Some Cautionary Strictures on the Writing of the Rhetoric of Science

Abstract

he prohferation of papers, programs, and now a journal issue dedicated to the rhetoric of is eloquent testimony to the vitality of what may be called the turn.' The fact that the present writers, working respectively from within a department of Communications and a department of the History and PhUosophy of Science, have for some time been laying the ground work for a joint program in the Rhetoric of Science is evidence of the extent to which they subscribe to the intellectual currents which motivate the rhetorical turn. Nevertheless, the peculiar nature of science itself, the practice thereof, and even its rendition as text, compel us to offer some cautionary strictures against the too easy assumption that scientific texts are as susceptible to rhetorical analysis as are texts in other disciplines. We are aware, of course, that such cautions go somewhat against the tide of opinion, both of some other writers in the present issue of Rhetorica, and increasingly in the humanistic disciplines generally. Lest we be suspected of a hankering for the restoration of an unfashionable and discredited scientism, we offer a caveat and a concession. First, the strictures referred to here are directed at rhetorical