Thomas M Lessl
Biographic Data
| ID | 5595535 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Thomas M Lessl |
| GIVEN NAMES | Thomas M |
| FAMILY NAME | Lessl |
| SIGNATURE | LESSL T M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Georgia |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 16 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 10 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1985 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Thomas Huxley’s Positivist Romance
Storm of Words
Book Review| December 01 2017 Storm of Words: Science, Religion, and Evolution in the Civil War Era Storm of Words: Science, Religion, and Evolution in the Civil War Era. By Monte Harrell Hampton. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2014; pp. ix + 345. $59.95 cloth. Thomas M. Lessl Thomas M. Lessl University of Georgia Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2017) 20 (4): 764–767. https://doi.o…
Evolution
Evolution may denote the scientific field concerned with the natural history of life and the mechanisms that account for its development, but it can also mean evolutionism, a broader alignment between evolutionary ideas and the idea of progress. Evolutionism has been an important communication resource in modernity, especially within various scientistic movements that have helped to forge science's public identity. Its supposition that progress a…
The Politics of Sacred Rhetoric
Journal Article The Politics of Sacred Rhetoric: Absolutist Appeals and Political Persuasion Get access The Politics of Sacred Rhetoric: Absolutist Appeals and Political Persuasion. By Morgan Marietta. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2012. 263pp. $39.95. Thomas M. Lessl Thomas M. Lessl University of GeorgiaAthens, Georgia [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Church and State, Volume…
The Culture of Science and the Rhetoric of Scientism
The culture of modern science continues to establish its public identity by appealing to values and historical conceptions that reflect its appropriation of various religious ideals during its formative period, most especially in the rhetoric of Francis Bacon. These elements have persisted because they continue to achieve similar goals, but the scientific culture's growing need for autonomy has required their secularization. The Darwin fish emble…
The Galileo legend as scientific folklore
The legend of Galileo's persecution by the Roman Catholic Church is treated here as an example of scientific folklore. By examining the various ways in which this legend diverges from scholarly readings of the Galileo affair, we can assess the part that folklore plays in building and sustaining a professional ideology for the modern scientific culture. The forty treatments of the Galileo episode that are examined here were found in sources, such …
Punctuation in the Constitution of Public Identities
The constitution of one group or “people” cannot be accomplished apart from the constitution of other groups. This is to say that group identities exist only in the context of relationships or that identities and relationships are two aspects of the same thing. One way in which both public and private relationships are constructed is through the causal interpretation of sequences of actions —what the Palo Alto group has called punctuation. In the…
The priestly voice
Public communication may be said to be either priestly or bardic. Rhetoric, when it is bardic, gives voice to a body of meanings already at work in the consciousness of its audience. The priestly voice is didactic, attempting to bring institutionally authorized meanings to an initiate audience. The bardic voice is the voice of its auditors. The priestly voice is the voice of an institution calling proselytes into its ranks. An important place to …
Heresy, orthodoxy, and the politics of science
Heresy and orthodoxy are two sides of an interactive process by which institutional identities are formed. Heresy plays a central part in the emergence of orthodoxy by means of the rhetoric it evokes from institutional elites. The orthodox response provoked by the crisis of heresy solidifies authority, defines institutional boundaries, enhances group solidarity, and, as a ritual, becomes an outlet for collective anxiety. The contemporary response…
Science and the sacred cosmos
In his public television series Cosmos, Carl Sagan uses evolutionary science as the doctrinal basis for a cosmology that attempts to answer questions traditionally belonging to the province of religion. Sagan's rhetoric identifies science with what is ultimate in nature by placing it at the apex of cosmic evolution, and thus he legitimates the role of the scientist in the modern world. Cosmos can be regarded as an effort to renew the religious bo…
Heresy, orthodoxy, and the politics of science
Heresy and orthodoxy are two sides of an interactive process by which institutional identities are formed. Heresy plays a central part in the emergence of orthodoxy by means of the rhetoric it evokes from institutional elites. The orthodox response provoked by the crisis of heresy solidifies authority, defines institutional boundaries, enhances group solidarity, and, as a ritual, becomes an outlet for collective anxiety. The contemporary response…
Science and the sacred cosmos
In his public television series Cosmos, Carl Sagan uses evolutionary science as the doctrinal basis for a cosmology that attempts to answer questions traditionally belonging to the province of religion. Sagan's rhetoric identifies science with what is ultimate in nature by placing it at the apex of cosmic evolution, and thus he legitimates the role of the scientist in the modern world. Cosmos can be regarded as an effort to renew the religious bo…
The priestly voice
Public communication may be said to be either priestly or bardic. Rhetoric, when it is bardic, gives voice to a body of meanings already at work in the consciousness of its audience. The priestly voice is didactic, attempting to bring institutionally authorized meanings to an initiate audience. The bardic voice is the voice of its auditors. The priestly voice is the voice of an institution calling proselytes into its ranks. An important place to …
Science and the sacred cosmos
In his public television series Cosmos, Carl Sagan uses evolutionary science as the doctrinal basis for a cosmology that attempts to answer questions traditionally belonging to the province of religion. Sagan's rhetoric identifies science with what is ultimate in nature by placing it at the apex of cosmic evolution, and thus he legitimates the role of the scientist in the modern world. Cosmos can be regarded as an effort to renew the religious bo…
Heresy, orthodoxy, and the politics of science
Heresy and orthodoxy are two sides of an interactive process by which institutional identities are formed. Heresy plays a central part in the emergence of orthodoxy by means of the rhetoric it evokes from institutional elites. The orthodox response provoked by the crisis of heresy solidifies authority, defines institutional boundaries, enhances group solidarity, and, as a ritual, becomes an outlet for collective anxiety. The contemporary response…
The priestly voice
Public communication may be said to be either priestly or bardic. Rhetoric, when it is bardic, gives voice to a body of meanings already at work in the consciousness of its audience. The priestly voice is didactic, attempting to bring institutionally authorized meanings to an initiate audience. The bardic voice is the voice of its auditors. The priestly voice is the voice of an institution calling proselytes into its ranks. An important place to …
Punctuation in the Constitution of Public Identities
The constitution of one group or “people” cannot be accomplished apart from the constitution of other groups. This is to say that group identities exist only in the context of relationships or that identities and relationships are two aspects of the same thing. One way in which both public and private relationships are constructed is through the causal interpretation of sequences of actions —what the Palo Alto group has called punctuation. In the…
The Galileo legend as scientific folklore
The legend of Galileo's persecution by the Roman Catholic Church is treated here as an example of scientific folklore. By examining the various ways in which this legend diverges from scholarly readings of the Galileo affair, we can assess the part that folklore plays in building and sustaining a professional ideology for the modern scientific culture. The forty treatments of the Galileo episode that are examined here were found in sources, such …
The Culture of Science and the Rhetoric of Scientism
The culture of modern science continues to establish its public identity by appealing to values and historical conceptions that reflect its appropriation of various religious ideals during its formative period, most especially in the rhetoric of Francis Bacon. These elements have persisted because they continue to achieve similar goals, but the scientific culture's growing need for autonomy has required their secularization. The Darwin fish emble…
The Politics of Sacred Rhetoric
Journal Article The Politics of Sacred Rhetoric: Absolutist Appeals and Political Persuasion Get access The Politics of Sacred Rhetoric: Absolutist Appeals and Political Persuasion. By Morgan Marietta. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2012. 263pp. $39.95. Thomas M. Lessl Thomas M. Lessl University of GeorgiaAthens, Georgia [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Church and State, Volume…
Evolution
Evolution may denote the scientific field concerned with the natural history of life and the mechanisms that account for its development, but it can also mean evolutionism, a broader alignment between evolutionary ideas and the idea of progress. Evolutionism has been an important communication resource in modernity, especially within various scientistic movements that have helped to forge science's public identity. Its supposition that progress a…
Storm of Words
Book Review| December 01 2017 Storm of Words: Science, Religion, and Evolution in the Civil War Era Storm of Words: Science, Religion, and Evolution in the Civil War Era. By Monte Harrell Hampton. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2014; pp. ix + 345. $59.95 cloth. Thomas M. Lessl Thomas M. Lessl University of Georgia Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2017) 20 (4): 764–767. https://doi.o…
Thomas Huxley’s Positivist Romance
Philosophy (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Law (8 works) · Political science (8 works) · Rhetoric (6 works) · Art (5 works) · Epistemology (5 works) · Theology (5 works) · Aesthetics (4 works) · History (4 works)