According to
http://rhetoric.byu.edu/Canons/Invention/TOPICS%20OF%20INVENTION/TOPICS.HTM
Aristotle divided the "special" topics of invention into the three
branches of oratory:
1. judicial oratory (or "forensic";
oriented to what the accused was said to have done, the past);
2. deliberative oratory (or "legislative";
oriented to what might be done, the future); and,
3. epideictic oratory ("ceremonial" or "demonstrative";
oriented to the present).
Aristotle did not include `determinative' oratory, i.e., science. (It
had not yet been discovered.) The `determinative' branch is timeless.
Perhaps Michael Crighton is Aristotlian and centuries behind the
times.
Fundamentally, the determinative branch of oratory, science, is a way
to persuade someone that one judgement is more suggestive than
another. Mathematics provides one method, which Aristotle know about;
similar observation provides another, which Aristotle tried, but
failed to succeed at as well as we would wish; and experiment provides
a third, which Aristotle did infrequently, if at all.
By Aristotle's reckoning, legislative or deliberative debates are not
determinative. The consequences involve only what is known. They are
over `the worthy, the unworthy, the advantageous, or the
disadvantageous'. Is it worthy for the US government to require that
all US military parcel shipments go by firms that are owned at least
3/4 by Americans? (To take a contemporary question.)
However, Aristotle is wrong. Not all debates are founded only in
persuading people regarding what is known. Some debates' consequences
depend on discovering about the universe, on gaining suggestive
evidence regarding what is unknown.
For example, whether or not Americans are harmed by Chinese coal
burning depends on the degree to which current climate is changing and
the degree to which that change, if any, is caused by human action,
the degree to which aerosols mitigate a change, if any, caused by
extra carbon dioxide, the probability that the Chinese might act
against aerosol air pollution, and so on.
Suppose that Michael Crighton is Aristotlian and obsolete. In this
case, it is doubtful that Crighton sees his misrepresentation of
others' determinative works as a misapplication of his talents and as
a moral failing. Rather, it is more likely that he sees his actions
as an application of `deliberative' oratory, an attempt to influence.
--
Robert J. Chassell
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http://www.rattlesnake.com http://www.teak.cc
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