an inquiry into coherence

offered an alternative view of communication that emphasized its epistemological implications and creative possibilities.  At the heart of their work is an integrative vision of human interaction and understanding that draws from diverse disciplines ranging from classical rhetoric to  quantum physics and Eastern Philosophy.   

     Their work resonated with my own personal and educational experiences, and informed the intellectual and professional practices I have pursued throughout my career as a teacher, scholar and practitioner of communication.  Pierce and Cronen envisioned communication as more than an instrument for transmitting knowledge and representing the physical world, but also as a vehicle for creating that world.  They were concerned with both what we know and how we know, how knowledge is both matter and energy, substance and spirit.

     Pearce and Cronen's work is part of a larger conversation about the quality and character of communication and its potential for cultivating wholeness in a fragmented world.  Their concerns inspired my own theoretical work on rhetorical coherence which responds to the contemporary view that language creates reality with the question, "what kind of reality does oppositional language create?"   

      For more than four decades that question has informed my teaching, research and service and has shaped my understanding of rhetoric, race and epistemology and their role in creation and reconciliation of human identity, difference and division.  The answers I have found suggest the need for a paradigm shift in communication comparable to that of the sciences, a symbolic revolution that recognizes Einstein's transformative insight:  “You cannot solve a problem with the same mind that created it.”