Rhetoric and Science

Abstract

This chapter explores the return of the problem of rhetoric for science in the modern period. In contemporary technoscience, rhetoric functions as an integral aspect of the production and circulation of knowledge as well as an often scapegoated reminder of the fundamental limits on knowledge understood as “objectivity” circulated by and for subjects experiencing nothing but “subjectivity.” By focusing on “entropy” as both a polyvalent term within thermodynamics and information theory and as an apparent constraint limiting and enabling the communication and production of scientific knowledge, the chapter points to the larger scaled ecosystem of attention within which the proliferating and diversifying locales of scientific knowledge production emerge in the modern and postmodern periods, an ecosystem labeled by diverse commentators as the “noösphere.”