Excerpts from mail: 2-Oct-100 Re: Design Knowledge ... by Klaus
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> rhetoric has nothing to say about the ingenuity needed to
> create new speeches but about what is invariant in and can be generalized
> to all speeches.
Rhetoricians would disagree. The art of invention, based on topics or
topoi, is the cornerstone of rhetoric. It is the art of discovering (or
inventing) what may be said in a given particular situation--i.e. in a
specific speech for a specific occasion. Invention is regarded as the
first of the five arts of rhetoric and the subject of unending
discussion. The literature is extensive and fascinating.
The methods of creativity that are often discussed in design employ
topics as the device of art. One example of many concerns Horst Rittel.
Late in his life, students at Berkeley explained the art of rhetoric to
him--there is a strong rhetoric program at Berkeley--and he recognized
that the inventional devices in his own approach to design had an
uncanny resemblence to rhetorical topoi.
By the way, topoi are also the device of art in dialectic. In contrast,
logic and grammar employ the device of categories.
Dick
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