Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Ernst Robert Curtius studied topoi as "commonplaces", themes common to orators and writers who re-worked them according to occasion, e.g., in classical antiquity the observation that "all must die" was a topos in consolatory oratory, for in facing death the knowledge that death comes even to great men brings comfort. [2]
Topoi behave much like the category of sets and possess a notion of localization; they are a direct generalization of point-set topology. [1] The Grothendieck topoi find applications in algebraic geometry, and more general elementary topoi are used in logic. The mathematical field that studies topoi is called topos theory.
Special topoi included such concepts as justice or injustice, virtue, good, and worthiness. Again, these are areas of inquiry seen by many today as belonging to other arts, but from Greek times through the Renaissance, these were considered integral to the study and practice of rhetoric.
The Topics (Ancient Greek: Τοπικά; Latin: Topica) is the name given to one of Aristotle's six works on logic collectively known as the Organon.In Andronicus of Rhodes' arrangement it is the fifth of these six works.
Aristotle's definition of rhetoric, "the faculty of observing, in any given case, the available means of persuasion", presupposes a distinction between an art (τέχνη, techne) of speech–making and a cognitively prior faculty of discovery.
Certain categories called topoi (singular topos) can even serve as an alternative to axiomatic set theory as a foundation of mathematics. A topos can also be considered as a specific type of category with two additional topos axioms.
consolatio works are united by their treatment of bereavement, by unique rhetorical structure and topoi, and by their use of universal themes to offer solace. [3] All consolatio works draw from a relatively narrow range of arguments aimed at offering solace, to allay the distress caused by the death of a loved one, a matter of ill fortuna.
Topical logic is the logic of topical argument, a branch of rhetoric developed in the Late Antique period from earlier works, such as Aristotle's Topics and Cicero's Topica.It consists of heuristics for developing arguments, which are in the first place plausible rather than rigorous, from commonplaces (topoi or loci).