1. “The Hidden Teacher” by Loren Eiseley
What is the argument?

2. AP Seminar Section I, Part A
End-of-Course Questions
AP Seminar Section I, Part A
Read the passage and respond to the following three questions:
1. Identify the author’s argument, main idea, or thesis. (3 points)
Explain the author’s line of reasoning by identifying the claims used to build the argument and the connections between them. (6 points)
3. Evaluate the effectiveness of the evidence the author uses to support the claims made in the argument. (6 points)
AP Seminar Section I, Part A

3. 1. Identify the author’s argument, main idea, or thesis.
Anthropologist, Loren Eiseley in “The Hidden Teacher” observes that humans are extraneous to nature. We think that the world revolves around us, that animals, insects respond to our every whim and cower to our prowess. However, in “the world of spider,’ the author does not exist.

4. 2. Explain the author’s line of reasoning by identifying the claims used to build the argument and the connections between them.
The author asserts in line 1 that she learned an “unexpected lesson” from a spider connecting that first line with the title. The selection ends with an affirmation of this lesson when Eiseley states in the last sentence that “in the world of spider” she did not exist. Not only does Eiseley come to the conclusion that humans are extraneous in the natural world, but she observes that spiders have a sense of self and place that humans lack. She contrasts the certitude of the spider and its sense of “universe” with her ambivalence and lack of conviction. The certainty of the spider is unexpected, and the uncertainty of Eiseley is unexpected. The spider feels every vibration, knows the “tug of the wind,” “the fall of a raindrop, the flutter of a trapped moth’s wing,” whereas, Eiseley “comes up,” “curious, ” tentatively exploring a world she does not know. “The Hidden Teacher” knows its universe, while Eiseley wanders along the gully without a sense of direction, a “vast impossible shadow” unseen and irrelevant to those she encounters.

5. Evaluate the effectiveness of the evidence the author uses to support the claims made in the argument. The argument is implied. Eiseley states that she realizes that in the world of spider, [she] did not exist. The argument consists of this realization and the acceptance of human being as irrelevant, extraneous in nature. The evidence (her observations) assert her argument. The spider knows “the tug of the wind, the fall of a raindrop, the flutter of a trapped moth’s wing”, however, all of this is based on Eiseley’s interpretations of the spider’s behavior. The fact that the spider responded to the intrusion of the pencil point suggests that perhaps she is not extraneous to the spider. We may be irrelevant, extraneous, or irrational but our actions can have effects on the universe of the spider.