Science as Argumentative Practice

Abstract

This chapter clarifies the concept of science as a set of “argumentation practices,” and explains the conceptual normative framework that integrates different approaches to scientific argumentation related to a number of theoretical developments. These developments include the “practice turn” in science studies, the “rhetorical turn” in the application of argumentation theory in the study of scientific texts, and the mutual exchange between rhetoric and argumentation studies. The chapter also highlights the obstacles and ambiguities in the alignment of key elements of this comprehensive framework by argumentation theorists who have inherited their evaluative perspectives from the ancient Greeks. It concludes that these theorists’ basic evaluative perspectives do not align with another one which takes an argument as product, procedure, and process. A useful set of methods for studying different conceptions of cogency in science studies can be obtained after making the required modifications in the perspectivist framework.