This essay explores how rules for handling testimonial evidence were developed in the contexts of the British jurisprudence, epistemology and theological debate over the course of the eighteenth century, and shows how Thomas Paine appropriated these rules in The Age of Reason, his deistic manifesto.

This essay explores how rules for handling testimonial evidence were developed in the contexts of the British jurisprudence, epistemology and theological debate over the course of the eighteenth century, and shows how Thomas Paine appropriated these rules in The Age of Reason, his deistic manifesto.

This essay inquires into the meaning and usage of eikos, an important term in early Greek rhetorical theory Based on a survey of 394 uses of the verb eoika (of which eikos is the neuter perfect participle) in texts ranging from Homer to Isocrates, it argues that the traditional translation of eikos as "probability" is in some ways misleading. Specifically, the essay proposes: 1) that "to be similar" is the core meaning of eoika, 2) that all other senses of eoika can be seen as extensions of the "similarity" sense, 3) that the "befittingness" sense of eikos continued to be of great importance in the early Attic orators, and 4) that the sense of eikos as that which is befitting or socially expected, and the sense of eikos as that which is verisimilar, work in tandem in the "profiling" strategy of some eikos arguments.

Abstract This essay is an inquiry into Heraclitus' conception of logos and its importance for sophistic thought. Following G. S. Kirk, I argue that Heraclitus used logos to designate structure or ordered composition, both in language and in the physical world. Further, I propose that early sophists like Gorgias and Protagoras shared with Heraclitus a structural conception of logos. The essay proceeds by reviewing various understandings of Heraclitus and his philosophy, making the case that Heraclitus did use logos to signify structure or “ordered composition,” and by exploring the relationship between Heraclitus, read in this way, and the sophists.