Improving speed reading comprehension: unleashing the power of logos
Learn to improve comprehension while reading or speed reading is a mission critical activity. The first step is to locate the ethos or facts. However, facts by themselves will not improve understanding. In reality, numerous facts can often be the cause of reduced comprehension. Anyone who has been to college has vivid memories of a professor talking for hours. You can probably remember your brain going numb as they talked about one fact after another. What was missing was Logos and Pathos. The logos provides the insight needed to use the facts, and the poignancy provides the emotion. In this article, I will focus on logos.
Aristotle speaks of the importance of the Logos in his rhetoric. Logos takes Facts or Ethos to the next level. Logos is a calling. An appeal based on logic or reason. Another way of looking at logos is the findings that are associated with facts. Let’s look at three ways to do this.
Logos lead to logical conclusions. Think of a courtroom drama. The lawyer presents the facts. They offer the jury the evidence that needs to be examined. They then present logical conclusions based on the facts. Remember the famous OJ trial? Let’s see how Logos resulted in his acquittal.
When OJ was acquitted, a lot of people just couldn’t believe it. The facts were overwhelming. Hundreds of pieces of evidence that prove he killed his wife. However, his lawyer got involved with Logos to discredit all the facts. Think about this. There were no witnesses. The entire trial was based on the evidence. However, when the detective he collected the evidence was asked under oath if he tampered with the evidence, what did you do? He took the Fifth Amendment. He refused to testify that the evidence was valid. No matter how much evidence existed, the jury could not return a guilty verdict if the evidence was invalid. The Logos of findings were conclusive. If the detective responsible for the evidence refused to authenticate it, what other choice did the jury have? This is the power of the Logos. The power to find out if a fact is true or false.
Logos also leads to predictions. Just today, NASA has announced that the evidence for extraterrestrial life has become almost overwhelming. They recently showed that life could exist based on quite a different chemistry than life on Earth is based on. They then found that the number of stars that could support life was triple the number originally believed. As a result, they predicted that the probability of extraterrestrial life was so extremely high as to be almost a certainty. The evidence was examined. The Logos based on this evidence leads to a new prediction about the existence of extraterrestrial life.
Finally, Logos can be used in the results. Based on evidence of creating tiny machines on a scale once thought impossible, it will result in new ways to deliver medicine and cure disease. These cures have not yet occurred. The investigation is being actively carried out. However, based on the evidence, the Logos predicts that these medical advances will result in cures never before possible in the very near future.
When you’re reading, or speed reading, it’s important to distinguish between facts and findings based on these facts. Many writers present their findings as facts. They are not. they are logos. Learning to use Logos intelligently while learning can definitely increase your understanding or any material.