Rhetoric and Incommensurability

Abstract

Edited and Introduced by Randy Allen Harris Rhetoric of Science and Technology Edited by Alan Gross Information and Pricing 978-1-932559-49-1 (paperback, $34); 978-1-932559-50-7 (hardcover, $65); 978-1-932559-51-4 (PDF, $19.99). © 2005 by Parlor Press; 596 pages, with index, notes, and bibliography. Bookstores : Order by fax, mail, or phone. See our "Sales and Ordering Page" for details. About This Book Rhetoric and Incommensurability examines the complex relationships among rhetoric, philosophy, and science as they converge on the question of incommensurability, the notion jointly (though not collaboratively) introduced to science studies in 1962 by Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend. The incommensurability thesis represents the most profound problem facing argumentation and dialogue—in science, surely, but in any symbolic encounter, any attempt to cooperate, find common ground, get along, make better knowledge, and build better societies. This volume brings rhetoric, the chief discipline that studies argumentation and dialogue, to bear on that problem, finding it much more tractable than have most philosophical accounts. Reviews Struan Jacobs, International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 22.1 (2008): 100-103. S. Scott Graham, Rhetoric Society Quarterly 38.2 (March 2008): 229-33. What People Are Saying Harris’s book is especially strong for its reminder to rhetoricians that Kuhn’s notion of the paradigm is not the only source of incommensurability theory. In tracing the history of incommensurability in both Feyerabend and in Kuhn’s evolving theory, Rhetoric and Incommensurability helps to create a productive space of interaction between rhetoric and incommensurability studies more broadly conceived. Although Rhetoric and Incommensurability probably will not be the final word on rhetoric of science and incommensurability studies, it does an excellent job of summing up recent rhetorically based incommensurability scholarship. Finally, it expertly integrates resear