the founder’s teachings
changes mainly were due to mistake or misunderstandings
changes that had to be made were made secretively
the critical tradition is unique among schools
note: he’s talking about the function of schools in general, not just religious schools, but especially religious and semi religious schools.
- The uniqueness of the critical tradition can be seen in comparing to the traditional function of schools
- changes are rare in traditional schools
- changes are usually due to mistakes
- any conscious changes are usually secretly made
- otherwise they can lead to schisms in the school
first:
The unique method of the critical tradition can be seen when comparing to the traditional function of a school, namely, to preserve the founder’s doctrine against change.
I thought it could be a little better at the start.
second:
The method of the critical tradition is unique amongst schools, whose traditional function is to preserve the founder’s doctrine against change.
So it’s a bit implicit how the critical tradition is different than that. The original has some hints like it states that it’s method is “the method of critical discussion”. So I might put that in my paraphrase:
final:
The method of the critical tradition of criticising the received doctrine is unique amongst schools, whose traditional function is to preserve the founder’s doctrine against change.
Okay I think that’s reasonable.