The last few years I’ve been reading and studying the subject of Rhetoric, for the public speaking that I do, but mainly just because it’s a fascinating subject that I’ve never dived that deep into. I became interested in it after I read “Ideas Have Consequences” by Richard Weaver, a book that truly changed my life (highly recommended) for the better. I was listening to some people debate “science” today when it occurred to me that neither knew what science was much less how to verbalize the definition rhetorically. They literally did not understand the words coming out of their own mouths.
And because many people, especially during the Wuhan Flu, pull out “science” as an “ultimate” term, I was also reminded of a passage from Richard Weaver’s book “The Ethics of Rhetoric” (Copyright 1953) which I had bookmarked. It’s a little long but it illustrates the sophistry or manipulative nature involved in unethical (not ethical) rhetoric. It’s amazing that he wrote this in 1953. The title of the Chapter is:
“Ultimate Terms in Modern Rhetoric.”
I’ve also included a link to purchase the book or sign up for my blog if you’re interested. If you do buy the book, read it slowly and pay attention to the chapter on the Lincoln vs. Douglas debates, for good reason this is a famous chapter on Rhetoric.
–“Ultimate” Terms in Contemporary Rhetoric–
“Another word of great rhetorical force which owes its origin to the same historical transformation is “fact.” Today’s speaker says “It is a fact” with all the gravity and air of finality with which his less secular-minded ancestor would have said “It is the truth.”{176} “These are facts”; “Facts tend to show”; and “He knows the facts” will be recognized as common locutions drawing upon the rhetorical resource of this word. The word “fact” went into the ascendent when our system of verification changed during the Renaissance. Prior to that time, the type of conclusion that men felt obligated to accept came either through divine revelation, or through dialectic, which obeys logical law. But these were displaced by the system of verification through correspondence with physical reality. Since then things have been true only when measurably true, or when susceptible to some kind of quantification. Quite simply, “fact” came to be the touchstone after the truth of speculative inquiry had been replaced by the truth of empirical investigation.
Today when the average citizen says “It is a fact” or says that he “knows the facts in the case,” he means that he has the kind of knowledge to which all other knowledges must defer. Possibly it should be pointed out that his “facts” are frequently not facts at all in the etymological sense; often they will be deductions several steps removed from simply factual data. Yet the “facts” of his case carry with them this aura of scientific irrefragability, and he will likely regard any questioning of them as sophistry. In his vocabulary a fact is a fact, and all evidence so denominated has the prestige of science.
These last remarks will remind us at once of the strongly rhetorical character of the word “science” itself. If there is good reason for placing “progress” rather than “science” at the top of our series, it is only that the former has more scope, “science” being the methodological tool of “progress.” It seems clear, moreover, that “science” owes its present status to an hypostatization. The hypostatized term is one which treats as a substance or a concrete reality that which has only conceptual existence; and every reader will be able to supply numberless illustrations of how “science” is used without any specific referent. Any utterance beginning “Science says” provides one: “Science says there is no difference in brain capacity between the races”; “Science now knows the cause of encephalitis”; “Science says that smoking does not harm the throat.” Science is not, as here it would seem to be, a single concrete entity speaking with one authoritative voice. Behind these large abstractions (and this is not an argument against abstractions as such) there are many scientists holding many different theories and employing many different methods of investigation. The whole force of the word nevertheless depends upon a bland assumption that all scientists meet periodically in synod and there decide and publish what science believes. Yet anyone with the slightest scientific training knows that this is very far from a possibility. Let us consider therefore the changed quality of the utterance when it is amended to read “A majority of scientists say”; or “Many scientists believe”; or “Some scientific experiments have indicated.” The change will not do. There has to be a creature called “science”; and its creation has as a matter of practice been easy, because modern man has been conditioned to believe that the powers and processes which have transformed his material world represent a very sure form of knowledge, and that there must be a way of identifying that knowledge. Obviously the rhetorical aggrandizement of “science” here parallels that of “fact,” the one representing generally and the other specifically the whole subject matter of trustworthy perception.
Furthermore, the term “science” like “progress” seems to satisfy a primal need. Man feels lost without a touchstone of knowledge just as he feels lost without the direction-finder provided by progress. It is curious to note that actually the word is only another name for knowledge (L. scientia), so that if we should go by strict etymology, we should insist that the expression “science knows” (i.e., “knowledge knows”) is pure tautology. But our rhetoric seems to get around this by implying that science is the knowledge. Other knowledges may contain elements of quackery, and may reflect the selfish aims of the knower; but “science,” once we have given the word its incorporation, is the undiluted essence of knowledge. The word as it comes to us then is a little pathetic in its appeal, inasmuch as it reflects the deeply human feeling that somewhere somehow there must be people who know things “as they are.” Once God or his ministry was the depository of such knowledge, but now, with the general decay of religious faith, it is the scientists who must speak ex cathedra, whether they wish to or not.”
Weaver, Richard M.. The Ethics of Rhetoric (pp. 214-217). Muriwai Books. Kindle Edition.
https://www.amazon.com/Ethics…/dp/1626541108/ref=sr_1_2…
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