Prof. Lucknow's site on the history of science [be
careful if you go back to his root homepage....it has an interactive element
that crashes some browsers]Prof. Lucknow's site on the history of science [be
careful if you go back to his root homepage....it has an interactive element
that crashes some browsers]
Remember that before the scientific revolution, "science" generally meant induction over deduction. Why? The generalizations upon which deduction was based, in those days, were constrained by the "truths" of the church. Knowledge needed to be reconstructed. In our time, the situation is reversed: due to the "scientific" tradition, science now most relates to deduction.
Bacon Chronlogy
Bacon website,Created by Anniina Jokinen on June 19, 1996. Includes a midi plug in that could make you go insane
New conceptions for truth, methods, and language.
faculty psychology: reason--memory--imagination--appetite--will
rhetoric: applying reason to the imagination for the better movement of the soul.
Bacon on Discourse
Bacon fosters serious empirical study, but does not advocate pure positivism perception as fallible; mental operations as subjective the branches of knowledge: inquiry/invention, judgment, memory, and delivery serve both logic and rhetoric Invention: remembrance "founding the mastery of man over nature." He felt that man should free himself from the hegemony of the logos--especially as it had been used to deceive man as to the true nature of reality. Stresses experimental method over classical deduction. Was convinced that man needed a total reform of human knowledge. For his time, he was probably right.
Use commonplaces to thoroughly examine an issue
1) History to his memory
2) Poesy to his imagination
3) Philosophy to his reason joined with memory, will, appetite.
Through four commonplaces:
1) colours of good and evil, to a higher or lower degree, including shades of meaning and fallacies.
2) antithea: theses which may be argued pro and con
3) Formulae: small parts of a speech, fully composed
4) apothegms: pithy statements
How does one develop these commonplaces: observe, converse, study. Kept in notebooks. Plato did wrong to call rhetoric mere cookery. It adorns that which is good more than it colors over evil. Logic in exact matters, rhetoric in popular opinions.
Ed's Note: when folks seek to sublimate Rhetoric, they strip or otherwise devalue invention. Recall the tenor of the times: that direct, repeated observation was the key--instead, for rhetoric, Bacon offers "memory."
How does one build theory? Step-wise induction, free from the idols. Not induction which moves too fast from induction to deduction. -Rejection of the syllogism: that it does not correspond to scientific empirical reality.
The idols (illusions/prejudices) of man based on faulty sense perception especially as it relates to induction.
general prejudice that homogeneity spawns.
one's own personality constrains and discolors. Further, that which we contact is almost by accident, but yet seems powerful to us.
others use words without precision so can mislead, especially in mistaking the word for the thing.
untested information has gotten through as dogmas of philosophy and erroneous demonstrations, especially philosophy and theology, "odd fables."
the worst: of the marketplace as the misuse of language is rampant and very confusing. Men should work to progressively liberate oneself to open up a "vacuum" where truth can enter. Not Locke's tabla rosa, but a less prejudiced variety. Bacon appeals to induction, yet constrains it by the potentials of the prejudices above. (Further, remember that Aristotle found induction as a rhetorical process in the realm of the paradigm). Bacon tended to oppose rhetoric, although he wrote much about how to improve it.
Descartes on the Web
Preference for mathematics over syllogistic reasoning due to its certainty.
Faith in the power of reason to determine truth and discipline the imagination. experiment over disputation; inquiry over communication; action over speculation. The line by which the history of western civilization is measured. Geometric truth: demonstration based on definitions, axioms, cause and effect. Prediction not argument. No room for appearances, or emotional appeal. No need for invention. Only needs to communicate principles that logic and experiment have discovered. Searched for an absolute and unshakable foundation for truth, not found in induction or experience, nor in existing theories or narratives.
What is called for is universal doubt: that which one has seen and heard. The only thing which escapes doubt is the doubting itself--I think therefore I am
1) Jesuit education in which he came to realize the true strength of the ability to argue--that language has the power to convince--even if something is not the case.
2) severe scepticism
3) "inspirational event," in which he saw science as a haphazard accumulation of poorly drawn insights
4) application of the theory of doubt to everything, especially science: one must check, double check, and re-check that which is claimed to be the case--from point zero.
1) That which CAN be doubted should be. All that is outside that realm must be believed on faith, but is not of the scientific world.
2) truth is once again thought to be certainty. That is, the doubt casts out the power of speech and replaces it with the power of empirical observation such that science becomes "propositional"
3) thought reigns supreme (almost as did Augustine's inspiration)
4) language, then, becomes the mere expedient for conveying the certainties which thought has mastered.
These activities further confirmed those tendencies from the end of the Renaissance: that rhetoric was primarily about expressing rather than discovering truth. Philosophy and rhetoric became further than further separated. Further, rhetoric is despaired of due to the tendencies of the scientific method
1) that any theory be justified with regard to its absolute truth or falsity
2) that persuasion/rhetoric is rejected due to its location in probability, and due to the fact that it embellishes.
3) that language is less important than mathematics/logic.
4) That we should ignore the concealed and subtle rhetoric characteristic of philosophic and scientific speech. The latent power structures in a text are ignored.
1) teacher-student relationships in education in which the authoritarian structure of knowledge exchange is more like rhetoric than science.
2) One ALWAYS gives an introduction--contextualizes. Vocabulary, method, schemes, material known--that all undergirds even the most "scientific" of processes. Such an introduction is always in the form of a rhetorical introduction.
3) Popularizing is problem. It is not enough to merely philosophize; one must gain disciples: rhetorically. Otherwise, the great insight is lost to the world.
More on Locke, from ILTweb
makes Bacon and Descartes more accessible. Discusses the relationships among perception, thought, and language. As opposed to accepting the possibility of directly receiving truth, he sees physical science as moving toward truth, but knowledge as psychology.
Outside world---sense perception---ideas----knowledge of ideas--- reflection upon those ideas--- ideas as signs of real things and words as again removed.
ESSAY ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING, from ILTweb
Prefigures the triangle of meaning prefigures the contemporary treatment of encoding and decoding common usages aren't good enough ways to fix usages for philosophical discourse. Prefigures Korzybski on having science determine true nature and then adjusting language accordingly. claimed that rhetoric was an instrument of error and deceit--except for efforts toward order and clarity. However, he takes rhetoric to be its most limited aspect: style only which mostly covers over the truth.
1) faculties of the mind: under standing (to perceive) and will (to prefer). Theory of ideas: reflection based on sensory experience, produces ideas, which are held in patterns by the mind. Reason enables us to unite ideas by association.
2) association of ideas: connect concepts so they form mental units
3) pathetic proof: must be used to reinforce the logical conclusions.
4) syllogism: dismissed:neither demonstrates nor strengthens relationships
More on Vico
the answer to Descartes lawyer, historian, student of ancient Rome, rhetorician. He also designed a "new science," quite different from Descartes. Locates "facts" not in the clear and distinct perception or indisputable certainty of the Cogito, but in the identity of truth and fact as that which is made or realized by man. "The facts" are historical as human design progresses in ascending and descending movements. No greater certainty is possible than when a person narrates and explains what he has himself done. This holds for sciences and metaphysics. "Language has a prominent role in the realization of the state and politics, religion and culture, the moral order and legal system, and is the design of modern science.
According to Vico the human spirit (ingenium) did not form language, but was formed by it. Man is assigned the task of passing on and refining language: the world in which we now live has been unlocked by the mythical, poetic and later the objective, rational word. Outstanding speakers are those able to preserve, develop and transform this world." (58) The Cartesians were against historical science, myth and poetry, rhetoric as having anything to do with science. Vico argued that they have everything to do with it: that history is the best empiricism, that poetry offers the most enjoyment of life, that the rhetorical word constructs and displays the world. Vico was lost, until Croce in early 1900's, Rosenstock-Huessy in the mid-1900's, and Grassi in the late 1900's.
Found IN language that which RD needed math.
1) we use communication to share our experience.
2) rhetoric (pragmatic language based on probabilities) is as essential to human relations as math is to the physical! (Is physical geometry appropriate to social life?)
3) passions must be stirred for right leadership
4) invention=topoi
5) probability essential
6) Cartesian certainty doesn't appeal to all: father of the hypothesis
7) "historical" science: that civilized nations proceed cyclically-- that nature is not static==a fact that the Cartesians have missed.
8) that math is as man-made as is language!!Therefore, is no more reliable than are scientifically historical narratives.
The Arte of Rhetorique, onLine
reminds us that there was always a classical rhetorical tradition despite the "turns and attacks."
Returns to the 5 canons
the 3 purposes (teach, delight, persuade)
natural ability, theory, models, and practice
7 parts of a speech (adds proposition--the pith saying in the introduction)
nature of causes (honest/filthy, doubtful, trifle)
Need for audience analysis of the full circumstances for speaking.
Causes: with places and lines of argument for each praise/blame deliverative consulting/profit/cost: deliberative right/wrong judicial
4 virtues of style: plainness, aptness, composition, nobility
Rhetoric may not be much used by scientists and mathematicians (technicians). It is used to speak "of matters as may largly be expounded, for man's good, and may with much grace be set out for all men to hear" [my re-write of old english]. Especially on definite questions which have specific bases and implications. However, when taking up, or solving, definite questions, one needs, or uses, indefinite (general) premises or generalizations.
Wilson discusses the province of rhetoric by contrasting its concerns with those of technical disciplines. What does he lay out as the proper matters for rhetoric? Especially, what are the relationships between questions definite and indefinite as they relate to the general and specific concern of rhetoric? The ends of rhetoric: to teach, delight and persuade. What must an aspiring rhetorician possess and accomplish? How does Wilson organize models, theories, practice and natural ability? Wilson treats the 5 canons. Wilson presents seven parts to the speech. Through which of the seven does Wilson provide a somewhat unique contribution? What are the 4 general matters about which one may speak? Wilson adopts the traditional tripartite "kinds" of speeches. Wilson proposes four virtues of style. Define each: plainness, aptness, composition, exornation (nobility)
the classical conception does carry through
a. 5 canons survive Ramus' attack; invention, though limited and much misunderstood, is renewed.
b. However, Rhetoric gets strongly aligned with the Church
c. And strongly aligned with the liberal arts.
d. b. and c. turn into heavy weights to carry come new science.
a. effort to "repair" latin and "fix" (standardize) it and the vernaculars.
b. efforts to create a universal grammar/language
c. much lamenting and knashing of teeth over the symbolic nature of language and the ambiguities of real linguistics in operation.
d. much work concerning the relationships among reality, knowledge, and language.
e. ongoing debate as the nature of the best style: ornate, plain, natural
a. Anti syllogism and rhetoric
b. new experimental methods
c. new faculty psychology
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