Doug Kulchar

Professional Bio

My research bridges Rhetoric with Information and Complexity Theory, understanding rhetoric's constitutive role in shaping what Wilfrid Sellars terms "the space of reasons." Drawing primarily on traditions of Epistemic and Materialist Rhetorics, as well as Philosophy of Science debates on explanation and nomology, my dissertation considers the rhetorical dimensions of classical Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics by examining foundational metaphors - such as the Maxwell's Demon Gedankenexperiment - and modeling methods, tracking their reception and extension in Cybernetics and Systems Theory. By examining the development and continuing influence of these rhetorical resources, I argue for a renewal of Kantian critique in Rhetoric, aimed at understanding mathematical and statistical models as topoi by which we attune ourselves to the infra- and supra-sensible world.