Rhetoric of Science

uhn observed that modern science is characterized by the bracketing of major disagreements regarding basic assumptions except during periods of "crisis." While pre-modern inquiry saw the contemporaneous co-existence of fundamentally incompatible frameworks, each competing for adherents, modern science normally excludes such divisions. Instead, modern science is characterized by a succession of frameworks. Only at periods of transition that are temporally bounded, for which Kuhn coined the term "scientific revolutions," does more than one framework have currency within a given sub-specialty (1962, 10-22).

Kuhn's influential work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). Kuhn is often cited by scholars concerned with the discursive strategies by which the natural and social or human sciences justify themselves and their specific claims. Kuhn's legacy is well captured by Nelson, Megill, and McCloskey in the opening essay of The Rhetoric of the Human Sciences (1987) where they link him to Stephen Toulmin and Chaïm Perelman as instigators of the study of the Rhetoric of Inquiry. In their words, Kuhn's landmark classic "challenges philosophy to account for the actual

[Thu 07 May 2009 09:49:12 AM EDT] Hafsa Murad : Hi Andrea, I can hear you loud and clear. [Thu 07 May 2009 09:49:18 AM EDT] Blanche Sanders : Smile, you're on candid camera

Building on the work of science theorists like Thomas Kuhn and Bruno Latour, and genre theorists like Carolyn Miller and Anis Bawarshi this study shows that innovation is inhibited/enhanced through genre and generic communities.