Solving the mystery of presence: verbal/visual interactionin Darwin’s structure and distribution of coral reefs

Abstract

In Chaïm Perelman, Ray Dearin and I contend that presence transcends the isolated effects that Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca catalogue; we contend that there is a global form, a synergy of effects in which “to be persuaded is to live in a world made significantly different by the persuader.” Later, on my own, I extend this form of presence from the verbal to the visual. In this paper, I attempt to further this analysis of presence, to offer a systematic account of the verbal-visual interaction on which it depends, to offer, in effect, a genealogy of presence. Such an account is essential if we are to explain the mystery of verbal-visual presence, to explain what is, in fact, the central mystery of Perelmanian presence, the transformation of the perceptual into the argumentative. My example is Darwin’s first masterpiece, The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs