The Rhetoric of Argument in Berkeley's Siris

STEPHEN LEO CARR The Rhetoric of Argument in Berkeley's Siris Bishop Berkeley's Siris is a strange, anomalous text, an apparent lapse from his sceptical, strong-minded, and rigorous philosophy. His other works are uncluttered masterpieces of analysis and exposition, which develop their own terminology and appeal to personal introspection for verification. Siris, however, is littered with borrowings from eighteenthcentury systems of chemistry and physics and from esoteric, hermetic philosophies, which underlie and shape its argument. Whereas elsewhere Berkeley sharply limits the grounds of knowledge, Siris enthusiastically advances the marvelous, mythopoeic idea of an animistic universe and treats the world as though it were the body of an animal whose every motion is directed by God. In its methods and conclusions, then, this text may strike modem readers as foreign or even bizarre, not worthy of consideration as serious philosophical discourse. Especially since the scientific theories it invokes have been disproven or superseded, its proposals may seem useless, of interest only to historians of science or philosophy. Yet I believe that in Siris Berkeley writes a self-conscious, philosophically informed discourse that is grounded in his sense of the rhetorical and ultimately supra-philosophical purposes of abstract inquiry . He uses the persuasive power that scientific argument had within his culture to develop insights that surpass the ideology and philosophy supporting eighteenth-century science. This practice is specifically informed by Berkeley's novel theories of language and of science, but its significance extends beyond his philosophy to larger issues concerning the often unacknowledged influence of rhetorical motives and strategies in scientific and philosophic texts.' Siris purports to be 'A Chain of Philosophical Reflexions and Inquiries Concerning the Virtues of Tar-Water, and divers other Subjects connected together and arising One from Another." Berkeley's metaphor of a chain and emphasis on the interconnectedness of his text promise a rigorous, coherent work. And his claim in the introduction that each topic relates to the next 'as effects are linked with their causes' assures readers of the text's logical structure, of its ascent up causal chains to more inclusive principles. In general, Siris appears to proceed in this orderly, rigorous manner. Berkeley describes tar-water's preparation, surveys the illnesses and discomforts he has treated with this medicine, and then UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUME 51, NUMBER 1, FALL 198] 0042-()247181/tOOO-OO47-0060$o1.5010 \Q UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS 48 STEPHEN LEO CARR investigates the physical and chemical principles responsible for its success, To explain tar-water's apparent potency he uses the most sophisticated and reputable scientific theories available, He refers both to ancient writers, such as Pliny and Aristotle, and to contemporary authorities, to Boyle, Boerhaave, Newton, and others, He even draws on recent scientific discoveries; the observations about air that soon led to the discovery of oxygen, for example, playa crucial part in his argument. This massive body ofcontemporary scientific opinion supports Berkeley's conclusion that tar-water's curative powers originate in an 'aether or pure invisible fire' (152) that cannot be perceived 'otherwise than from its effects' (159)' Siris's physics becomes in tum the basis of a metaphysics, The text continues with an exposition of both ancient and modem philosophical arguments for the necessary existence of an active principle or agent permeating the natural world, By tracing parallels between his theories and numerous metaphysical systems Berkeley expands Siris's science into a full-scale cosmology, He treats the fiery 'aether' underlying tar-water as the physical manifestation and experiential confirmation of this system, Finally, these scientificand philosophical principles become the basis for a theological argument about the existence of a benevolent God who actively manifests himself in the world, Siris, then, seems to move from tar-water to Trinity in a straightforward fashion; like many works of natural theology it progresses from natural history, to science and philosophy, and finally to an affirmation of God's omnipresent power, Indeed, the text's orienting metaphor, a chain, is such a commonplace eighteenth-century trope for the structure of both rational discourse and the world that the form and content of Berkeley's argument would likely be perceived as entirely conventional and unproblematic, Though...