Abstract

This article reports on a study that examined papers written by graduate students in the Physical Seminary course at Johns Hopkins University (1892–1913) to investigate how students reused various visuals of the interferometer to construct narratives of late-19th-century Ether research. Their representations of the interferometer focused on the mechanics of the devices by constructing a series of textual-visual relationships, requiring that the reader scan back and forth between the written text and the accompanying visual. These multimodal texts demonstrate how the students used writing activities to create a narrative of equipment development, which highlighted the centrality of trained vision in enculturating graduate students into disciplinary writing practices in the late 19th century. Through an analysis of the specific interactions and the network of visuals the students used to reconstruct a history of Ether investigation, scholars of writing and rhetoric can see how important inclusion of equipment and its detailed discussion was to graduate writing and disciplinary enculturation in the sciences.

Journal
Written Communication
Published
2021-01-01
DOI
10.1177/0741088320964265
CompPile
Search in CompPile ↗
Open Access
Closed
Topics
Export

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (1)

  1. Rhetoric Society Quarterly

References (70) · 14 in this index

  1. Applegarth R. (2014). Rhetoric in American anthropology: Gender, genre, and science (1st ed.). University of …
  2. Department of Physics Records, University Archives, Johns Hopkins University
  3. Bazerman C. (1981). What written knowledge does: Three examples of academic discourse. Philosophy of the Soci…
  4. College Composition and Communication
  5. Textual dynamics of the professions: Historical and contemporary studies of writing in pr…
Show all 70 →
  1. Written Communication
  2. Bowen G. M., Roth W. M. (2002). The “socialization” and enculturation of ecologists in formal and informal se…
  3. Buehl J. (2016). Assembling arguments: Multimodal rhetoric and scientific discourse. University of South Caro…
  4. Buiani R. (2014). Innovation and compliance in making and perceiving the scientific visualization of viruses.…
  5. Department of Physics Records, University Archives, Johns Hopkins University
  6. College Composition and Communication
  7. Written Communication
  8. Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  9. Written Communication
  10. Engineering and the mind’s eye
  11. Ways of seeing, ways of speaking: The integration of rhetoric and vision in constructing …
  12. Rhetoric, through everyday things
  13. Florence M. K., Yore L. D. (2004). Learning to write like a scientist: Coauthoring as an enculturation task. …
  14. Fountain T. K. (2014). Rhetoric in the flesh: Trained vision, technical expertise, and the gross anatomy lab.…
  15. Science in Dispute
  16. Image and logic
  17. Golinski J. (2005). Making natural knowledge: Constructivism and the history of science. University of Chicag…
  18. Gooding D. C. (2004). Cognition, construction and culture: Visual theories in the sciences. Journal of Cognit…
  19. Goodwin C. (1994). Professional vision. American Anthropologist, 96(3), 606–633. https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1…
  20. Poroi
  21. Rhetoric Review
  22. Rhetoric Society Quarterly
  23. Gross A. G., Harmon J. E. (2014). Science from sight to insight: How scientists illustrate meaning. Universit…
  24. Pioneer: A history of the Johns Hopkins University
  25. Holton G. (1969). Einstein, Michelson, and the “crucial” experiment. Isis, 60(2), 133–197. https://doi.org/10…
  26. Department of Physics records, University Archives, Johns Hopkins University
  27. Ways of seeing, ways of speaking: The integration of rhetoric and vision in constructing …
  28. Jack J. (2009). A pedagogy of sight: Microscopic vision in Robert Hooke’s Micrographia. Quarterly Journal of …
  29. Johns Hopkins University circulars
  30. Johns Hopkins University circulars
  31. Department of Physics records, University Archives, Johns Hopkins University
  32. Argumentation
  33. 10.4159/9780674039681
  34. Knorr-Cetina K., Amann K. (1990). Image dissection in natural scientific inquiry. Science, Technology, & Huma…
  35. Kong K. (2006). A taxonomy of the discourse relations between words and visuals. Information Design Journal, …
  36. Across the Disciplines
  37. Written Communication
  38. Lave J., Wenger E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press…
  39. Reading science: Critical and functional perspectives on discourses of science
  40. Counterpoints
  41. The idea of the writing laboratory
  42. The master of light: A biography of Albert A. Michelson
  43. Lynch M. (1985). Discipline and the material form of images: An analysis of scientific visibility. Social Stu…
  44. Representation in scientific practice
  45. Lynch M. (2017). Routledge revivals: Art and artifact in laboratory science (1985): A study of shop work and …
  46. Myers N. (2014). Rendering machinic life. In Coopmans C., Vertesi J., Lynch M., Woolgar S. (Eds.), Representa…
  47. Mathematical discourse: Language, symbolism and visual images
  48. Visual cultures of science: Rethinking representational practices in knowledge building a…
  49. Pauwels L. (2008). An integrated model for conceptualising visual competence in scientific research and commu…
  50. Potochnik A. (2017). Idealization and the aims of science. University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.72…
  51. Éléments de physique expérimentale et de météorologie
  52. Prior P., Bilbro R. (2012). Academic enculturation: Developing literate practices and disciplinary identities…
  53. Technical Communication Quarterly
  54. Roe S. M. (2017). The journey from discovery to scientific change: Scientific communities, shared models, and…
  55. Writing in the academic disciplines, 1870–1990: A curricular history
  56. Orphan works: Statement of best practices
  57. The command of light: Rowland’s school of physics and the spectrum
  58. Swenson L. S.Jr. (1972). The ethereal aether: A history of the Michelson-Morley-Miller aether-drift experimen…
  59. Department of Physics Records, University Archives, Johns Hopkins University
  60. Technical Communication Quarterly
  61. The tiger and the shark: Empirical roots of wave-particle dualism
  62. Wilson A. (2017). Science’s imagined pasts. Isis, 108(4), 814–826. https://doi.org/10.1086/695603
  63. 10.1086/501101
  64. Physical optics
  65. Yu H. (2017). Communicating genetics: Visualizations and representations. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org…