Hi Trickster (aka David Lind),
moq_discuss@moq.org wrote:
>
> Glenn wrote:
> That wrench is a special gift from science, and when someone
> mistreats it, you go and blame science.
>
> DL writes: A gift from science? I may be wrong, but I thought
> science was (as defined by Webster) "A branch of study concerned with
> observation and classification of facts and esp. withobservation and
> classification of facts and esp. with the establishment of verifiable
> general laws" - science (it seems to me) doesn't create anything - it
> is instead ONE way to observe and classify. Was the wheel a gift of
> science? Feel free to edify me.
Excellent! My biting little one liner above is an example of rhetoric, as
defined by the 3.a. and 3.b. meanings of the word in my American Heritage
dictionary:
Affectation or exaggeration in prose or verse.
Unsupported or inflated discourse.
What I've done is taken a grain of truth and made it sound like a bushel.
And you've only confiscated half the bushel. What about "gift"? When was
the last time you got a free wrench in the mail, no less from a group
calling itself "science"? Oh that's "special" all right!
I was fully aware of what I was doing when I wrote those words and I'm not
proud of those words. I was fighting fire with fire. Mine were antagonized
by these:
JON
"science has declared that morals aren't real"
PIRSIG
"Morals can't function normally because morals have been declared
intellectually illegal by the SOM that dominates present social
thought."
It's more difficult to spot rhetoric in arguments you favor. You can train
yourself to do it though. You know you're getting good at it when you can
pre-intellectually "smell" rhetoric (it should always smells lousy). So do
me a favor and "sniff" the next time you read passages from Lila,
especially when he's bashing SOM. Maybe you'll start smelling what I smell.
Nice catch David and happy hunting.
Glenn
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