The report, of course, offers new material for arguments about what will happen to the bears as the planet warms.
He follows in the footsteps of earlier humanists such as Lorenzo Valla (1406 57) and Rudolph Agricola (1443 85), who set about to replace the scholastic curriculum, based on syllogistic and disputation, with a treatment of logic oriented toward the use of the topics, a technique of verbal association aiming at the invention and organization of material for arguments, and persuasion.
And that he might have found rich material for argument in this exhibition is, along with the quality of the work itself, strong recommendation indeed.
In 1963, after a string of unsatisfying commercial features, he announced he was leaving the movies behind to concentrate on a grand project for television: a series of historical films meant to educate the mass audience, offering essential information and material for argument.
China is such a mix of strength and weakness these days that it provides endless material for opportunistic arguments.
With no time to prepare material for counter-arguments, debaters are forced to think on their feet, a task that requires practice as well as skill.
Zhang Guangning, chairman of the China Iron and Steel Association, recently declared that "China's steel production has already hit a peak".For the handful of big firms that produce most of the world's iron ore, the raw material for steel, such arguments are hard to swallow.
Like Mr. Currin's art, it takes the eroticism of oddness as its subject and sets out the material for endless aesthetic argument in visually magnetic terms.
In any case a divine command metaethical theory provides the material for such an argument.
3. Preparation puts pep in a happy arguer's step: Dig up all the materials for your argument beforehand; comb through data, documents, statistics, videos, photographs, emails and voicemail messages.
Russia, with its policy of conquest in central Asia and the Caucasus, would seem to offer ideal material for Mr. Said's argument, Mr. Irwin notes, but mysteriously plays no role at all in "Orientalism".
