narrative rhetoric logic

Narrative, Rhetoric, and the Origins of Logic Apostolos Doxiadis

StoryWorlds: A Journal of Narrative Studies, Volume 2, 2010, pp. 77-99 (Article) Published by University of Nebraska Press DOI: 10.1353/stw.0.0015 

For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/stw/summary/v002/2.doxiadis.html

Access Provided by University Calcutta at 12/24/12 11:23AM GMT

Narrative, Rhetoric, and the Origins of Logic Apostolos Doxiadis

In Vom Mythos zum Logos (1940), a book that became emblematic of a now rather passé, idealized view of ancient Greek culture, Wilhelm Nestle proposed that the greatest achievement of the Greeks was the abandonment of the mythological interpretation of the world in favor of a rationalist model, developed with the tools of analytic thinking. Nestle’s account has since been supplanted by newer approaches, which found a lot more than myth in mythos and a lot less than pure reason in logos. However, if we restrict the meaning of  his two terms and read mythos simply as “story” and logos as “logic,” Nestle’s catchphrase takes us back to a seminal event in cultural history, an event that has not been examined with the attention it deserves. More specifically, this essay argues that what we call, for short, “the birth of logic” can best be understood not as the abandonment of the narrative mode

of thought (story ) for the rational ( logic ), but as a transformation of aspects of the former into the latter. This transformation occurred in the classical era (500-330 BCE) in certain Greek  poleis, when the new democratic institutions allowed multiple narrative representations of reality  to come into conflict, thus creating the need for choice among competing versions. The medium for these verbal battles was the newly invented prose genre of  rhetoric .1 The idea that judicial practice, more particularly, was a context for the early development of logic is not new (Lloyd 1990; Asper 2004). However, most investigations have a blind spot where the relations of  rhetoric—and thus of logic—to narrative are concerned. Focusing precisely on this interface, I put forward a cognitively grounded account of classical forensic rhetoric as a tool for comparing narratives in contest. My argument, in a nutshell, is that the tools and methods of logic were not invented ex nihilo but—as is common in cultural evolution— adapted from an earlier, existing practice: they were borrowings that sometimes involved what biologists call exaptations, which involve the assignment to new uses of features originally developed for another purpose, in this case the craft of  poetic storytelling . The following section lays groundwork for my argument, briefly  characterizing some of the cognitive properties of  narrativity and the socially developed practice of  storytelling . In the next I set the scene for Greek rhetoric, examining how narrativity is behind the generic format of the forensic speech, functioning as a macroscopic algorithm for creating texts. In the final section I turn to the microstructure of the forensic speech and the specific borrowings and exaptations of poetic storytelling patterns that are redeployed for purposes of demonstrative persuasion.

Ending in the early fourth century BCE, my account makes it possible to speak of the shift transition from story  to logical  proof in Greek  culture—a process we can think of as beginning with Homer (eighth century BCE) and ending with Euclid (c. 300 BCE)—as a much more seamless transition than previous research would suggest. On Narratives and Storytelling

For the purposes of my discussion, I distinguish between narrative and storytelling , defining the first as more general than the second. I make 80

storyworlds volume 2 2010

the distinction in order to separate narrativity, viewed as a basic human mental capacity, from the telling of stories, which is at least partly  shaped through cultural practice. narrative

 Narrative is a representation of action through a sequential symbolic

system—here I consider only human language. The action represented need not be there in the real world: the events in Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov did not actually happen, but it makes perfect sense to speak  of them, when referring to the novel, as if they did. Note that there are two operative words here: action is at least as important in the study  of narrative as its representation. In fact, despite poststructuralist and other theorists’ preference for “the signifier over the signified,” experimental research of the past decades brings to the foreground the oftforgotten truth that “narratives are discourses that describe a set of actions” (Zacks, Tversky, and Iyer 2001: 5). It is important to underscore the importance of action for narrative understanding because “narrative is gappy; like a thin fabric. . . . If we do start picking holes and looking at the gaps rather than at the smooth surface, then indeed it does start to fall to pieces” (Gainsford 2001: 1). What prevents a narrative from falling to pieces is, precisely, the underlying, represented action. Mandler and DeForest ( 1979) showed that when people hear a story, they model their recall on the represented action, and not on the form in which it is told to them: the mental coding of a narrative captures what narratologists call the  fabula, the underlying events in their chronological order, and not the sjuzet , the story as constructed to suit a narrator’s choices. Narratives flow linearly in time, yet they mediate between worlds that are largely nonlinear: both the world of action, with its manifold possibilities, and our mental models of it are like complex, multidimensional maps, representing not just objects but also relations, in webs of immense connectivity. Narratives, by contrast, are like specific  paths taken through these worlds—partial, linear views of nonlinear environments. The worlds of actions and mental representations are nonlinear in two ways: for any event in them, we can speak of  outgoing nonlinearity , determined by the many possible events that can follow it (Bremond Doxiadis: Origins of Logic

81

1980).

Likewise, events have an incoming nonlinearity , mostly due to the multifactorial nature of causality: more events or states of affairs than one are usually necessary to cause an action (Pearl 2000). Arguably, the ability to effect the translation from the nonlinear world of action through the linear medium of narrative to the nonlinear world of mental representations is a fundamental, at least partly innate, human cognitive skill. storytelling

To compose and understand interesting stories, however, our narrative potential is not enough; a sophisticated cultural practice is also needed. A “storytelling species” we may be, but not in the sense in which seagulls are a “flying species.” Like other higher cognitive functions, storytelling is instrumental in ordering a complex and often chaotic environment. I am particularly  interested in two ways in which this is achieved. On the one hand, we can conceive of stories as made up of discrete or modularized  scenes, which can be telescoped into shorter versions, or outlines. On the other hand, as I begin to discuss in more detail in the next section, cultural traditions forge  patterns in storytelling, at both the macro- and the microlevel. These patterns take the forms of structured story and scene types, themes, and motifs, as well as low-level narrative formulas. Rhetoric, Narrative, and Persuasion: Macrostructural Perspectives In this section, I look at how narrative- and storytelling-related structures are at the core of the generic pattern of the classical forensic speech.

At the center of any trial—then as now—is an action, something that actually happened. But the narrative of it is never one. Many narratives unfold during the process, including the partial accounts of the events given by the witnesses, but all of the stories gravitate around the two central narratives—those of the prosecution and the defense. Every trial is like Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, a constellation of narrative views of  the same event. Yet unlike the film, a trial has to end with a final decision about what happened, that is, a conclusive narrative. 82

storyworlds volume 2 2010

Greek forensic rhetoric developed within the context of the classical trial process. In this process there were no lawyers, and though witnesses gave statements, there was probably no—or very little—further examination. The prosecution was conducted by a volunteer and the defense by the defendant himself, though his speeches were written by  a professional rhetor, the logographos. The case was decided by a large  jury. The jurors did not discuss the process but voted directly after it. They had to make two decisions: which of the two main narratives gave a better fit to the facts, and which law applied to the defendant’s actions. Their thinking depended crucially on narrative probability , that is, the degree to which it is plausible that a certain chain of events could  have occurred within the particular storyworld elaborated over the course of  the trial. They took into account written laws but were also affected by  various  gnômai, proverb-like snippets of oral wisdom brought forward by the speakers. the forensic speech

Essentially designed to increase narrative probability, the forensic speech is driven by the potentialities and constraints of narrative intelligence. The generic form developed in the second half of the fifth century and has at its center the rhetor’s narrative of the events of the case being tried: if the jurors believe that , the rhetor has won. The main aim of the rest of the speech is to make this narrative even more persuasive. To better understand the rhetorical genre, it is important to remember that the earliest extant forensic speeches, of Gorgias and Antiphon (c. 430 BCE) are, together with the History of Herodotus, the first prose compositions in Greek. All extant Greek literature until then is in verse, and so is all storytelling, in the epics of Homer and Hesiod (eighth and seventh centuries), the narrative parts of so-called lyric poetry  (seventh and sixth centuries), and tragedy (fifth century). The Homeric epics, especially, were an immense influence on all later Greek literature. Many  of their stylistic features survive not only in subsequent poetic forms but also in the prose works of fifth- and fourth-century historians and philosophers. It is thus safe to assume that classical rhetoric was also influenced by the mostly Homeric techniques of poetic storytelling. Already by the end of the fifth century a more or less standard temDoxiadis: Origins of Logic

83

plate for the forensic speech is in place. Its very existence should be seen as a lesson from poetry: poetic genres had developed on the infrastructure of clear, standardized patterns, and so too does rhetoric. The generic macrostructure of the forensic speech consists of four parts: introduction, narration, proof , and epilogue. Introduction

In addition to fulfilling requirements that stem from the circumstances of the speech’s delivery, such as capturing the jurors’ attention, the introduction must also focus on what is to be proven, both in terms of  narrative (what happened) and law  (what law applies given what happened). Outlining a story’s plot inside the story itself is a storytelling trick at least as old as Homer, probably developed to give order and unity, through anticipation and recapitulation, to the sprawling, digressive oral style (Notopoulos 1951). Along the same lines, starting a storytelling performance with an outline of the plot is standard epic practice. Its use in the forensic speech’s introduction can thus be seen as a clear case of a borrowing, a storyteller’s device being put to a new use by the rhetor.  Narration

Modern authors translating diêgêsis (Latin: narratio) as “statement of  facts” distort the original sense, deflecting our attention from the close affinity between ancient legal thinking and narrativity. The speaker’s purported aim in the narration is indeed merely to recount the “simple facts.” The seemingly plain narrative, however, is in reality artfully— though seemingly artlessly—constructed to increase narrative probability (Gagarin 2003). The one quality ancient theorists agree a narration should necessarily possess is believability , whereby an action is represented, convincingly, as true; on the same principle, the other side’s narration is contested as being less believable. In a sense a narration is (a big part of) its own proof. Quintilian (c. 35–c. 96 CE), in the strongest possible statement of  the narrative-as-proof view, writes: “What difference is there between a proof and [a narration] save that the latter is a proof put forward in continuous form, while the proof is a verification of the facts as put forward in the [narration]?” (1920: 93). In other words, what drives the 84

storyworlds volume 2 2010

change from mythos to logos is largely the new intention with which the mythos is told: not to delight or instruct, but to convince. Proof 

The proof part of the speech is made necessary by the fact that the speaker’s narration is contested by his opponent’s: additional argument is needed, both to enhance the probability of the speaker’s own narration and to diminish that of the other side. Some ancient authors further separate proof into division, the actual   proof , and refutation, the latter having the aim of anticipating some of  the opponent’s arguments. Division identifies the contestable parts of  the narration, breaking them down into separate items that can be dealt with more easily, each one in the form of a new narrative. These are of two kinds: sub-narratives, parts of the narration expanded in greater detail, and counternarratives, narratives alternative to the rhetor’s own. Essential to the creation of both of these modes is the awareness that narratives come from a much larger, nonlinear world of possibility, from which new variations can be culled. Subnarratives are usually created by closer examination of an event’s incoming  nonlinearity, through a more detailed look at the causes of  events. For example, in Gorgias’s Encomium of Helen, a display piece exonerating the fabled beauty for her part in starting the Trojan War, the rhetorical strategy is to show that Helen is free of blame whatever the reason that made her follow Paris. In the brief division Gorgias lists all four possible subnarratives to the main event: “Either she did what she did by the wishes of fate and designs of the gods and decrees of necessity, or she was taken by force, or was persuaded by words, or conquered by Eros” (my translation; Greek text in Diels and Kranz 1966: 289). Gorgias does not opt here for any one subnarrative over another. What is important is that that they exhaust all possibilities: if he manages to deal successfully with each one in the proof proper, he will have solved the whole problem. Counternarratives are developed from looking at outgoing  nonlinearity, that is, identifying competing scenarios for the basic action. These are then discredited, in favor of the speaker’s own narration. 2 Here is a part of the division from Antiphon’s On the Choreutes in which the Doxiadis: Origins of Logic

85

chorêgos (sponsor) of a tragic performance is accused of having poi-

soned one of the chorus members: “In the first place, then I will prove to you that I did not tell the boy to drink the poison, compel him to drink it, give it to him to drink, or even witness him drinking it” (Maidment 1941: 259). But , the speaker will conclude, the boy drank the poisoned drink of his own accord. The proof proper employs two kinds of arguments: 1.

The inartistic proofs consist of witnesses’ statements, under oath (free men) or torture (slaves), and contracts and laws, that is, information that comes to the rhetor from outside. These are all in the mode of action representation, either direct, in witnesses’ statements (“Eratosthenes was having an affair with the defendant’s wife”), or conditional-generic, in laws and contracts (“If a man is having an affair with a married woman . . . ”). 2. The artistic proofs are already to be found in the earliest extant speeches, interwoven with the inartistic. These are created by the rhetor and come in three varieties: ethos (relating to character),  pathos (appealing to the jurors’ emotions), and logos, with arguments addressed to reason ( dianoia). The latter, Aristotle tells us, “lie in the speech itself, demonstrating ( deiknunai) or seeming to demonstrate” (my translation; Greek text in Aristotle 1926: 16). The logos part of the proof deals piecemeal with the sub- or counternarratives set out in the division, making the ones that are favorable to the speaker even more probable, and disfavorable ones more improbable. Epilogue

Modern writers often translate this as peroration, and mostly it is that, a rounding up and emotional appeal to the jurors to support the rhetor’s story, possibly with an addition of a gnômê, as for example at the end of  Antiphon’s Prosecution of the Stepmother for Poisoning : “I have stated my  case; I have championed the dead man and the law. It is upon you that the rest depends; it is for you to weigh the matter and give a just decision. The gods of the world below are themselves, I think, mindful of  those who have been wronged” (Maidment 1941: 31). 86

storyworlds volume 2 2010

Putting It Together: The Microstructure of Persuasive Accounts Rhetoric had its origin to a considerable extent in the attempt to give to prose the same qualities of beauty which its elder sister, poetry, already possessed. —Samuel E. Bassett, “YΣTEPON ΠPOTEPON OMHPIKΩΣ”

I now turn to the microstructure of the Greek forensic speech to see how  it too, like the macrostructure, was crucially affected by earlier storytelling practices. The first instances of the patterned reasoning we call logic  appear in the artistic proofs of the logos of the forensic speech. Bassett’s astute observation gives us the strongest key to understanding how these patterns suddenly begin to materialize in mid-fifth century. Though seemingly  coming out of nowhere, in reality the patterns for reasoning come from poetic storytelling. I argue, more specifically, that to construct their persuasive arguments Greek rhetors made extensive use of two related techniques of archaic poetic storytelling, chiasmus and ring composition. The logical microstructures later theorized by Aristotle as syllogisms were purified versions of these two techniques of poetic composition, in their elementary form. Narrative is made up of strings of words, representations that describe either actions (“The king killed a stag”) or states (“The queen was fat”).3 “Jack eats a sandwich and Jill is doing homework” can be broken down in two bits of action joined with an “and”; but these smaller bits cannot be broken down further, and are thus atomic . Narrative phrases are put together in quotidian narrative through links that are either temporal (as in “and then”), spatial (“elsewhere”), causal (“and so”), associative (“which brings to mind”), or elucidatory (“who was the son of  . . . ”). The aim of this joining up is, always, the representation of action in a storyworld. In archaic Greek storytelling,  gnômai are added to action and state phrases, as basic stock. The early poet-storytellers compose their poems in a syntax of nonsubordination, phrases put together one after the other in what was called lexis eiromenê, or “strung-along style” (Notopoulos 1951). Its major forms are  parataxis, where action phrases are concatenated, with or without the conjunction and , and apposition, where Doxiadis: Origins of Logic

87

each phrase incrementally adds to the image of the previous, as in the beginning of the Iliad : Sing muse the terrible wrath of Peleus’ son Achilles which caused Achaeans myriads of troubles and sent many mighty souls of heroes to Hades and made their bodies carrion, to dogs and birds of all kinds. (My translation)

In poetic storytelling, the basic narrative reasons for linking phrases (temporal, causal, etc.) are supplemented with those demanded by the figures and patterns molded by tradition. Chief among these in Homer is the simile, which is a form of analogical composition (“this looks like this”). But other patterns are common, among them chiasmus and ring composition. Though these structures could have come to Greece from earlier literary traditions, like Sumero-Akkadian and Ugaritic, where they are also prevalent, it is quite possible that they are cognitive universals (Douglas 2007). Chiasmus (X) and ring composition (RC)—some scholars use the terms interchangeably—are symmetrical structures of phrases of the form ABB*A* (X) and ABCB*A* (RC) where B* and A* mirror elements of B and A, respectively, either in word or subject. Note that X/RCs can be of arbitrary length, that is, A 1 A2 A3 . . . AN A*N ... A*3 A*2 A*1 (X), and A1 A2 A3 . . . AN . . . A*3 A*2 A*1 (RC). RCs can also be many  tiered, with an element of A i in an RC breaking down into further RCs, as Ai1 Ai2 Ai3 . . . AiN . . . A*i3 A*i2 A*i1, and so on, like a tree’s branches. A famous modern example of simple X is John F. Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country .” For elementary versions of RC, we can look at those limericks where the first line is repeated at the end. X/RC is prevalent in the Homeric epics (van Groningen 1958), at least partly because of its power as a mnemonic device. As memory is often structured on an inner, underlying spatial form, the existence of a  going-there-and-back model could be at the root of X/RC. This would account for, among other things, the epics’ use of a series of questions and answers that are answered in exact reverse order, as in Odysseus’s 88

storyworlds volume 2 2010

questions to his mother, Anticleia, in Hades (Od . 11.171 –203, summarized in Reece 1995: 213): A—What killed you? (171) B—A long sickness? (172) C—or Artemis with her arrows? (172–73) D—How is my father? (174) E—How is my son? (174) F—Are my possessions safe? ( 175–76) G—Has my wife been faithful? ( 177–79) G*—Your wife has been faithful. (181–83) F*—Your possessions are safe. (184) E*—Your son is thriving. (184–87) D*—Your father is alive but in poor condition. (187–96) C*—Artemis did not kill me with her arrows. (197–99) B*—Nor did a sickness kill me. (200–201) A*—But my longing for you killed me. (202–3) RC is not just mnemotechnics, however. Reece calls it “perhaps the most important structuring device of oral narrative, building bridges between the many components of the larger poem . . . weaving the digressionary  material into the larger fabric of the narrative.” Though it may have begun as an unconscious mechanism and “survived for its mnemonic and tectonic value,” it soon became “an aesthetic principle as well, becoming a desirable and expected pattern of oral narrative” (220). chiasmus and ring composition: from old form to new function

I focus here on the use of X/RC as a vehicle for the emerging process of  proof, in the microstructure of rhetorical speeches. 4 Bassett was the first to see in X/RC more than aesthetic value: “We . . . may ask how far the chiastic order was determined by . . . [the] arrangement of ideas . . . [along with] poetic economy and possibly the element  of surprise which sharpens the attention of the listener  . . . [Potentially relevant, too, is] the psychological factor, the advantage of  using one idea to suggest another , and thus to make the thought continuous ” (1920: 59; my  italics). The importance of  surprise cannot be exaggerated, especially  Doxiadis: Origins of Logic

89

when coupled with the seemingly antithetical notion of continuity. Real understanding—by human beings, not machines—often depends on sudden leaps of the imagination, surprisingly bridging, through insight, what was previously a discontinuity—a concept at least as old as Plato’s exaiphnês, the “suddenly” in which the Forms are revealed to the soul. Paul Friedrich, proposing X as one of the elements of  lyric epiphany , writes of it creating “an illusion . . . of a synchronic, monocular vision of  an absolute aesthetic truth—usually with a radical closure” ( 2001: 218). Like a joke, an X’s effect is not reducible to the sum of its parts: when  you try to explain it, you gain in clarity only what you lose in impact. It is precisely this operation of X/RC that could be at the heart of the exaptation process at work here. What was possibly invented and survived initially for mnemotechnic use or its pleasing, symmetrical rhythm was later used for its capacity to give continuity and unity to phrases that could not be directly connected via the rationale of action representation—in other words, via the rationale for putting sentences together that had been dominant until the flowering of rhetoric. In what follows I present a brief typology of X/RC in early classical speeches in an attempt to identify the point of transformation, the historical moment when poetic storytelling practices are first employed, not to tell stories, but to show that one story is more convincing than another. We cannot know to what extent this transformation was consciously effected. But Socrates’ view of the rhetors and the sophists as confidence-tricksters could well be motivated by his belief that they  were merely playing with words, that they were, so to speak, “putting the signifier over the signified”—which, in a very literal sense, is exactly  what they were doing. Ring Composition as Cognitive Tool 

The most basic tricks of rhetoric verbal prestidigitation were two, the  paradeigma, described by Aristotle as “rhetorical induction,” and the enthymeme, the “rhetorical syllogism.” I propose that these methods of argumentation are intimately related to RC and X. A major example of the refitting of storytelling practices, from poetic to logical uses, can be found in the rhetorical adaptation of the Homeric use of  paradeigma (Latin: exemplum). This is typically an appeal 90

storyworlds volume 2 2010

1. Let us eat (601) 2. For even Niobe ate (602) 3. This was her story (603–612) 2*. She ate (613) 1*. So let us also eat (618)

Fig. 1. Abridged from the Odyssey 24.601–618 (Willcock 1964: 141). My numbering and formatting follow the standard notation for RC.

to a mini story, usually mythological, to justify a certain behavior. What is of particular interest is that the standard framing device for  paradeigma in Homer is RC. Figure 1 presents an example, in abridged form: Achilles, addressing Priam, proposes that they set aside their mourning for Patroclus and Hector, respectively, and have dinner. This arrangement reinforces the injunction through analogy with the old story, in a way that is both continuous and, because of its symmetry, aesthetically  pleasing—and thus more convincing.5 Fifth-century rhetoric borrows this structural model almost exactly, though the aim of the patterning changes, occasionally, from injunction to demonstration. This change happens when an action phrase (“ a did so”) becomes a state phrase (“ a is so”), the verb morphing into the copula “is.” The central element of the RC can still be a mini story, but it is often a gnômê, as in the case of a speech by Lysias (c. 400 BCE) represented in figure 2. A husband is defending himself for having murdered a man surprised in flagrante delicto with his wife. Here he is appealing to the fact that the punishment for adultery by Athenian law is death, arguing that he has done nothing more than apply the law himself (Lamb 1930/2006: 21; bracketed phrases are mine, added for clarity). To our more developed logical sense, the sequence 1 2 3 contains most of the defendant’s reasoning, with link  1–2 being a fortiori and 2–3 analogical. In terms of information given, 2* is mere repetition. But it is this that completes the RC, creating a continuous link from the defendant’s action to the court’s decision. Thus, it is not just the undeniable truth of  3 that makes the appeal ( 1*) much stronger than a mere “please acquit me.” It is also the connectivity of the pattern. Doxiadis: Origins of Logic

91

1. Wherefore I , sirs, not only stand acquitted of wrongdoing by the laws, 2. but am also directed by them [the laws] to obtain this satisfaction: it is for you to decide whether they are to be valid or of no account. 3. For to my thinking every city makes its laws in order that on any matter which perplexes us we may resort to them and inquire what we have to do. 2*. And so it is they [the laws] who, in cases like the present, exort the wronged parties to obtain this satisfaction. 1*. I call upon you to support their opinion.

Fig. 2. On the murder of Eratosthenes (Lamb 1930/2006: 21).

One might argue that in this case the RC argument is more rhetorical than logical. But that is exactly the point: at this historical stage th ere is no clear demarcation of the two; and it is only through an examination of this intermediate stage that the roots of logic in poetic narration are laid bare. Chiasmus as Cognitive Tool 

G. E. R. Lloyd (1966) has identified analogy  and  polarity  as two major conceptual categories of archaic thought, both having roots in mythology. The RC pattern we just described is obviously based on analogy, whereas the two basic X-type arguments that follow—there could be others—depend on polarities. For an example of the first X-type argument, let us look at how Gorgias, in the Encomium, disposes of the first item in his division, that Helen’s abduction was decided by the gods. A passage that seems ponderous and repetitious to the modern mind—these are standard accusations against Gorgianic style—becomes razor sharp if we see it as the extended X that it is. Thus, as shown in figure 3, the contrasting elements in 1 and 1* and the identical elements in 2 and 2* drive the outer parallelism, while the central pair 33* is a  gnômê that the audience can naturally accept as true, in pure ABB*A* form. It may be suggested that this passage too is an example of pure argument, without any narrative elements. However, there are three reasons 92

storyworlds volume 2 2010

1. Now if through the first [will of the gods or decree of fate], it is right for the responsible one to be held responsible; 2. for the gods’ predetermination cannot be hindered by human premeditation. 3. For it is the nature of things, not for the strong to be hindered by the weak,

3*. but for the weaker  to be ruled and drawn by the stronger, 2*. God is a stronger force than man in might and in wit and in other ways. 1*. If then one must place blame on fate and on a god, one must free Helen [who is not responsible] from disgrace.

Fig. 3. Encomium of Helen (my translation; Greek text in Diels and Kranz 1966: 289–90).

why it is, again, something of a cultural centaur, half-argument and half-narrative. First, the outer elements 1 and 1* contain injunctions; in other words, the X leads from action to action (from “hold the right person responsible” to “acquit Helen”). Second, it is true that 2 and 3 begin with “for,” thus indicating a logical type of connection with the previous phrases, 1 and 2, respectively. But 2* and 1* are without  such direct links, from 3 and 2*. Their existence and position is therefore pattern-dictated. The importance of form over content is seen especially in 2*, which is logically redundant—but completes the pattern. And third, it is too early in intellectual history to speak of pure argument; there is as yet no theory and no practice to support a formal syllogism. All there is, is a traditional way of weaving verbal patterns—here put to new use. Clearly, we have here another case of the form being stronger than the content: the poetic effect of X adds persuasive power to the construction, a cognitive reinforcement of meaning that it would be misleading to call merely “logic,” in our modern understanding of the world. The second type-X argument prevalent in rhetoric is guided by a specific form of polarity, contradiction, already an accepted principle at the time.6 The central ABBA structure starts with two phrases that, together, form a hypothesis: “If  a happens (A),” “then b happens (B).” The third element (B*) is a denial of B, either from the narration (“ b did not happen”) or based on narrative possibility (“ b couldn’t have happened”). The fourth element, A*, completes the X pattern symmetrically. Doxiadis: Origins of Logic

93

The following is a simple example of this type, from Antiphon’s First  Tetralogy , a “textbook” speech on a fictitious case, in which the prosecutor is accusing the defendant of having murdered a man and his slave in a secluded spot, motivated by personal enmity. In this passage, Antiphon is trying to rule out one of the counternarratives (Maidment 1941: 55):

Malefactors are not likely to have murdered him, as nobody who was exposing his life to a very grave risk would forgo the prize when it was securely within his grasp; and the victims were found still wearing their cloaks.

There is something strange about this simple X-pattern: the 1* has been moved to the top. In proper X form, as shown in figure 4, the argument would have read: 1. Nobody who was exposing his life to a grave risk [the malefactors] 2. Would forgo the prize (i.e. the cloak) when it was within his grasp. 2*. And the victims were found wearing their cloaks. [1*. Malefactors are not likely to have murdered him.]

Fig. 4. Antiphon’s First Tetralogy argument, in proper logical form.

This arrangement totally conforms to Aristotle’s conception of a syllogism as ex anangês (from necessity): if we accept 1, 2, and 2* as true, then 1* is a necessary  conclusion. But it also exhibits the characteristic effect of the X that it is; specifically, it “tightens and closes; there is an element of inevitability as exit replays introitus” (Friedrich 2001: 241). Figure 5 presents this type of argument in generic form, the arrows marking the links from one phrase to the next: 1. Counter-story A

i

2. Contains action B

ii

2*. Action B did not occur

iii

 1*. Counter-story A did not happen.

Fig. 5. The second X-type argument.

Notice that links i and ii make linear sense, the first logically ( 2 completes 1), and the second formally ( 2* is an anadiplosis of  2, a repetition 94

storyworlds volume 2 2010

of the last word of a sentence at the start of the next). But link iii is not  justified from the content of the previous phrase: there is no linear rule taking us from 2* to 1*. This linking can be explained only if we map the implicational connections (represented with dotted arrows in figure 6) in two dimensions: i  1. Counter-story A

ii 

2*. Action B  did not occur.

2. Contains action B 

iv 

v 

iii 

1*. Counter-story A did not happen

Fig. 6. The nonlinear expansion of the second X-type argument.

Thus, for the implication to hold we need links iv  and v  operating together. Now we can see the full power of X structure: though the text only states the four phrases in linear order, the X form encodes their relationships in a way that implies the latent connections. In other words, X linearly encodes a nonlinear pattern. Figure 7 presents a longer example, from Gorgias’s Defense of Palamedes, another mythological case. Here Gorgias builds a subnarrative with details from real-world knowledge: 1*. I did not commit treason. {INSTEAD OF: If I committed treason.} 2. Treasonable action must begin with discussion 3. [If] a discussion [occurs] 4. [It] implies [there is a] meeting , 4*. Which [meeting] was impossible [for] 5. no one could come to me and I could 6. not go to anyone, nor 7. could a written message be sent. [3*. So there was no discussion.] [2*. So there was no treasonable action.] [1*. I did not commit treason.]

Fig. 7. Gorgias, Defense of Palamedes (my translation; Greek text Diels and Kranz 1966: 295–96). Doxiadis: Origins of Logic

95

Similar to the previous example, the X here starts with 1* (the negation of  1: “If I committed treason”). The form of the X in the speech is 1*2344*, with 1 as well as 3*2*1* omitted, while 5–7 are outside the X  structure, offering additional evidence for 4*. A mind trained in X/RC—as the classical mind undoubtedly was— can naturally supply  3*–1*, and effect closure, as 1–4 is a cascading pattern of questions and answers, the one leading to the other. We have here a chase of the demonstrandum through a series of implied questions in Homeric form: (1) How would I have committed the crime of  treason? (2) To commit it, shouldn’t I have had a discussion with someone? (3) Wouldn’t this imply a meeting? So, the second X-type argument has the generic form 1*23 . . . NN*, where 1 as well as the rest of the sequence . . . 3*2*1* is omitted.7 The reason why this is an X, despite the lacunae in its form, has to do with the particular nature of rhetorical proofs, which are almost always gappy in this exact way: the more obvious things are left unsaid. To be rhetorically  persuasive, a concatenation of phrases need only be complete enough to lead a listener over its inevitably many gaps. In fact, Aristotle calls the enthymeme syllogismos ellipês (truncated syllogism), stressing that in rhetoric “the conclusion must neither be drawn from too far back nor should it include all the steps of the argument”; the first situation “causes obscurity,” while the second “is simply a waste of words because it states much that is obvious” (my translation; Greek text in Aristotle 1926: 288).

Conclusion

In a justly famous study, emblematic of the “narrative turn” in the human sciences, Jerome Bruner states: “There are two modes of cognitive functioning, two modes of thought, each providing distinctive ways of  ordering experience, of constructing reality.” These are the logico-scientific, which Bruner rather confusingly calls paradigmatic , and the narrative. The two are “irreducible to one another,” and “efforts to reduce one mode to the other or to ignore one at the expense of the other inevitably fail to capture the rich diversity of thought” (1985:11). That the two modes are irreducible to one another, however, does not mean that they don’t interact. After all, narrative came first: for many  96

storyworlds volume 2 2010

millennia it was the main language-related higher-cognitive activity in existence. This cognitive ability supported the design and delivery of  particular stories, intricate artifacts, molded by the skills of their tellers through centuries of practice. Archaic Greece had a strong storytelling tradition, a tradition rich in patterns. When political and social change created new demands on speech, in the fifth century, older forms were gradually adapted to new uses. My examination of the ways in which narrativity and storytelling practices shaped both the generic form and the microstructure of demonstrative speeches provides insight into the intertwined genealogies of Bruner’s two modes of thought, suggesting that though the logico-scientific mode is not reducible to the narrative, it is at least partly derived from it. Notes I am most grateful to David Herman for his invaluable editorial suggestions. My thanks also go to Pavlos Calligas, for setting me right on a couple of philosophical points. 1.

We consider here only the first of the three subgenres of Greek rhetoric,  forensic , deliberative, and epideictic . 2. The way counternarratives are proposed in division, only to be discredited, adopts the form of  priamel , in another possible case of cultural exaptation. This figure, whose first extant uses are in Homer, takes the form of a series of  foils, proposed but then rejected in favor of the main subject of the poem. Here is a typical priamel from Sappho (my translation; Greek text in Lobel and Page 1963: fr. 16). Some say that cavalry, some infantry, some a fleet is the most beautiful [thing] on the dark earth, but I say one’s lover. 3.

The narrative mode also includes characters’ speech, in dialogue or thought (monologue). These don’t appear in rhetoric, however, which makes use only  of indirect speech. 4. The only examination of the use of RC in rhetoric, to my knowledge, is Worthington’s mostly macrostructural analysis of Aeschines and Deinarchus. Worthington sees RC as a stylistic device, mostly employed by rhetors for the post-trial rewriting of speeches, for “publication.” Interestingly, he correlates presence of RC with historical fabrication, as “it is hard to reconcile the sophistication of complex ring structures in some parts of a speech with historical accuracy” (1994: 19). Doxiadis: Origins of Logic

97

5.

Interestingly, Nestle describes this common Homeric pattern as thesis-reasonnarrative-reason-thesis (quoted in Willcock 1964: 142). 6. The fact that Odysseus says enantiotata (“totally opposed things”) about the defender, in Defense of Palamedes, is considered by the speaker tantamount to a proof that he is lying. 7. One of the first mathematical proofs of whose original form we have a more or less clear picture, and which was contemporaneous with the first extant speeches of Antiphon and Gorgias, follows precisely the same type-X pattern (Doxiadis forthcoming a, b).

Works Cited Aristotle ( 1926). Art of Rhetoric. Ed. J. H. Freese. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Asper, Markus ( 2004). “Law and Logic: Towards an Archaeology of Greek Abstract Reason.” Annali Istituto Orientale di Napoli 26: 73–94. Bassett, Samuel H. ( 1920). “YΣTEPON ΠPOTEPON OMHPIKΩΣ” (Hysteron Proteron—Homeric Style) Harvard Studies in Classical Philology  31: 39–62. Bremond, Claude (1973). Logique du récit . Paris: Éditions du Seuil. Bruner, Jerome (1985). Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Diels, Hermann, and Walther Kranz ( 1966). Fragmente Der Vorsokratiker . Vol. 2. Dublin: Weidmann. 271 –307. Doxiadis, Apostolos (forthcoming a). “Sing Muse of the Hypotenuse.” Writing  Science. Ed. Markus Asper. New York: de Gruyter. ——— (forthcoming b). “A Streetcar Named (among Other Things) Proof.” True  Accounts: The Interplay of Mathematics and Narrative. Ed. Apostolos Doxiadis and Barry Mazur. Princeton: Princeton UP. Douglas, Mary (2007). Thinking in Circles. New Haven: Yale UP. Friedrich, Paul (2001). “Lyric Epiphany.” Language in Society 30: 217–47. Gagarin, Michael (2003). “Telling Stories in Athenian Law.” Transactions of the  American Philological Association 133: 197–207. Gainsford, Peter ( 2001). “Cognition and Type-scenes: The aoidos at Work.” Homer, Tragedy, and Beyond . Ed. F. Bundelmann and P. Michelakis. London: Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies. 3–21. Lamb, W. R. M. ( 1930/2006). Lysias. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Lloyd, G. E. R ( 1966). Polarity and Analogy . Cambridge: Cambridge UP. ——— (1990). Demystifying Mentalities. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Lobel, Edgar, and Denys Lionel Page ( 1963). Poetarum Lesbiorum Fragmenta. Oxford: Oxford UP. Maidment K. J. (1941). Minor Greek Orators. Vol. 1. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge: Harvard UP. 98

storyworlds volume 2 2010

Mandler, Jean M., and Marsha DeForest ( 1979). “Is There More Than One Way to Recall a Story?” Child Development 50.3: 886–89. Nestle, Wilhelm (1940). Vom Mythos zum Logos . Stuttgart: A. Kröner. Notopoulos, James A. ( 1951). “Continuity and Interconnexion in Homeric Oral Composition.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 82: 81–101. Pearl, J. (2000). Causality . Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Quintilian (1920). Institutio Oratoria. Trans. H. R. Butler. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Reece, Steve ( 1995). “The Three Circuits of the Suitors: A Ring Composition in Odyssey .” Oral Tradition 10.1: 207–29. van Groningen, B. A. ( 1958). La Composition littéraire archaïque grecque. Amsterdam: N.V. Noord-Hollandsche Uitgevers Maatschappij. Willcock, M. M. (1964). “Mythological Paradeigma in the Iliad.” Classical Quarterly  14.2: 141 –54. Worthington, Ian (1994). “History and Oratorical Exploitation.” Persuasion: Greek Rhetoric in Action. Ed. Ian Worthington. London: Routledge. Zacks, J. M., B. Tversky, and G. Iyer ( 2001). “Perceiving, Remembering, and Communicating Structure in Events.” Journal of Experimental Psychology 130: 29–58.

Doxiadis: Origins of Logic

99