ABOUT THIS BOOK

Starring the Text: The Place of Rhetoric in Science Studies firmly establishes the rhetorical analysis of science as a respected field of study. Alan G. Gross, one of rhetoric’s foremost authorities, summarizes the state of the field and demonstrates the role of rhetorical analysis in the sciences. He documents the limits of such analyses with examples from biology and physics, explores their range of application, and sheds light on the tangled relationships between science and society. In this deep revision of his important Rhetoric of Science, Gross examines how rhetorical analyses have a wide range of application, effectively exploring the generation, spread, certification, and closure that characterize scientific knowledge. Gross anchors his position in philosophical rather than in rhetorical arguments and maintains there is rhetorical criticism from which the sciences cannot be excluded.

Gross employs a variety of case studies and examples to assess the limits of the rhetorical analysis of science. For example, in examining avian taxonomy, he demonstrates that both taxonomical and evolutionary species are the product of rhetorical interactions. A review of Newton’s two formulations of optical research illustrates that their only significant difference is rhetorical, a difference in patterns of style, arrangement, and argument. Gross also explores the range of rhetorical analysis in his consideration of the “evolution of evolution” of Darwin’s notebooks. In his analysis of science and society, he explains the limits of citizen action in executive, judicial, and legislative democratic realms in the struggle to prevent, ameliorate, and provide adequate compensation for occupational disease. By using philosophical, historical, and psychological perspectives, Gross concludes, rhetorical analysis can also supplement other viewpoints in resolving intellectual problems.

Starring the Text, which includes fourteen illustrations, is an updated, readable study geared to rhetoricians, historians, philosophers, and sociologists interested in science. The volume effectively demonstrates that the rhetoric of science is a natural extension of rhetorical theory and criticism.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Alan G. Gross is a professor of rhetoric at the University of Minnesota. He is coeditor of Rereading Aristotle’s Rhetoric, published by Southern Illinois University Press, the author of The Rhetoric of Science, and coauthor of Communicating Science: From the 17th Century to the Present, and Chaim Perelman.

REVIEWS

“Starring the Text brings the gravamen of Alan Gross’s rhetoric of science project to its sharpest resolution. The strong case Gross makes for the distinctive contribution of the rhetoric of science to understanding science and the clear yet complementary differentiation in function it makes between rhetorical and sociological interpretations is convincing and elegantly perspicuous.”—John Angus Campbell, University of Memphis

“Informative and illuminating, Starring the Text adds impressive new research in primary sources. Alan Gross effectively frames challenging points and offers an economical exposition of the background science needed to understand the volume’s cases and theories. He demonstrates superior scholarship throughout, exemplified by his deftness at using rhetorical theory from Aristotle in antiquity to Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca in the twentieth century.”—Jeanne Fahnestock, author of Figures of Argument: Studies in the Rhetoric of Science

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

 Contents
 Preface 000
 Part One: The Case for the Rhetorical Analysis of Science 000
 1. The Achievements of Rhetoric of Science 000
 2. The Justification of Rhetoric of Science 000
 3. The Kind of Rhetoric Science Is 000
 Part Two. The Limits of the Rhetorical Analysis of Science 000
 4. The Possibility of a Complete Rhetorical Description of
 Science: Taxonomy as Example 000
 5. The Possibility of a Complete Rhetorical Description of
 Scientific Change: Newton's Opticks as Example 000
 Part Three. The Range of the Rhetorical Analysis of Science 000
 6. The Generation of Scientific Knowledge: The Evolution of
 Evolution in Darwin's Notebooks 000
 7. The Initial Certification of Scientific Knowledge: Peer Review
 as the Institutionalization of Consensus 000
 8. The Spread of Scientific Knowledge: The Initial Acceptance of
 Heliocentricity 000
 9. The Incorporation of Claims into Practice: Closure in Science
 and Its Philosophy 000
 10. Science and Society: Curing Occupational Medicine 000
 Part Four. Science Studies: Where Rhetoric Fits In 000
 11. Compatible Insights Between Sociology and Rhetoric: Priority
 as a Social Norm 000
 12. Complementary Insights among the Disciplines: The Example of
 Incommensurability 000
 Bibliography 000
 Index 000