To answer this one, we need to go as far back as Aristotle’s The Rhetoric some 2300 years ago. In this verbal self-defense classic — as in: “you gotta know what can be done, how, if you are to effectively defend yourself . . . ” —  on what has aptly been called the devilish art of persuasion by any means fair or foul, Aristotle (left, courtesy Wiki, public domain)  found this key answer to the question “How do arguments work to persuade us?” in Book I Ch 2: “Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. The first kind depends on the personal character of the speaker [ethos]; the second on putting the … Continue reading Why is the debate over design theory so often so poisonous and polarised?