The Essay Engineering methodology

The three parts of the Essay Engineering methodology:

The standard Essay Engineering literary analysis consists of two main parts for a single work, and a third part for the comparative study.

• Part One: “Defining the Structuring Principle of Empirical Evidence, and thus the Literary Work”

• Part Two: “Transforming Empirical Reality to the Higher Signifying Plane of the Conceptual Framework”

• Part Three: “Comparative Study of Two (or more) Conceptual Frameworks”

The empirical evidence-gathering of Part One consists of the transformation of one level and ascending to the next level, from “linguistic symbol of textual layer” to “meaning reconstruction and internalized intuition” to “reconstituted reality qua structuring principle” – these are the elements of First-Order Thinking (1OT), this is the First-Order Thinking building-up.

The theoretical analysis of Part Two explicates a thesis (paragraph thesis and primary thesis) in its variation of meaning from one level to another from “conceptual framework” to “structuring principle” to “Interior meaning” to “supporting evidence”; as well as the basic sense of each level, the analysis explains the linkages between levels – these are the elements of Second-Order Thinking (2OT), this is the Second-Order Thinking cascade of linkages. Part Two is a theoretical reformulation of Part One; that is, the conceptual framework (2OT) is a restatement in theoretical terms of the empirical reality (1OT).

The comparative study of Part Three is dealt with only at the advanced level of Essay Engineering study. Parts One and Two constitute the essential foundation of the curriculum.

Why is meaning reconstruction (1OT) necessary? Why can’t I just do the conceptual framework (2OT) right away?

The “description of reality” does not really exist “in” in the literary work. It only exists when the reader has come to a full understanding of what the words mean as a reality – the literary work does not contain a reality, but only words that describe a reality. Sentences always need to be “translated” into a reader’s intuitive understanding of the meaning. For any sentence to be understood, there must be an intuitive grasp of its sense; this happens so naturally with everyday language, it is never noticed; with complex sentences in literary works, the intuitive grasp must be learned.

The “description of reality” exists, then, entirely and only in the reader’s understanding through an intuitive grasp of sentences that describe an empirical reality – and this is the actual purpose of the paraphrase. The reader creates the intuitive understanding through the sentence-level meaning reconstruction – without this, reading comprehension is partial and incomplete, and there is no understanding of the reality described in words. It is the meaning reconstruction that is the description of reality – and without meaning reconstruction, there is only reading without reading comprehension.

A description of Parts One and Two:

Part One is an examination of the empirical evidence of the literary text (the lyrics of a song, the verses of a poem). The first step (1-A) is the sentence-level meaning reconstruction, that constitutes the most basic understanding of empirical evidence. The second step (1-B) is the synthesis of the sentence-level meaning, to identify the structuring principle of empirical reality. Together, these two parts are the foundation of 100% accurate and complete reading comprehension – the very simple purpose of this procedure is 100% reading comprehension. (The careful study of every single sentence is of course quite laborious at the beginner level; however, this process is quickly internalized, and with progress to the intermediate and advanced level, the student has naturally internalized many steps, such that Parts One and Two proceed both efficiently and spontaneously. In this sense, Essay Engineering as a methodology is simply the making explicit the intuitive internal method of human thought.)

The Essay Engineering tools for the sentence-level meaning reconstruction (First-Order Thinking, micro-scale empirical reality; Step 1-A) are:

• distinguish interior meaning of subjective state (emotion, purpose, value, motive) from the exterior meaning of physical-material reality (objects); both must be correctly understood, but the priority and primary concern is with interior meaning.

• identify Indirect meaning, i.e. tacitly stated meaning that is not explicitly stated

• identify major points and minor points; focus on major points.

The Essay Engineering tools for passage analysis (First-Order Thinking, macro-scale empirical reality; step 1-B) are:

• synthesis of single meaning points into a multi-point meaning pattern, to grasp the overall trajectory of an episode. (thus, no longer thinking of the “textual passage”, but of the “reconstituted reality”)

• identify the structuring principle that explains cause and outcome, and the change in reality

In both Part One and Part Two, these Essay Engineering tools are used:

• The “heuristic-iterative” process of micro-level revision, of sentence-level meaning reconstruction, of logical-linguistic concatenation.

• “extrapolate additional meaning” & “jump to higher signifying plane”, the Essay Engineering formulation of inductive reasoning.

• Use of bullet points for separate points; the visual presentation of paragraph is greatly confusing for working with evidence and ideas.

The Essay Engineering tools for the conceptual framework (Second-Order Thinking, micro-scale concepts; step 2-A) are:

• From the reading notes (i.e. meaning reconstruction notes) of Part One, identify a set of major Structuring Principles that are related in topic, that together constitute a more complete and more coherent interior meaning. Simply, look for a meaning pattern by looking for connections between the single meaning point of a single structuring principle.

• From each structuring principle (via major passage analysis of Part One), extrapolate a single formal quality. (this entails the tool of the “jump to higher signifying plane”)

The Essay Engineering tools for the paragraph theses (Second-Order Thinking, macro-scale concepts; step 2-B) are:

• Extrapolate the connections between the single formal qualities, to identify the constellation of the conceptual framework. (The constellation of the conceptual framework is the result of Second-Order Thinking; and is equivalent to the meaning pattern of the empirical reality of First-Order Thinking. Recall, the literary work is simply a description of empirical reality.)

• The paragraph structure is the 2OT cascade of linkages, from “conceptual framework” to “structuring principle” to “Interior meaning” to “supporting evidence”. (The reverse order of the 1OT building-up from “linguistic symbol of textual layer” to “meaning reconstruction and internalized intuition” to “reconstituted reality qua structuring principle”.)

• The paragraph formulation as the Logical-Linguistic Concatenation. (lucidity of each sentence; as well as linkage to precedent and subsequent sentences, as in a chain.) The logical element addresses the formulation of propositional content; the linguistic element addresses the specific prose formulation constituting either clarity of thought or obfuscation of thought. In practice, the two are often linked; as language and thought are two sides of the same coin. Language is best understood not as prose but as affecting the Signal/Noise ratio of thought.

Part Two: is to collect the "structuring principles" (as established via major points of empirical evidence); then, to restate them as and transform them into the conceptual. What in Essay Engineering is called the Formal Quality (FQ), constitutes the “higher signifying plane”; this element is known from the empirical evidence where it is fragmentary because it is not the primary form of empirical reality. In a sense, the Formal Quality is the structuring principles as seen not in empirical reality (as experienced while reading/hearing the literary work or lyrics) – but the Formal Quality is the same content and experience rearranged in a new structure of concepts, the same reality as seen from the higher plane of theoretical constructs; it is seeing some experience of empirical reality entirely as a ‘conceptual framework’.