Epideictic rethoric in Galileo's Dialogo / Brian Vickers.
Abstract:
This essays relates Galileo's Dialogue to the tradition of debate in Renaissance humanism, where individual personae representing separate philosophical systems argue their case in a polemical manner. Galileo's use of this form is shown to include an intensive and brilliant application of epideictic rhetoric, the linked techniques of praise and blame which, since the time of Aristotle's Rhetoric, were applied to evaluating ethical and philosophical issues
Annali dell'Istituto e Museo di storia della scienza di Firenze A. 8, fasc. 2 (1983), p. 69-102