Title: Simplifying complexity : rhetoric and the social politics of dealing with ignorance /
Authors: Yoos, George E.,; Randall-Schab, Magdalena
Year: 2015
Subjects: Communication in science.; Science Public relations.; Communication of technical information; Rhetoric Social aspects.; Ignorance (Theory of knowledge); Science Social aspects
Abstract: The book deals with the plurality of the sciences and technologies. It is about the way in which each of them develops around the prosthetics of printed languages and the models used as visual aids to help us create new modes of communication to understand and solve human problems. In this collection of essays, Yoos surveys different models that have evolved from the innate, biological forms of grammar, logic, and modes of orientation. He explores the evolution of socially constructed systems of numeracy and measurement that have evolved and developed in different languages for the use in scientific and technological communication.
Contents: Rhetorical limitations in the use of frames and perspectives -- Aging and complexity -- The human animal and its ascendance from ignorance -- The word of Herbert Simon on artificial intelligence -- Circular thinking and linear exposition: circling around a point to discover the point -- Modern and postmodern thinking: rational and interpretive thinking -- Use of different types of graphic display to interpret meaning -- Stasis, observation, and facts -- The apparent realism of naïve realism: how really naïve is naïve realism? -- Various types of modeling used for finding correlations, designing structures, discovering contrasts, and making comparisons -- A sense of place as fundamental to our thinking about models about equilibriums -- Fenced-off and fenced-in equilibriums: outside and inside boundaries and fences -- The rhetoric and politics of standardization: measurements and needs for precision -- Simple-minded simplicity of simples -- Rhetorical unity in narrative and exposition -- Boolean algebra, Turing machines, and the Sheffer stroke function.