Forms of appeal

In the text “Dominion Over Nature”, Robert Pack uses all three forms of appeal: logos, ethos, and pathos.

Logos

Through logos, Pack attempts to show the validity of his ideas by appealing to logical arguments. For instance, he uses the example of the Genesis Bible account to show that God’s two commandments towards humankind are contradictory:

The initial account is followed by God’s first commandment, ‘Be fruitful and multiply,’ but this imperative is succeeded by a second one – ‘subdue [the earth], and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air (…) – which will prove to be antithetical to the first. (ll. 2-7)

Through the use of logical arguments, Pack then argues that the success of human beings clashes with the idea that people should dominate and subdue nature. That is because humans rely on the natural world in t...