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Visual Rhetoric birthed Neuroscience



Modern society was built upon ancient, almost mythological beginnings. The first known visual rhetoric illustrations can be found in the Egyptian pyramids. Etched in stone, the ancient hieroglyphs launched and influenced languages, worldwide. Modern society meets ancient beginnings with modern science, neuroscience.

Technology, coding, language and how people behave, act, and even make choices can be boiled down to visual rhetoric. Everyone, everyday is exposed to visual rhetoric via marketing, trademarks, catchphrases, sigils, symbols, context, photos, music, ads, push notifications, list ad infinitum, are all forms of visual rhetoric. And now evolved minds want to know.

There are many books and highly educated academics, philosophers, and marketers making the same connections. Visual rhetoric are parts of building and engineering the human. A book by Edward Comstock, "Connections between neuroscience, rhetoric, and writing a plastic pedagogy for the digital age" states: "contemporary neuroscience complements extends, and challenges...accounts of the relations between rhetoric, affect and writing..."

A doctorial dissertation by Brett Ingram from the University of Massachusetts asserts:

"Recent neuroscientific research into affect, identity, and decision-making echoes many of the claims made by ancient rhetoricians: namely, that rhetorical activity is corporeally transformative, and that the material transformations wrought by rhetoric have profound implications..."

I find it fascinating the world has always known at some primal level our existence is somehow correlated to the pyramids, ancient symbols, and by visual rhetoric.












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