Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/08564_Field_TCGG T329.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 878b | 16 lines

and notes (p. 2): “From this it appears that Seneca recognized
three main stages of development: (i) the pre-Ciceronian thesis
(ii) the privately rehearsed declamations of Cicero and his
contemporaries, known to them as causae  (iii) the declamation
proper, known as controversia  and subsequently also as
scholastica .”

     These scholastic exercises in ancient Rome depended on
the sic et non  examination of theses. And in his Topics  (I, 9)
Aristotle refers to such theses as an assertion or negation of
some exceptional philosophical tenet, giving as examples “that
everything is in a state of flux” or “that all existence is One.”

     Moreover, “thesis” meant that the topic might not only be
paradoxical but that it would be considered in abstraction from
particular circumstances and from “given person place or time.”