Starring the Text: The Place of Rhetoric in Science Studies
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.52610/rhs.v11i41.200Keywords:
Rhetoric, science, rhetorical analysis, communal competitiveness, incommensurability, Newton, Leibniz, Merton, KuhnAbstract
Rhetoric has at least two roles in science studies: as a complement to other branches of science studies and as a supplement to these branches. As an example of a complementary role, I show that a discovery of the renowned sociologist, Robert K. Merton, that of communal competitiveness in the scientific community, realized in contests over priority, can be enriched by a rhetorical analysis of a typical contest, the Newton-Leibniz debate over the discovery of the calculus. As an example of a supplementary role for rhetoric, I show that the problem of the incommensurability of paradigms, first posed by Thomas S. Kuhn, cannot be satisfactorily addressed without recourse to rhetoric analysis. In this latter case, rhetorical analysis serves as both a necessary theoretical framework and a necessary component within that framework. These examples are meant strongly to suggest any study of the workings of science that omits rhetoric is seriously incomplete.
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