October 18

I found the differences between ancient and modern rhetoric in the ways that today we hold extrinsic proofs with a higher regard than intrinsic proof while ancient rhetoricians did the opposite interesting.  Particularly interesting was the way they saw extrinsic proofs as compared to today, then the were seen as unreliable and requiring careful interpretation while being skeptical of authority and accuracy.  Today we see many extrinsic proofs as reliable and accurate and usually they are written by an authority on the subject, that could, however, have something to do with the types of documents we use today.  Much of the time when we use extrinsic proofs they are data or studies, typically we do not find just anything in a book or on the internet without confirming wither its accuracy or the credibility of the author. 

In our suspicion we are the most like the ancient rhetoricians in our approach to extrinsic proofs.  We do not have to worry about who the author is because their info is almost always just a few clicks away; if not provided in the material where we found the extrinsic proof than through a quick internet search.  The book further mentions ways we can tell if a work is worthwhile, such as checking what else the author has written, or looking at reviews on the piece.  The possibility of one person have a slight inaccuracy or ignorance to relative information, or a bias can be fixed by doing exactly what we usually do when working on something, using multiple sources, not all sources will have the same bias, inaccuracy, etc. and by using multiple sources we are more likely to have an accurate and more rounded view of the topic. 

Another worry ancient rhetoricians had which we no longer have to deal with is how documents have changed, before print things changed commonly through countless translations and copying but today we are basically guaranteed to have the same copy of the text as anyone in any part of the world which speaks the same language as us.

One commonality we have with ancient rhetoricians is to generally distrust the testimony of ordinary persons, at least to distrust it as an authority on the subject.  We only use the voices of people in some way attached to the topic.  Whenever we look at the people we think about biases they may have and how that may affect their comments.  The use and effect of testimony also depends greatly on what is being looked into.  Today we put a high emphasis on what would be called Community authorities.