I tend to avoid subscription pricing. I don’t know much about Windows options. I don’t have a strong opinion on XMind.
Text Analysis practice:
From the preface of Conjectures and Refutations:
As we learn from our mistakes our knowledge grows, even though we may never know–that is, know for certain. Since our knowledge can grow, there can be no reason here for despair of reason. And since we can never know for certain, there can be no authority here for any claim to authority, for conceit over our knowledge, or for smugness.
Text Analysis practice:
From the preface of Conjectures and Refutations:
Those among our theories which turn out to be highly resistant to criticism, and which appear to us at a certain moment of time to be better approximations to truth than other known theories, may be described, together with the reports of their tests, as ‘the science’ of that time. Since none of them can be positively justified, it is essentially their critical and progressive character -the fact that we can argue about their claim to solve our problems better than their competitors–which constitutes the rationality of science.
Initial breakdown:
- Those among our theories which turn out to be highly resistant to criticism, and which appear to us at a certain moment of time to be better approximations to truth than other known theories, may be described, together with the reports of their tests, as ‘the science’ of that time.
- Those among our theories which turn out to be highly resistant to criticism may be described, together with the reports of their tests, as ‘the science’ of that time
- and which appear to us at a certain moment of time to be better approximations to truth than other known theories
- Since none of them can be positively justified, it is essentially their critical and progressive character -the fact that we can argue about their claim to solve our problems better than their competitors–which constitutes the rationality of science.
- Since none of them can be positively justified
- it is essentially their critical and progressive character -which constitutes the rationality of science.
- -the fact that we can argue about their claim to solve our problems better than their competitors-
I’d put an ellipsis in square brackets in this one or something else to mark that you’re combining text that wasn’t adjacent in the original.
Also I’m not sure if you recognized that the second part is actually a clause. I thought maybe you were trying to do one chunk per clause. “constitutes” is a finite (= clause-leading) verb here. (There was one other clause you didn’t separate, too, and I don’t know if that’s intended either. It’s fine not to separate all clauses.)
That sounds like a good idea. I will try to do that with sentences or clauses that are mixed and matched.
I did not recognize EDIT(fixing reference quote):“–which constitutes the rationality of science.” END EDIT as a clause. I hesitated a bit about whether to mix and match the different parts of the sentence. Given that they are separate clauses, I’m not sure it was a good idea. I think that the main reason I wanted to connected the “which” clause with something else was that I didn’t pay enough attention to discerning whether it was a clause or not. I was a bit hazy on what to do and glossed over it without enough consideration. If I had thought about it more, I might have recognized that there was something that I didn’t understand.
I just looked it up and it jogged my memory of how “which” works as a relative pronoun. Introduction to Defining Clauses - Purdue OWL® - Purdue University.
So, “which” is the noun (pronoun) in that clause. Knowing that, I think I actually would prefer to break it up into multiple nodes. The “which” node is an elaboration on “critical and progressive character” and a defining connection to “rationality”.
I think the other clause that I didn’t separate is “which turn out to be highly resistant to criticism”. I can’t remember if I recognized it at the time. I might have because I seemed to have recognized at least one “which” clause, and given it its own node. And looking at it now, it looks like the “which” clause does belong in the root node because its a crucial element of the topic sentence.
Text Analysis practice:
From the preface of Conjectures and Refutations:
THE ESSAYS and lectures of which this book is composed are variations upon one very simple theme–the thesis that we can learn from our mistakes. They develop a theory of knowledge and of its growth. It is a theory of reason that assigns to rational arguments the modest and yet important role of criticizing our often mistaken attempts to solve our problems. And it is a theory of experience that assigns to our observations the equally modest and almost equally important role of tests which may help us in the discovery of our mistakes. Though it stresses our fallibility it does not resign itself to scepticism, for it also stresses the fact that knowledge can grow, and that science can progress–just because we can learn from our mistakes.
Grammar trees for a couple of the sentences in paragraph above:
The essays and lectures of which this book is composed are variations upon one very simple theme–the thesis that we can learn from our mistakes.
They develop a theory of knowledge and of its growth.
Dashes can interrupt the regular grammar of a sentence.
They can also, in pairs, separate a group of words, like a parenthetical or pair of commas, except they increase rather than decrease emphasis.
With dashes, semi-colons and colons, you should sometimes give them a tree node.
Here I think you were looking for a connector word to relate the dash-separated group to the rest of the sentence. But there isn’t a word doing that job. The connector is the dash.
The connection besides the dash is that “thesis” modifies (restates or elaborates on) “theme”. So you could directly connect them in the tree or have a dash node between them.
The “that” subtree is a modifier of “thesis”.
I think if you examine it closely, you’ll see the way you used “that” doesn’t have a clear, specific meaning that makes sense. I’m guessing you just found the most conjunction-like thing you could and used it as a connector to the two other groups you needed to connect.
FYI, many other types of practice are possible. For example, rewriting text more simply can help you understand and analyze it. Here’s a short section:
THE ESSAYS and lectures of which this book is composed are …
Rewrite:
This book’s chapters are …
I’ve been thinking about this one and I can’t quite understand it yet.
My thinking at the time was that the “through” group includes “their” which seems to refer to “members”. So, I was reading the “through” group as saying “through [the members] voluntary, individual choice and contractual agreement”. But as I think about it now, it doesn’t seem like the “through” group should be modifying a noun at all.
Could through actually be modifying “derived” directly? The first screenshot of the definition of “through” (below), with just #4, is from the preposition definition of “through”. To consider what the whole prepositional phrase is modifying, I think it helps to look at the other definitions of “through”. The adjective version of “through” doesn’t match the meaning in this context and the adverb version isn’t an exact match either but it’s closer. And “through” doesn’t seem to be qualifying the kind of “rights” or which “members” but it does qualify the method of “derived”.
Also, it seems like the prior two prepositional phrases, “from the rights” and “of its members”, could both be omitted with the sentence still meaning basically the same thing (though you might want to replace “their” with “the group members”). Omitting the prepositional phrase being modified would change the meaning more significantly in the example from the grammar article:
In “John wanted to learn about the science of orbits.”, there are two prepositions. The first is “about” and its noun is “science”. The second is “of” and its noun is “orbits”. The prepositional phrase “about the science of orbits” is an adverb modifying “learn”. It tells us what the learning is about. The second prepositional phrase, “of orbits”, is an adjective modifying “science”. It tells us what type of science. The second prepositional phrase is a modifier inside of the first prepositional phrase.
Saying “John wanted to learn of orbits”, sounds like he just wants to learn of the existence of orbits.
part of the Google definition of “through”:
I think rights being “through” something does make sense, kind of like saying “He got his wealth through marriage”. I think a right can also be (gotten) “through” something. Actually in that example sentence I think “through” modifies “got”. But in “I’m jealous of his wealth through marriage” then “through” actually modifies “wealth”, so it can modify a noun.
Being derived through something makes sense too. Without analyzing much, that version probably works better.
I think you’re right about how I used “that” as a connector. I intiuited that “that” was connecting “thesis” and “we can learn from our mistakes” but I couldn’t really see exactly how. I thought about it more and looked some stuff up, including my previous research on “that”. Learning Grammar - Parts of Speech Analysis and Trees - #33 by Fire
It’s making more sense to me now (after several hours of reading and thinking about it).
“That” is a relative pronoun, introducing the relative clause “that we learn from our mistakes”. Relative clauses function as adjectives so they have to be modifying some noun. I don’t think I identified the “that” clause as a relative clause so I didn’t consider what it would be modifying.
I think it would help my analyses to remember, or keep in mind, that the relative pronoun, which introduces a relative clause, is part of the relative clause. I think I sort mentally separated them when they should go together as a unit.
I also forgot that dashes increase emphasis. I read it in a grammar book that I have but it didn’t stick with me. I was implicity treating dashes basically the same as parenthesis.
My attempt at the corrected tree:
[are [and [essays [(The)]] [lectures [(The)]] [of [which [is [book [this]] [composed]]]]] [variations [upon [theme [one] [very] [simple] [-- [thesis [the] [that [learn [we] [from [mistakes [our]]] [can]]]]]]]]]
If “that” is a pronoun, then it needs to represent a noun and have a role within a clause – e.g. being the subject or object of something.
In “I like the car that is red.” the “that” is a pronoun referencing “car” which serves as the subject of “is”. You can make a tree with two “that” nodes to represent its two purposes.
In “I think that Joe is cool” the “that” is the object of “think” and is a forward reference to “Joe is cool”, so more of a pro-clause than a pronoun, but similar to a pronoun. (This is debated.)
But in “I like the thesis that we learn from our mistakes.” (to make it a complete but simpler sentence), the “that” doesn’t have a noun role in either clause. It only has a connector, relater, subordinator or conjunction role, but not a noun, pronoun, pro-clause or pro-sentence role. If “that” was a reference to “thesis” then you’d need to be able to put it in the tree somewhere that a second copy of “thesis” would go, but “like” has a subject and object already, and “learn” has a subject and no object, and “from” has an object. There are no empty noun slots.
Text Analysis practice:
From the preface of Conjectures and Refutations:
I have relied upon my central thesis to give unity to the book, and upon the diversity of my topics to make acceptable the marginal overlapping of some of the chapters. I have revised, augmented, and re-written most of them, but I have refrained from changing the distinctive character of the lectures and broadcast addresses. It would have been easy to get rid of the tell-tale style of the lecturer, but I thought that my readers would rather make allowances for that style than feel that they had not been taken into the author’s confidence. I have let a few repetitions stand so that every chapter of the book remains self-contained.
Simplified paragraph rewrite:
- I have relied upon my thesis to unite the chapters.
- I revised the chapters but didn’t change the character of the lectures.
- It would have been easy to get rid of the lecture style, but I thought readers would rather be taken into the author’s confidence.
- I have let repetitions stand so that every chapter remains self-contained.
Grammar analysis of the topic sentence from the original paragraph:
I have relied upon my central thesis to give unity to the book, and upon the diversity of my topics to make acceptable the marginal overlapping of some of the chapters.
Rewrite:
I have relied upon my central thesis to give unity to the book. I have relied upon the diversity of my topics to make the overlapping of chapters acceptable.
The rewrite helped me see that “overlapping” is a modifier of “acceptable”.
[have [I] [relied [and [upon [thesis [my] [central] [“to give” [unity [to [book [the]]]]]]] [upon [diversity [the] [of [topics [my] [“to make” [acceptable [ overlapping [the] [marginal] [of [some [of [chapters [the]]]]]] ]]]]]]]]]
Text Analysis practice:
From Purpose of Thinking; Positive and Negative Arguments; Clear Goals :
Summary: Thinking is complicated but worth working on and improving. Positive arguments aren’t as good as negative arguments, because we care whether an idea is broken (and will fail) or not. One negative argument can imply an idea is broken; a dozen positive arguments cannot rule out the idea being broken. In order to improve at decisive criticism, we need to define goals more clearly. To remain flexible, we need to consider multiple goals instead of just one. It’s easy to give decisive, pass/fail judgments to candidate houses in terms of a clear goal like “at least 3 bedrooms, a pool, and costs under $300,000 (plus works for background context goals like having a roof)”.
This article has some description of text analysis ideas for reading comprehension:
and briefly mentions using tree diagrams:
Text Analysis practice:
From the introduction of The Beginning of Infinity:
“Progress that is both rapid enough to be noticed and stable enough to continue over many generations has been achieved only once in the history of our species. It began at approximately the time of the scientific revolution, and is still under way. It has included improvements not only in scientific understanding, but also in technology, political institutions, moral values, art, and every aspect of human welfare.
Whenever there has been progress, there have been influential thinkers who denied that it was genuine, that it was desirable, or even that the concept was meaningful. They should have known better. There is indeed an objective difference between a false explanation and a true one, between chronic failure to solve a problem and solving it, and also between wrong and right, ugly and beautiful, suffering and its alleviation – and thus between stagnation and progress in the fullest sense.
In this book I argue that all progress, both theoretical and practical, has resulted from a single human activity: the quest for what I call good explanations. Though this quest is uniquely human, its effectiveness is also a fundamental fact about reality at the most impersonal, cosmic level – namely that it conforms to universal laws of nature that are indeed good explanations. This simple relationship between the cosmic and the human is a hint of a central role of people in the cosmic scheme of things.
Must progress come to an end – either in catastrophe or in some sort of completion – or is it unbounded? The answer is the latter. That unboundedness is the ‘infinity’ referred to in the title of this book. Explaining it, and the conditions under which progress can and cannot happen, entails a journey through virtually every fundamental field of science and philosophy. From each such field we learn that, although progress has no necessary end, it does have a necessary beginning: a cause, or an event with which it starts, or a necessary condition for it to take off and to thrive. Each of these beginnings is ‘the beginning of infinity’ as viewed from the perspective of that field. Many seem, superficially, to be unconnected. But they are all facets of a single attribute of reality, which I call the beginning of infinity.”
