Re: Magic

["Dave Healy" <healy001@maroon.tc.umn.edu>]

It seems as though there's magic and there's magic.  There's the kind of magic 
that magicians do, which is studied, rehearsed, technical.  Within limits, 
anyone can lean to do magic.  We won't all be David Copperfields, but anyone can
learn a few parlor tricks.

Using this analogy, anyone can learn to write, and anyone can learn to tutor.  
The question is, what is one learning?  In what sense is rhetoric a parlor 
trick?

The other kind of magic is the kind that just happens.  It's what we call 
something when we don't what else to call it or when we don't know how to 
account for it.  Magic is of the super-natural; it's ineffable.  In what sense 
is rhetoric supernatural?  How can rhetoric be ineffable, i.e., incable of being
expressed in words?

Dave Healy