Quote:


What about this, this and this?



Like much of the web these three links all draw on common data (in this case probably originally the American Heritage, I would guess). Mere cloning of data across sites neither validates nor invalidates its accuracy. The wiki link suggests the answer: Silva Rhetoricae is evidently giving a more technically accurate differentiation of terms based on its meaning in logical argument; indeed the external links at the foot of the wiki entry refer to the SR citation as an authority.

Apophasis was originally and more broadly a method of logical reasoning or argument by denial, a way of telling what something is by telling what it is not, a process-of-elimination way of talking about something by talking about what it isn't.

A useful inductive technique when given a limited universe of possibilites, the exclusion of all but the one remaining is affirmation through negation. The familiar guessing-game of "Is it bigger than a bread box?" is an example of apophatic inquiry.

This denotation has generally fallen into disuse and is frequently overlooked, although it is still current in certain contexts, such as mysticism and Negative theology. An apophatic theology sees God as ineffability and attempts to describe God in terms of what God is not.


PS: Michael, you may want to review your own site’s entry, since at the very least there appear to be two definitions, and you have the less worthless… (unless you judge duplicating the meaning of cataphasis makes this the more wwftd!