Hi Joshua, Lewis wrote an essay titled "Bulverism: Or, The Foundations of 20th Century Thought." It's included in the book God in the Dock. He explains the origin of the term there, which I'll paste below.
"In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it Bulverism. Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father—who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than the third—‘Oh you say that because you are a man.’ ‘At that moment’, E. Bulver assures us, ‘there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and then explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. . . . That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century."
C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock, ed. Walter Hooper (HarperOne, 1994), 301–302.
Where (I suppose, if we're speaking of Lewis, I should say "From whence") does the term originate?
Hi Joshua, Lewis wrote an essay titled "Bulverism: Or, The Foundations of 20th Century Thought." It's included in the book God in the Dock. He explains the origin of the term there, which I'll paste below.
"In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it Bulverism. Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father—who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than the third—‘Oh you say that because you are a man.’ ‘At that moment’, E. Bulver assures us, ‘there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and then explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. . . . That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century."
C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock, ed. Walter Hooper (HarperOne, 1994), 301–302.
Bulverism, illustrated, about ten minutes:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1FxjMYeye5Y&pp=ygUQYnVsdmVyaXNtIGRvb2RsZQ%3D%3D