A Little Rhetorical Pick-Me Up

Obviously, I've been feeling a bit low the last few days, so I made the following little visual to put in my cubicle. Famous rhetorician Kenneth Burke (who pretty much has a cult following in academia) liked to break the rules a bit. He wrote the following poem to define humans. It integrates seamlessly with his works of rhetorical theory.

As you can tell, this poem is the inspiration for my blog name, and the quote upon entry is from another great rhetorician, Jim W. Corder. These guys don't just write boring theory. They help us to understand the world in new ways. I find Burke's theory of "terministic screens" helps me to understand Garrett Lisi's TED talk on particle physics and quantum mechanics.



The idea of terministic screens is sort of real-world metaphor (in my mind at least) for the implications of particle physics for understanding everything described by Lisi. The terms we associate with a concept are connected to it in some sort of larger relational network. The interaction, shape, and network of all the diverse pieces and the way they move and connect helps us to interpret what we see and form new ideas about it. It's too complex to ever even really talk about effectively in application, but it's still really cool.