fanatico wrote:
The promise of finding long-term technological solutions to the problem of world food shortages seems difficult to fulfill. Many innovations that were once heavily supported and publicized, such as fish-protein concentrate and protein from algae grown on petroleum substrates, have since fallen by the wayside. The proposals themselves were technically feasible, but they proved to be economically unviable and to yield food products culturally unacceptable to their consumers. Recent innovations such as opaque-2 maize, Antarctic krill, and the wheat-rye hybrid triticale seem more promising, but it is too early to predict their ultimate fate.
In this paragraph, is the first sentence a generalization or a position?
The first sentence is the topic sentence of this paragraph. It states that the promise seems difficult to fulfill. The rest of the paragraph explains the reasons.
The first sentence, in my opinion, is a position. The author expressed his opinion that the promise is difficult to promise and then gave the explanation for his/her thinking.
At first, I thought it was a generalization, but I changed my mind after reading the definition of generalization on wikipedia:
Quote:
A generalization (or generalisation) of a concept is an extension of the concept to less-specific criteria. It is a foundational element of logic and human reasoning.[citation needed] Generalizations posit the existence of a domain or set of elements, as well as one or more common characteristics shared by those elements. As such, it is the essential basis of all valid deductive inferences. The process of verification is necessary to determine whether a generalization holds true for any given situation.
The concept of generalization has broad application in many related disciplines, sometimes having a specialized context-specific meaning.
Of any two related concepts, such as A and B, A is considered a "generalization" of concept B if and only if:
every instance of concept B is also an instance of concept A; and
there are instances of concept A which are not instances of concept B.
For instance, animal is a generalization of bird because every bird is an animal, and there are animals which are not birds (dogs, for instance).
Let me know your inputs.
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