SUSAN HAACK
645
WHAT, THEN, MIGHT a reasonable rhetoric of science be?-A very dif–
ferent enterprise, certainly, from John Limon's study of
"The Double
Helix
as Literature," playing with the conceit of Crick and Watson as a
"base pair" and searching the text for evidence of a sexual relationship
between them; or S. Michael Halloran's efforts to show that Crick and
Watson kicked off a revolution in molecular biology because of their
rhetorical daring, using "we" instead of the passive voice, and describ–
ing their structure for DNA as "of considerable biological interest"; or
Alan Gross's suggestion that the idea that there is such a molecule as
DNA is just an illusion created by the words, pictures, and diagrams in
Crick and Watson's papers. A reasonable rhetoric of science, sensitive
to
the differences between different kinds of text, the relativity of style to
purpose and audience, the evolution of scientific language with the
growth of scientific knowledge, and to scientific communication as
pooling of evidence, could make a contribution-a small contribution,
but useful nonetheless-to our understanding of the scientific enter–
pnse.
As articles, presentations, textbooks, etc., aim to communicate
results, the ideal is that the degree of credence given a claim in the rele–
vant sub-community depend on the quality of the evidence it has, for
transmission of information within the community
to
maximize episte–
mological efficiency. Of course, successful transmission of results
depends on the audience as well as on the presenter: think of Niren–
berg's paper on the coding problem, making almost no impression on
the small, sleepy audience at its first reading, but electrifying an audi–
ence of hundreds when Crick arranged for it to be read a second time,
on the last day of the same conference.
There is a real distinction between modes of communication that
promote the epistemically desirable correlation, and those that impede
it, illustrated by the contrast between these scenarios :
(I)
a scientific
claim comes to be accepted within the relevant sub-community
because strong evidence is clearly communicated in a journal article or
conference presentation;
(2)
a scientific claim comes to be accepted in
the absence of good evidence because it is promoted by means of emo–
tive language, snazzy metaphors, or glossy photographs, melodramatic
press conferences, etc. But in practice there is rarely such a clean divi–
sion of cases; and the usual way of drawing the distinction-"mere
rhetoric," on the one hand, versus" logic," on the other-leaves a lot to
be desired.
For example, casting aspersions on one's opponents' competence,
which at first sounds definitely in the epistemically inefficient category,
