Landmark Essays on Rhetoric of Science: Issues and Methods

Book excerpt: Landmark Essays in Rhetoric of Science: Issues and Methods compiles the essential readings of the vibrant field of rhetoric of science, tracing the growth and core concerns of the field since its development in the 1970s. A companion to Randy Allen Harris's foundational Landmark Essays in Rhetoric of Science: Case Studies, this volume includes essays by such luminaries as Carolyn R. Miller, Jeanne Fahnestock, and Alan G. Gross, along with an early prophetic article by Charles Sanders Pierce. Harris's detailed introduction puts the field into its social and intellectual context, and frames the important contributions of each essay, which range from reimagining classical concepts like rhetorical figures and topical invention to Modal Materialism and the Neomodern hybridization of Actor Network Theory with Genre Studies. Race, revolution, and Daoism come up along the way, and the empirical recalcitrance of the moon. This collection serves as a textbook for graduate and advanced undergraduate courses in science studies, and is an invaluable resource for researchers concerned with science not as a special, autonomous, sacrosanct enterprise, but as a set of value-saturated, profoundly influential rhetorical practices.