In this much anticipated revision and translation of Scienza e
Retorica, Marcello Pera argues that rhetoric is central to the making
of scientific knowledge.
Pera begins with an attack of what he calls the Cartesian syndrome--the
fixation on method common to both defenders of traditional philosophy of
science and its detractors. He argues that in assuming the primacy of
methodological rules, both sides get it wrong. Scientific knowledge is
neither the simple mirror of nature nor a cultural construct imposed by
contingent interests, thus we must replace the idea of scientific method
with that of scientific rhetoric.
Pera proposes a new dialectics of science to overcome the tension
between normative and descriptive philosophies of science by focusing on
the rhetoric in the proposition, defense, and argumentation of theories.
Examining the uses of rhetoric in debates drawn from Galileo's
Dialogues, Darwin's Origins, and the Big Bang-Steady State
controversy in cosmology, Pera shows how the conduct of science involves
not just nature and the inquiring mind, but nature, the inquiring mind,
and a questioning community which, through the process of attack,
defense, and dispute, determines what is science. Rhetoric, then, is an
essential element in the constitution of science as the practice of
persuasive argumentation through which results gain acceptance.