Rhetoric of Science and Technology

Rhetoric Of Science And Technology

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RHETORIC OF SCIENCE AND

TECHNOLOGY
Rhetorical inquiry is a multidisciplinary field of study devoted to the critical
examination of discourse. Initiated in classical times, it cultivates an "ability,
in each [particular] case, to see the available means of persuasion" (Aristotle
1991, p. 36). As an academic field, rhetoric of science and technology is the
study of how scientists and non-scientists use arguments to advance claims
about science and technology.

The idea that there is a rhetoric of science and technology may strike some as
perverse and others as obvious. In popular parlance, the term rhetoric
connotes something less than truthful, the ranting of politicians who evade
substantive dialogue. When tied to science and technology, rhetoric can sound
like a curse, staining the purity of certain knowledge and precise
measurement with the mark of ideological bias and political maneuvering. But
to those who study the rhetoric of science and technology, the term has no
such connotation. Instead it is steeped in its ancient tradition and denotes the
careful study of how texts are designed to seek the assent of an audience.
When those texts are from the realm of science and technology, the means of
persuasion utilized include such factors as appeals to disciplinary assumptions
and values, the demonstration of methodological rigor, and the selection of
language that suggest the neutral observation of nature.

Historical Development
The negative connotations attached to rhetoric are largely the result of a
lengthy conflict with philosophy, in which the latter claimed the more valued
side of oppositions between opinion and truth, form and content, passion and
reason. Yet recent developments in philosophy and other fields recognize
these dichotomies as problematic, resulting in a general resurgence of interest
in the tradition of rhetorical inquiry, a tradition maintained by enclaves of
scholars working mostly in departments of Speech Communication and
English in the United States (/places/united-states-and-canada/us-political-
geography/united-states).

Developments in the philosophy, sociology, and history of science have also

contributed to the rise of scholarship on the rhetoric of science and
technology. Science studies scholars have shown that what one era recognizes
as the truth of a scientific theory is seen by a later era as mere opinion,
supplanted when an authorizing scientific community accepts a new truth
claim. The fact that this transformation occurs by way of arguments addressed
to a particular audience, that it often entails a significant shift in values and
beliefs by people with an investment in the outcome of those arguments, and
that it is frequently marked by controversy, makes rhetorical inquiry a natural
approach to the study of such moments.

The idea that communication between scientists and the public might have a
rhetorical dimension, or that new technologies may be promoted through
rhetorical means, is rarely disputed. Thus the rhetorical examinations of these
aspects of science and technology are likewise promising scholarly pursuits in
an age when science and technology play such an important role in the
development of public attitudes and policies.

The first hint that rhetorical inquiry might be applied to scientific discourse
began appearing in the journals of rhetoricians in the 1970s. There were
theoretical essays exploring the developments in philosophy and sociology of
science that contributed to the possibility for a rhetoric of science (Weimer
1977; Overington 1977), research that began to examine the persuasive nature
of specific scientific texts (Campbell 1975), and a general call for scholarship in
this new area (Wander 1976). The birth of the field was announced when two
books appeared almost simultaneously with nearly identical titles: Lawrence J.
Prelli's A Rhetoric of Science (1989) and Alan G. Gross's The Rhetoric of
Science (1990). Both fruitfully applied classical rhetorical concepts to the study
of scientific truth claims.

In 1991 Randy Allen Harris wrote a thorough review of the nascent field,
defining its relationship to other fields and organizing the scattered research
into useful taxonomic categories. In 1993 the American Association for the
Rhetoric of Science and Technology (/science-and-
technology/technology/technology-terms-and-concepts/science-and-
technology) held its inaugural meeting at the National Communication
Association convention, where it continues to meet annually. The field has
continued to develop with the aid of such professional supports as the
University of Iowa (/social-sciences-and-law/education/colleges-us/university-
iowa)'s Project on the Rhetoric of Inquiry, graduate programs specializing in
the study of rhetoric in science and technology at the University of Pittsburgh
(/social-sciences-and-law/education/colleges-us/university-pittsburgh) and the
University of Minnesota, and a series of books on the Rhetoric of the Human
Sciences published by the University of Wisconsin (/social-sciences-and-
law/education/colleges-us/university-wisconsin) Press. Research has generally
grown along two paths: studies of the arguments made by scientists when they
address other scientists, and scholarship that focuses on the relationship
between science or technology and the public.

Internal Rhetorics of Science

The most heavily researched area in this growing field is the internal rhetoric
of scientists, that is, the discourse scientists use when addressing other
scientists, either within their own discipline or across disciplines. Because
most people think the internal discourse of scientists is resistant to rhetorical
scrutiny, scholars blazing the trail have focused on establishing that even the
most specialized communication can be examined usefully through the lens of
rhetorical analysis. The prototypical scientific research article has been the
subject of much research. For example Watson and Crick's famous 1953 Nature
report, "A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid," has been examined in
several unrelated studies that explain its persuasive design through rhetorical
theories pertaining to voice, ethos, irony, kairos, stasis, and narrative
(Bazerman 1988, Halloran 1984, Gross 1990, Miller 1992, Prelli 1989, Fisher
1994). An entire volume of essays has been written on the rhetoric of a single
journal article by Stephen Jay Gould (/people/social-sciences-and-
law/business-leaders/jay-gould) and Richard Lewontin (Selzer 1993).

More evidence that the research report was the primary focus for early
rhetoricians of science is the fact that some of the first books in the field were
devoted to illuminating writing practices in this genre. For example Charles
Bazerman's Shaping Written Knowledge (1988) contrasts the scientific article
with other forms of academic discourse and traces historical changes and
disciplinary differences in the design of the experimental report. It shows how
even scientists "use, transform, and invent tools and tricks of the symbolic
trade" to shape claims so that they are judged novel and truthful by other
scientists (p. 318). In Writing Biology (1990), Greg Myers looks at the review
process to examine the way authors and editors, operating with different
interests, negotiate the status of a scientific claim in a journal article. His book
further traces the way two controversies are played out in scientific journals,
where scientists interpret their own words and those of their opponents as
freely and expertly as any debater in the public forum.

In addition to the rhetoric of the experimental article, landmark scientific

monographs such as Newton's Opticks (1704) and Darwin's On the Origin of
Species (1859) and have received sustained attention from scholars of rhetoric
seeking to understand how scientists persuade their colleagues to accept
radical new theories. The most successful scientists are often the ones who are
also master rhetors, capable of adapting new ideas to the presuppositions of
their audiences rather than making a frontal assault on a standard paradigm
with the irresistible force of a revolutionary theory.

Rhetorical studies have done a particularly good job of showing how the style
in which a scientific claim is communicated has an influence on how a
scientific community thinks about that claim, and vice versa. Jeanne
Fahnestock's careful account of rhetorical figures in science demonstrates that
language does "much of our thinking for us, even in the sciences, and rather
than being an unfortunate contamination, its influence has been productive
historically, helping individual thinkers generate concepts and theories that
can then be put to the test" (Fahnestock 1999, p. xi).

Because facilitating the growth of knowledge is the central activity of

scientists, the way in which scientists use the tools of language and argument
to advance knowledge claims has received the most attention from scholars of
the rhetoric of science. Another internal rhetoric of science that receives less
attention, either because it is considered less central or because its character
is less contested and thus less shocking when discovered, is the way in which
scientists persuade one another that a particular line of research holds future
promise. Myers devotes a chapter of his book to the rhetoric of the grant
proposal, a genre of scientific writing that must convince reviewers a research
program deserves funding because of its potential interest to the scientific
community and the professional ethos of the authors. Leah Ceccarelli (2001)
examines motivational texts of science to show that scientists who employ a
strategic ambiguity of language are better able to persuade colleagues from
different disciplines to overcome barriers separating their fields and engage in
new interdisciplinary lines of research. These internal discourses of science
that do not seek the assent of colleagues to a particular truth claim, but
instead seek future action from fellow scientists, have been less studied by
rhetoricians, but may be just as important to the ultimate development of
science.

For the most part, research on internal rhetorics of science tends to be

descriptive and explanatory in nature, uncovering the rhetorical practices at
the heart of scientific activity. But some of it has an implicit prescriptive
character, suggesting other resources of language and argument that scientists
might use to shape science in more useful or ethical ways. In contrast research
on external rhetorics of science and technology tends to be more explicit in its
criticism of current communication practices and more direct in its
recommendations for change.
External Rhetorics of Science and Technology (/science-
Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Ethics
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