Analysis Of Back To The Final Frontier By Neil Degrasse Tyson

Neil deGrasse Tyson writer of “Back to The Final Frontier,” is an astrophysicist writer and science communicator. With Tyson’s knowledge on the aerospace industry, he describes in his article what it will take for America to remain the leading superpower in space. While reading his article, I found that Neil deGrasse Tyson does an excellent job at persuading his audience by establishing credibility, with great evidence to support his case, and to support his case he offers effective strategies of reasoning, while organizing it well for the reader to understand. Tyson is quick to start establishing credibility in the first sentence stating, “Spring 2001, amid the manicured lawns of the Princeton University campus, I was recumbent in an office chair with my mind in the universe when the phone rang. It was the White House.

I think Tyson did a wonderful job of using the Toulmin model. The Toulmin model has three components of argument and Tyson showed us in his article exactly how to correctly use the method. First, is the claim which was stated at the beginning like a thesis. The claim that Tyson stated was, other countries are progressing in the aerospace industry past America. Tyson then proceeds with the grounds or evidence of this claim. For example, “China’s swift rise as not only an economic powerhouse, but also an imminent space and naval superpower is particularly notable” (Tyson). He has plenty more evidence to support his claim throughout his paper. Then after the grounds comes the warrant. One warrant he uses in this same paragraph is, “On the space front, the People’s Republic’s list of achievements—and stated ambitions—is long indeed. Andrew S. Erickson, a China-in-space expert at the U.S. Naval War College, called its progress “relentless” in a recent New York Times article” (Tyson). The Toulmin model allows his paper to flow from beginning to