Ratiocinatio (ra’-ti-o-cin-a’-ti-o): Reasoning (typically with oneself) by asking questions. Sometimes equivalent to anthypophora. More specifically, ratiocinatio can mean making statements, then asking the reason (ratio) for such an affirmation, then answering oneself. In this latter sense ratiocinatiois closely related to aetiologia. [As a questioning strategy, it is also related to erotima {the general term for a rhetorical question}.]
If there is no solution to a problem, does that mean it’s not a problem? If it isn’t a problem, what is it? A fact of life? Some people devote their lives to developing solutions to non-existent problems. Like Lord Edward Pordle, the little-known 19th Century idiot who was highly regarded in his own time as a praiseworthy devotee of philosophic inquiry, which had a much wider scope and much less professional tenor than it has today. Philosophy was a rich man’s game, one of the first things to be called a “hobby” by the elite. One of its primary purposes was to demonstrate that the rich and the royal were not dull-headed layabouts; devotees of fox hunting, and whoremongering. In a way, philosophy became a front for their continued dissolution. They capitalized on philosophy’s ancient cache to conceal their worthless and immoral pursuits claiming whoring and horse riding were both philosophic endeavors. This was the problem Lord Pordle endeavored to find a solution to all of his life: Are whoring and horse riding philosophic?
His first contribution was to declare that everything is philosophy—not just theories of knowledge and reality and concepts of the true, the good, and the beautiful. At around that time rubber was discovered and it provided Lord Pordle with a brilliant metaphor (or maybe simile): for philosophy: “Philosophy is reality’s rubber suit. Even if there’s nothing there it shows a telltale contour, projecting the essence of what lies beneath.” To prove his point, he presented a whore dressed in rubber. Her contours were plain. Thus, she could be claimed as a site of philosophy for the development of theories of knowledge and reality and concepts of the true, the good and the beautiful. London’s “Guild of Practical Pimps” gave Lord Pordle an award of 500 pounds, and the newly invented rubber penis sheath was given his name: “The Pordle.”The sheath’s German inventor, Wilhelm Willy, claimed he got the idea from reading Pordle’s rubber theorem pamphlet and it’s explanation of rubber’s ability to act as a vessel and a shield, leading to further rumination on the inside and the outside as merely different perspectives, not actual places. It was quite a moment in merry London Towne. Then, Darwin came along and Pordle’s world came crashing down. Nobody, to this day, knows why. Clearly, Lord Pordle could’ve adapted his rubber theorem to evolution—looking at evolution as a stretching rather than an origin.
As he was wont to do when his ideas were roundly challenged, Lord Pordle cried, using the words “boo hoo” over and over as his vehicle of sorrowful expression. He was able to stop when his “Soothing Maid” was summoned. She placed him on her lap and petted his head like a puppy, giving him a chocolate bar from Holland. When he finished his chocolate bar he was restored, got off his Soothing Maid’s lap, and went back to his philosophic endeavors.
The next day he became a follower of the romantics. He believed in the primacy of the emotions. He had “I feel in order to think” tattooed on the back of his neck. Neck tattoos became all the rage throughout Europe and a large number of previously unemployed poets were hired by their nations’ tattoo parlors to assist their clients in finding the right words. Lord Pordle was doing great. In Europe, he was known as “Lord Tattoo.” However, he was 97 years old. He was way beyond the life expectancy of a 19th century man. He died in his study working on a treatise on the “importance and glory” of the recently invented shoelace titled “Whither Will the Buckle and the Button Tend?” He also had a little known interest in optics. He had been detained several times during his nighttime surveillance activities on the grounds of the local convent. He had said that he had “seen more than any man should see.” His “Peer at the Realm” spyglass was under development in his modest workshop, only to be purloined on the night of his death by one of Jeremy Bentham’s thugs who used it as the basis for his prisoner observation scheme.
Lord Pordle was an idiot, but he was born into immeasurable wealth. He was buried in Highgate Cemetery in a rubber suit.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu). Bracketed text added by Gorgias.
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