*Rhetorical Analysis Paper* The purpose of this assignment is to reflect on how different kinds of interdisciplinary studies can relate to each other. Howard Gardner’s interdisciplinary study on creativity (combining social science, psychology, and historical/biographical accounts) and Ray Kurzweil’s interdisciplinary study on the functioning of the human mind (connecting computer science and neurocognitive studies) both contribute in advancing our collective knowledge about human intellectual discoveries, creations, and inventions. *You will practice your critical thinking on connecting these two sample studies in order to show an understanding of creativity and interdisciplinarity from both perspectives. * In your paper, you will make a clear, specific, narrow argument about how a theoretical concept from Ray Kurzweil’s How to Create a Mind can illuminate and make us better understand the procedural working of the creative minds of any of the four innovators we have reviewed in Howard Gardner’s Creating Minds. Running the risk of oversimplification, the central issue in your Paper is to test whether the functioning of the human mind, as described by Ray Kurzweil, can apply also to the working of any of the creative minds described by Howard Gardner. If human mind in general works according to Kurzweil’s model, do creative minds also work according to such a model? For this assignment, you will: 1. analyze how a specific argument is organized and articulated by the author of an interdisciplinary study in a text (Ray Kurzweil’s How to Create a Mind) 2. identify one specific concept within the above argumentative line that you can see as potentially useful to generate new knowledge in other disciplines 3. compose a thesis-based argumentative essay that uses your identified theoretical concept from the first text (Ray Kurzweil’s How to Create a Mind) to make sense or suggest a possible interpretation of one model of creativity discussed in the other text (Howard Gardner’s Creating Minds) The argument you will make in your Paper must be logos-based and supported with evidence in the form of: • primary text citations and close reading of passages from Kurzweil and Gardner • secondary texts citations (quotations from any of the other readings we have read) Do not assume that the argument or evidence is self-evident—you must interpret the support you provide for your claim. In other words, prevent any communicative situation in which a reader encountering a provided piece of evidence in your paper (for example, a citation or a reference to an element in the text) might have to ask: What does it mean? What is its significance? Why does it matter?
