Socrates' gadfly method of debate is well illustrated in Plato's Meno, which recounts a discussion between Socrates and a rich young visitor from Thessaly called Meno, who wishes to know Socrates' opinion about an important question, namely: is virtue teachable?
Modi and his Government's spokespersons have been pursuing a method of debate that immediately boxes people into ideologies and scuttles the main discussion.
One section of the exhibition devoted to the Talmud, the ongoing rabbinical interpretations of the Bible, allows visitors to experience the Talmudic method of debating issues through interactive video.
Trolling has become subtle, and one of the more elegant methods of subverting debate is "concern trolling".
I thus find headlines like "Harsh Methods of Questioning Debated Again" a profoundly spineless approach to reporting on what are, after all, war crimes.
"Harsh Methods of Questioning Debated Again" (front page, May 4) describes the claims and counterclaims regarding the importance of information derived from torture of prisoners in tracking down Osama bin Laden.
In the news columns, an article by Scott Shane and Charlie Savage began with the question: "Did brutal interrogations produce the crucial intelligence that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden?" In print, the story was headlined, "Harsh Methods of Questioning Debated Again".
"This has been probably the most damaging to the Senate institutionally that I can recall," Mr. Daschle said today, referring to Mr. Lott's method of limiting debate and refusing amendments.
The security methods were the subject of debate on Hacker News, with the common refrain being "I'm not handing over my password," as per usual.
Two population estimation methods, double observer (DO) and double sampling (DS), have been advocated for avian population studies and the relative merits and short-comings of these methods remain an area of debate.
