In the study of language, a distinction is made between persuading and convincing. To persuade someone is to induce one to act, whether physically to do something or mentally to believe something. To convince, on the other hand, is to show the reasons something should or should not be acted upon. In the traditional scheme …
Category Archives: Thoughts About Writing
Infinite Perception
If I happen to say that the planet Neptune has sixteen moons, I am making a specific, or finite, qualification to the noun moons. If I go on to say that I believe the universe is infinite, I mean to say that there is no specific measure which can be taken of its extent. The …
Classically Romantic
In an earlier post (All That Is Implied), I had occasion to mention the British philosopher and historian R. G. Collingwood. Best known, perhaps, for his work in aesthetics, Collingwood made no bones in his essay “Form and Content in Art” about the difference between the romantic and the classical artist: Romantics are obviously warm-blooded …
All That Is Implied
What does it mean to say that one thing implies another? The derivation of the verb is instructive: to fold in, or to enwrap, and the first consonants of its original Latin verb (plicare) can be seen also in our verbs implicate, explicate, and even in the noun diploma, a piece of paper apparently originally …
More Human and Less Personal
That title phrase belongs to William Sloane, who in his work The Craft of Writing says that the real reader and real reading produce a delight which brings one “almost to the point of loss of personal identity.” We can see the phenomenon, he says, by watching a child read: Watch a child’s body when …