noun
definition
A technique of argument associated with Socrates wherein the arguer asks the interlocutor to agree with a series of premises and conclusions, ending with the arguer's intended point.
Examples of elenchus in a Sentence
He then spent some time in Holland, and the results of his investigations appeared at the Hague in 1766 in his Elenchus Zoophytorum and Miscellanea Zoologica, and in1767-1804in his Spicilegia Zoologica (Berlin).
An ingenious, though ineffective, proposal for the reform of the calendar was put forward in his Elenchus Calendarii Gregoriani (Frankfort, 1612); and he published a book on music, Melodiae condendae ratio (Erfurt, 1592), still worth reading.
Wallis's Elenchus geometriae Hobbianae, published in 1655 about three months after the De corpore, contained also an elaborate criticism of Hobbes's whole attempt to relay the foundations of mathematical science in its place within the general body of reasoned knowledge - a criticism which, if it failed to allow for the merit of the conception, exposed only too effectually the utter inadequacy of the result.
Swift as before to strike, in three months' time he had deftly turned his own word against the would-be master by administering Due Correction for Mr Hobbes, or School Discipline for not saying his Lessons right, in a piece that differed from the Elenchus only in being more biting and unrestrained.
Reference has already been made to the reason why a common Anabaptist confession was never made public. Probably, however, the earliest confession of faith of any Baptist community is that given by Zwingli in the second part of his Elenchus contra Catabaptistas, published in 1527.