Hugh Burns, Wayne Booth, Aristotle, and Computers

It was like having what Kathleen Blake Yancey calls a palimpsest - layers upon layers of history - right in our classroom in the form of a human being. That is what it felt like listening to Hugh Burns. He introduced us to Wayne Booth who believed, according to our Compbiblio source book, that "scholars understand little when it comes to lectures from fields of study other than their own" (367-68). I don't think that can be said of Hugh Burns who understands computer science well enough to write applications that we still use today, and he understands the histories of rhetoric and of philosophy well enough to make me long to possess his depth of knowledge.

He reintroduced us to ancient concepts still so relevant in this field today. Dr. Burns' presentation, left me longing for a true liberal arts education, the kind it is difficult to come by anymore. We could, and should, take entire courses on the "7 books of the philosopher:"

Metaphysics
Logic
Physics
Rhetoric
Poetics
Ethics
Politics

So often these days, however, we take only what we need to attain a specific degree within a specific field and turn away from the knowledge that might truly challenge us.

I also found his knowledge of Wayne Booth interesting and left wishing I had met the man. Again, we have an interesting character grounded in religion (Mormon) entering into the field of rhetoric; maybe this is the thing that drove Booth to argue for a return to a real rhetoric and not the sloppy dialectic of politicians we have come to associate with the word today: in a spiritual sense, words have great weight and meaning and should not be thrown around lightly.

And, then we have computers and the perspective from which they inform the fields of composition and rhetoric. It is fascinating that so many people in such a distinctly human field as composition resonate toward the technological creation, yet, Burns flows back and forth from one to another easily and has for his entire career.

This leads to a larger question for me, one I'm still meditating on, where is the space in which computers, religion, rhetoric, and composition meet in the classroom? I'll have to get back to you if I ever find an answer.