The Rhetoric of Science
The Rhetoric of Science
Scholarship is a form of rhetoric. The principal products of research are written documents and spoken presentations.
Most of the books sold in bookstores are classified as fiction. Fiction writers tell us that they make up their stories; the stories they write are products of their imaginations. Other materials are sold under the category non-fiction and this includes scholarship of all sorts, including science. On what basis can anyone make a distinction between fiction and non-fiction?
If you pick up a copy of a professional journal, such as the Journal of Experimental Biology, what evidence do you have that the articles it contains are not also works of fiction? How do we know that the authors haven’t simply made it all up? On what basis would one ever be justified in thinking that an article in JEB is more believable or credible than (say) a chapter in the Anthology of Science Fiction and Fantasy?
All researchers are story-tellers of a certain sort. All knowledge claims (scientia) are narratives. Science is a form of story-telling, a form of rhetoric. But that doesn’t mean that science doesn’t have special properties as a narrative form.
Suppose you wanted to tell a really good story. What makes a story truly captivating? Not all stories are equally compelling, and if we aim to be good story tellers, it is helpful to understand what makes some stories really grab the human mind. It is helpful to know something about different forms of rhetoric.
Prophecy
In 1494, Christopher Columbus embarked on his second voyage to the Americas. On May 5th of that year he landed on the island now known as Jamaica. He told the local native Jamaicans that in two days time, the moon would rise up and swallow the sun — plunging the midday into darkness. (In short, he predicted a solar eclipse.) When the eclipse did in fact take place, the native Jamaicans were dumbstruck: they were deeply impressed by Columbus’ apparent prophetic abilities.
There are only three way to account for the accuracy of any prediction. Either:
- The person has some sort of direct communication channel to God.
- The person’s prediction was just darn lucky. Or
- The person is in possession of a useful theory of the natural or social world that makes it possible to produce such predictions with a high likelihood of success.
Throughout history, the most powerful form of rhetoric has been prophecy. People have been most impressed, when someone made a prediction that was then borne-out. In most of the world’s religions, prophetic texts are among the most revered documents.
Of course, some predictions are more impressive than others. Suppose I predicted that tomorrow it will rain in Seattle. I doubt anyone would be impressed if it did, in fact, rain (even if the official weather forecast didn’t call for precipitation). The reason why this prediction would be less impressive is that there is a high probability of simply guessing correctly. That is, it is much more likely that my accurate prediction was “just darn lucky” in the case of predicting rain in Seattle compared with Christopher Columbus correctly predicting a solar eclipse.
So why might people respect or even revere science more than (say) novels or poetry? The answer lies in the mind’s disposition to be impressed by prophecy. Science provides compelling stories because it relies on the rhetorical power of prophecy. Its persuasive power lies in improbable predictions. Christopher Columbus could have told the Jamaicans a story about how, in the past, he had seen “the moon swallow the sun.” They might have thought this story was interesting and entertaining. But instead, Columbus told them a story about the future — a story that (improbably) came to pass. A future-tense story is much more impressive than a past-tense story. Yes: science is a form of narrative story-telling, but it commands special interest and respect, because it draws on the most powerful of all known rhetorical devices.
Our second slogan reminds us that science is a form of rhetoric, and that it’s rhetorical strength comes from making predictions:
Slogan: The rhetoric of science is the rhetoric of prophecy.
Prediction vs. Explanation
A common view is that science is an explanatory discipline; science aims to help us understand phenomena. This is only partially correct; it misses the main point. There are many other human activities that provide explanations for phenomena. History explains past events. Aesthetics explains art. Religion explains the meaning of life. Poetry explains the human heart. In each of these cases, people may draw great satisfaction from the explanations offered. Who is to say which explanations are True in any ultimate sense?
The key difference between science and most other intellectual activities is not explanation but prediction. Scientific explanations are used to make predictions; when the predictions derived from these accounts are borne-out, people tend to ascribe greater credence to the originating explanation. It is prediction that is key. Science is a community of scholars who hold each other to a methodological commitment to making and testing predictions.
We will never know for certain whether any scientific explanation is True. What makes scientific narratives compelling to human minds is not their truth value, but their prophetic value. When people say that science is just another form of story-telling, the implication is that it is no different than other forms of story-telling. However, some forms of story-telling are more compelling than others. Science is perhaps the most engaging form of story-telling human minds have yet discovered.