Close Reading of the Scholarly Text

The Value of the Individual Throughout the world there is a constant debate over the value and importance of an individual versus the perceived public’s greater good. In his article Yi-Fu Tuan, expresses his take on the differences between what is a community, what is a society, and what is the individual. Tuan attempts to highlight some of the less appealing qualities of a community while at the same time showing the benefits of a society and praises being an individual in today’s day and age. The strongest evidence of this point comes when he says, “Society values a human individual as it values an animal species, for its unique, nonreplicable way of being… notion that individualism is selfishness is thus wide of the mark…” (Tuan, 317) Throughout the article, Tuan states that in a community, it is more important to feel a sense of belonging than a sense of who you truly are and what you have achieved. In addition, he describes his personal loves and how he couldn’t imagine someone else having the exact same set of interests, which in his mind means that there isn’t anyone else that could have affected the world and society the same way that he has. In the middle of the article, Tuan has a passage titled “Specialized Language and Community” (Tuan, 315) in which he gives a perfect example of how actually defining the difference between community and society is not as easy as it seems. Tuan tells the story of two mathematicians who were had very different lives except for their love for math and ability to understand math at a high level. The scholarly level of mathematics has its own specific language, and the ability to understand this language is what separates these individuals from the rest of the population. By saying, “Scientists and mathematicians form, as we say, communities. But in view of the desire of scientist-mathematicians to constantly purify and expand their language… their readiness to accept new members with only talent and competence as qualifications… it is more accurate to call them societies.” (Tuan, 315) Tuan shows how the meanings of the words community and society are not inter-changeable but quite often they are used to create a perception of how the group would like to be viewed. At first reading the article it was slightly confusing as to what Tuan was really trying to say. It took until having to answer the third part of this assignment to understand that in reality Tuan’s point is a counter-point. He starts by talking about how he wants to debunk the public perception of community, society, and the individual but first he has to give examples of how the general public feels about those phrases. He lists the benefits to community and says that, “The problem with human beings lies in their individuality.” (Tuan, 308) His whole idea isn’t necessarily that the public perception is wrong. However it is more important to be able to understand the alternate meaning of each of those terms and more so be able to relate each of them to your own beliefs.