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Rhetoric
From time to time, I have been privately chastised for being too
direct in my replies. This has been known to make some folks think that
there is an unwritten subtext such as: "as any fool can see".
> Subject: Re: Regarding Bill's draft... another Bill's open issues with
>
> I'll point out that Bill Sommerfeld is a not-stupid...
>
I have had two folks tell me in the past 3 months that there are a
few of you out there that actually won't publically comment on my work,
for fear of being personnally flayed.
Gentlefolk, please take note that Bill and Bill get along quite
amicably in person. I consider Ran a good freind (albeit you might not
know that from our public exchanges).
It may interest you to know that this written perception problem is
not uncommon in scientific venues. Quoting "Social Epistemology", 1992,
v. 6, n. 2, pp. 231-240, entitled "Howe and Lyne bully the critics", by
Henry Howe (an ecologist) and John Lyne (a rhetorician):
Rhetoric is not used in this essay 'solely in a pejorative sense'.
_Au_contraire_, rhetorics bind together and help organize practices.
Whether rhetoric is good or bad depends on whether it is, well, good
or bad. ... Lyne wants it on record that he has no interest in an
end to rhetoric. Like [a critic], he wants 'better rhetoric'.
A number of critics decry our intemperance, calling into question
what they perceive to be innuendo, sneers, back-biting metaphor, and
_ad_hominem_ attacks. Sticks and stones. We reject the
characterization that our attacks are _ad_hominem_. If we term an
idea 'muddled' or a claim 'unrealistic', we really think that the
adjectives describe muddled ideas and unrealistic claims, not
muddled or unrealistic individuals.
Bill.Simpson@um.cc.umich.edu
Key fingerprint = 2E 07 23 03 C5 62 70 D3 59 B1 4F 5E 1D C2 C1 A2