Alan G Gross
Biographic Data
| ID | 5595305 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alan G Gross |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alan G |
| FAMILY NAME | Gross |
| SIGNATURE | GROSS A G |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Minnesota |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 16 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1983 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
The Viability of the Rhetorical Tradition
Rhetorical Style
Cara A. Finnegan, EditorJeanne Fahnestock, Rhetorical Style: The Uses of Language in Persuasion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 464 pp. $99.00 (cloth), $39.95 (paper). Twelve years have pa
A Model for the Division of Semiotic Labor in Scientific Argument
Argument A growing cross-disciplinary literature has acknowledged the importance of verbal-visual interaction in the creation and communication of scientific texts. I contend that the proper understanding of these texts must flow from a hermeneutic model that takes verbal-visual interaction seriously, one that is firmly grounded in cognitive constraints and affordances. The model I propose has two modules, one for perception, derived from Gestalt…
Starring the Text
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 r…
The Verbal and the Visual in Science
ArgumentHeidegger's philosophy of science is notable for the prominence it gives to visuals and visualization. This is because for Heidegger, truth - including scientific truth - is the consequence of unconcealment, the lifting of a veil. But as scientific truth is a special kind, its visualization is also special: scientific truth reveals itself to us as, in Heidegger's words, "a calculable nexus of forces." This nexus unconceals itself largely …
Why Hermagoras Still Matters
This paper attempts to revive an ancient idea, Hermagoras's notion of the staseis, emphasizing especially his fourth stasis, that of jurisdiction, which, I contend, is crucial when it comes to answering a class of interesting questions that can be properly addressed only by first addressing the question of intellectual jurisdiction. This class concerns what Thomas Kuhn calls "paradigm change"; in all of these cases, I would contend, four discipli…
Communicating Science
This book describes the development of the scientific article from its modest beginnings to the global phenomenon that it has become today. Their analysis of a large sample of texts in French, English, and German focuses on the changes in the style, oganization, and argumentative structure of scientific communication over time. They also speculate on the future currency of the scientific article, as it enters the era of the World Wide Web. This b…
Rhetorical studies as reduction or redescription? A response to Cherwitz and Hikins
En novembre 2000, Cherwitz et Hikins proposait une critique de l'integrite intellectuelle des principales lignes de recherches en rhetorique contemporaine, qualifiant l'attitude des chercheurs de provinciale. Les As. proposent une reponse a cette critique, insistant sur l'ambiguite des termes utilises et non expliques par Cherwitz et Hikins, et tentent de determiner si la pratique de la recherche en rhetorique se definit comme une redescription o…
Scientific Discourse in Sociohistorical Context
Argument and 17th-Century Science
This paper compares the argumentative practices of the English and French scientific communities from the origin of the scientific journal in 1665 up to 1700. To that end, we ask a uniform set of questions related to argumentative practice in a large sample of articles randomly drawn from the three pre-eminent scientific journals of this period: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Journal des Sçavans and Mémoires de l'Acadé…
The Science Wars and the Ethics of Book Reviewing
Douglas Walton, The Appeal to Pity
Preview this article: Douglas Walton, The Appeal to Pity: Argumentum ad Misericordiam, Page 1 of 1 /docserver/preview/fulltext/pc.7.1.13gro-1.gif
Taking up the challenge
(1999). Taking up the challenge: A response to Simons. Quarterly Journal of Speech: Vol. 85, No. 3, pp. 330-334
A theory of the rhetorical audience
Perelman has a complete and coherent theory of a rhetorical audience as a concept constructed by the speaker. This audience is of two kinds, universal and particular. Universal audiences consist of all rational beings; persuasive discourse addressed to these thematizes facts and truths. Particular audiences consist of one segment or another of humanity: Americans, Republicans, Elks, Medicare recipients; discourse addressed to them thematizes valu…
Do Disputes over Priority Tell Us Anything about Science
The ArgumentConflicts between scientists over credit for their discoveries are conflicts, not merely in, but of science because discovery is not a historical event, but a retrospective social judgment. There is no objective moment of discovery; rather, discovery is established by means of a hermeneutics, a way of reading scientific articles. The priority conflict between Roger Guillemin and Andrew Schally over the discovery of the brain hormone, …
Science. Steve Fuller
Science and Culture
Thales lived in Miletus, a Greek colony, in the seventh century BCE. According to Herodotus, he predicted an eclipse; according to Aristotle, he declared that water was the first principle of all things. Herodotus was almost certainly mistaken, and Aristotle's attribution is not a compliment but a criticism. But to judge these two statements thus is to miss their point. They may or may not be facts about Thales; they are most assuredly facts abou…
A Disorder of Being
Postmodern Culture - Volume 5, Number 2, January 1995
Renewing Aristotelian theory
As practical criticism, this account exhibits the strength and flexibility of science as a rhetorical enterprise. The rhetorical analysis of coldfusion reveals science under considerable stress: the mass media assault science's most cherished social arrangements, while a new experimental result threatens its deepest theories. Yet its rhetorical resources prove more than equal to this challenge. This analysis also contributes to rhetorical theory.…
The roles of rhetoric in the public understanding of science
In the public understanding of science, rhetoric has two distinct roles: it is both a theory capable of analysing public understanding and an activity capable of creating it. In its analytical role, rhetoric reveals two dominant models of public understanding: the deficit model and the contextual model. In the deficit model, rhetoric acts in the minor role of creating public understanding by accommodating the facts and methods of science to publi…
Persuasion and peer review in science
Shaping written knowledge
Rhetoric of science is epistemic rhetoric
On the shoulders of giants
In the seventeenth century, Descartes founded, and Newton revolutionized, modern optics. This story, often told by historians and philosophers of science, can be profitably reconceived in terms of rhetoric. Conceived this way, analyzed this way, the history of optics becomes a‐succession of argument fields, scientific works are disclosed as sets of persuasive structures, and scientific revolutions are revealed as rhetorically constituted: success…
Russia and the West in the Eighteenth Century
Public debates as failed social dramas
This essay exemplifies the usefulness of Victor Turner's concept of social drama in an analysis of the public debate over recombinant DNA research. The analysis encourages a consideration of the various debates about science and technology as possible reenactments of ideological conflict, reenactments which, to society's detriment, continually fail of satisfactory resolution
Argument and 17th-Century Science
This paper compares the argumentative practices of the English and French scientific communities from the origin of the scientific journal in 1665 up to 1700. To that end, we ask a uniform set of questions related to argumentative practice in a large sample of articles randomly drawn from the three pre-eminent scientific journals of this period: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Journal des Sçavans and Mémoires de l'Acadé…
Do Disputes over Priority Tell Us Anything about Science
The ArgumentConflicts between scientists over credit for their discoveries are conflicts, not merely in, but of science because discovery is not a historical event, but a retrospective social judgment. There is no objective moment of discovery; rather, discovery is established by means of a hermeneutics, a way of reading scientific articles. The priority conflict between Roger Guillemin and Andrew Schally over the discovery of the brain hormone, …
On the shoulders of giants
In the seventeenth century, Descartes founded, and Newton revolutionized, modern optics. This story, often told by historians and philosophers of science, can be profitably reconceived in terms of rhetoric. Conceived this way, analyzed this way, the history of optics becomes a‐succession of argument fields, scientific works are disclosed as sets of persuasive structures, and scientific revolutions are revealed as rhetorically constituted: success…
Why Hermagoras Still Matters
This paper attempts to revive an ancient idea, Hermagoras's notion of the staseis, emphasizing especially his fourth stasis, that of jurisdiction, which, I contend, is crucial when it comes to answering a class of interesting questions that can be properly addressed only by first addressing the question of intellectual jurisdiction. This class concerns what Thomas Kuhn calls "paradigm change"; in all of these cases, I would contend, four discipli…
Rhetoric of science is epistemic rhetoric
Analogy and intersubjectivity
The different ways in which analogy is used in political oratory, scholarly argument and scientific reports reflects distinctions in the kinds of intersubjective agreement sought and achieved by these three forms of discourse. Each form has a character and a “truth “ of its own. Nevertheless these “truths” are not all of equal status; they exist in a hierarchy of reliability, a hierarchy in which scientific truth is uppermost
Analogy and intersubjectivity
The different ways in which analogy is used in political oratory, scholarly argument and scientific reports reflects distinctions in the kinds of intersubjective agreement sought and achieved by these three forms of discourse. Each form has a character and a “truth “ of its own. Nevertheless these “truths” are not all of equal status; they exist in a hierarchy of reliability, a hierarchy in which scientific truth is uppermost
Public debates as failed social dramas
This essay exemplifies the usefulness of Victor Turner's concept of social drama in an analysis of the public debate over recombinant DNA research. The analysis encourages a consideration of the various debates about science and technology as possible reenactments of ideological conflict, reenactments which, to society's detriment, continually fail of satisfactory resolution
Russia and the West in the Eighteenth Century
On the shoulders of giants
In the seventeenth century, Descartes founded, and Newton revolutionized, modern optics. This story, often told by historians and philosophers of science, can be profitably reconceived in terms of rhetoric. Conceived this way, analyzed this way, the history of optics becomes a‐succession of argument fields, scientific works are disclosed as sets of persuasive structures, and scientific revolutions are revealed as rhetorically constituted: success…
Persuasion and peer review in science
Shaping written knowledge
Rhetoric of science is epistemic rhetoric
The roles of rhetoric in the public understanding of science
In the public understanding of science, rhetoric has two distinct roles: it is both a theory capable of analysing public understanding and an activity capable of creating it. In its analytical role, rhetoric reveals two dominant models of public understanding: the deficit model and the contextual model. In the deficit model, rhetoric acts in the minor role of creating public understanding by accommodating the facts and methods of science to publi…
Science and Culture
Thales lived in Miletus, a Greek colony, in the seventh century BCE. According to Herodotus, he predicted an eclipse; according to Aristotle, he declared that water was the first principle of all things. Herodotus was almost certainly mistaken, and Aristotle's attribution is not a compliment but a criticism. But to judge these two statements thus is to miss their point. They may or may not be facts about Thales; they are most assuredly facts abou…
A Disorder of Being
Postmodern Culture - Volume 5, Number 2, January 1995
Renewing Aristotelian theory
As practical criticism, this account exhibits the strength and flexibility of science as a rhetorical enterprise. The rhetorical analysis of coldfusion reveals science under considerable stress: the mass media assault science's most cherished social arrangements, while a new experimental result threatens its deepest theories. Yet its rhetorical resources prove more than equal to this challenge. This analysis also contributes to rhetorical theory.…
Do Disputes over Priority Tell Us Anything about Science
The ArgumentConflicts between scientists over credit for their discoveries are conflicts, not merely in, but of science because discovery is not a historical event, but a retrospective social judgment. There is no objective moment of discovery; rather, discovery is established by means of a hermeneutics, a way of reading scientific articles. The priority conflict between Roger Guillemin and Andrew Schally over the discovery of the brain hormone, …
Science. Steve Fuller
Douglas Walton, The Appeal to Pity
Preview this article: Douglas Walton, The Appeal to Pity: Argumentum ad Misericordiam, Page 1 of 1 /docserver/preview/fulltext/pc.7.1.13gro-1.gif
Taking up the challenge
(1999). Taking up the challenge: A response to Simons. Quarterly Journal of Speech: Vol. 85, No. 3, pp. 330-334
A theory of the rhetorical audience
Perelman has a complete and coherent theory of a rhetorical audience as a concept constructed by the speaker. This audience is of two kinds, universal and particular. Universal audiences consist of all rational beings; persuasive discourse addressed to these thematizes facts and truths. Particular audiences consist of one segment or another of humanity: Americans, Republicans, Elks, Medicare recipients; discourse addressed to them thematizes valu…
Argument and 17th-Century Science
This paper compares the argumentative practices of the English and French scientific communities from the origin of the scientific journal in 1665 up to 1700. To that end, we ask a uniform set of questions related to argumentative practice in a large sample of articles randomly drawn from the three pre-eminent scientific journals of this period: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Journal des Sçavans and Mémoires de l'Acadé…
The Science Wars and the Ethics of Book Reviewing
Scientific Discourse in Sociohistorical Context
Communicating Science
This book describes the development of the scientific article from its modest beginnings to the global phenomenon that it has become today. Their analysis of a large sample of texts in French, English, and German focuses on the changes in the style, oganization, and argumentative structure of scientific communication over time. They also speculate on the future currency of the scientific article, as it enters the era of the World Wide Web. This b…
Rhetorical studies as reduction or redescription? A response to Cherwitz and Hikins
En novembre 2000, Cherwitz et Hikins proposait une critique de l'integrite intellectuelle des principales lignes de recherches en rhetorique contemporaine, qualifiant l'attitude des chercheurs de provinciale. Les As. proposent une reponse a cette critique, insistant sur l'ambiguite des termes utilises et non expliques par Cherwitz et Hikins, et tentent de determiner si la pratique de la recherche en rhetorique se definit comme une redescription o…
Why Hermagoras Still Matters
This paper attempts to revive an ancient idea, Hermagoras's notion of the staseis, emphasizing especially his fourth stasis, that of jurisdiction, which, I contend, is crucial when it comes to answering a class of interesting questions that can be properly addressed only by first addressing the question of intellectual jurisdiction. This class concerns what Thomas Kuhn calls "paradigm change"; in all of these cases, I would contend, four discipli…
Starring the Text
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 r…
The Verbal and the Visual in Science
ArgumentHeidegger's philosophy of science is notable for the prominence it gives to visuals and visualization. This is because for Heidegger, truth - including scientific truth - is the consequence of unconcealment, the lifting of a veil. But as scientific truth is a special kind, its visualization is also special: scientific truth reveals itself to us as, in Heidegger's words, "a calculable nexus of forces." This nexus unconceals itself largely …
A Model for the Division of Semiotic Labor in Scientific Argument
Argument A growing cross-disciplinary literature has acknowledged the importance of verbal-visual interaction in the creation and communication of scientific texts. I contend that the proper understanding of these texts must flow from a hermeneutic model that takes verbal-visual interaction seriously, one that is firmly grounded in cognitive constraints and affordances. The model I propose has two modules, one for perception, derived from Gestalt…
Philosophy (24 works) · Sociology (18 works) · Epistemology (17 works) · Political science (14 works) · Linguistics (12 works) · Law (11 works) · Rhetoric (10 works) · Art (7 works) · Literature (7 works) · Psychology (7 works)