Introduction

I am pleased to announce the debut issue of the Science and Writing area of The Writing Instructor. In this issue are four excellent essays that will, I think, help advance the ever-expanding rhetoric of science field. Some clarifications may be necessary, however, to demonstrate how this area, “Science and Writing,” is actually conceived as a sub-category of study relevant to writing instructors.

Because we can design computers that follow rules when they process information, and because apparently human beings also follow rules when they think, then [some argue that] there is some unitary sense in which the brain and the computer are functioning in a similar—and indeed maybe the same—fashion.

—John Searle

Few contemporary scientific texts are written in the dialogue form used by earlier scientists such as Newton, Galileo and Boyle; additionally, the extended form of dialogue that exists in professional journals is usually not visible to the novice student. Therefore, students often are not actively engaged in the language and rhetoric of science. As Jay Lemke points out in his book Talking Science: Language, Learning, and Values: “Talking science is not the totality of doing science. But very little science gets done, or could get done, without the semantic resources of language, and particularly the thematic patterns and genre structures specific to science.”[1] Exploring the resources of dialogue in scientific argument improves student understanding and skills in both science and language.

Nature writing is perhaps the most American form of writing. It celebrates America’s wilderness and open spaces. It also laments America’s greed and exploitation of the environment. Perhaps most of all, nature writing touches our spirits, inspires us, and summons us.

Stasis theory is a powerful tool for rhetorical analysis, recently under fresh consideration by rhetorical theorists (e.g. Gross) and scholars who identify its utility in the writing classroom (e.g. Carroll). In this study, I apply stasis theory to a paleontological argument involving a controversial fossil, Protoavis texensis. Discourse related to the controversy is examined under the lens of the staseis, and the application of stasis theory to visual components of argumentative texts associated with scientific communication is explored. This paper applies stasis theory to science discourse based on the work of Lawrence Prelli; Frans van Eemeren, Rob Grootendorst, and Francisca Snoeck Henkemans; Mark Turner; Jeanne Fahnestock and Marie Secor; and others.

Science and Rhetoric: A Changing Relationship

Until recently, the notion of a “rhetoric of science” may have sounded oxymoronic.* Traditional conceptions of science as the embodiment of disinterested, objective knowledge of nature, coupled with perceptions of rhetoric as empty verbiage, subterfuge, or stylistic embellishment, made science and rhetoric appear quite incompatible.