Thesis ID: CBB001560527

Demonstrating Scientific Taste: Aesthetic Judgment, Scientific Ethos, and Nineteenth-Century American Science (2012)

unapi

Cutrufello, Gabriel J. (Author)


Temple University
Wells, Susan


Publication Date: 2012
Edition Details: Advisor: Wells, Susan
Physical Details: 239 pp.
Language: English

This dissertation explores how aesthetic claims in scientific arguments help construct scientific ethos through demonstrations of the rhetor's judgment. By examining the works of Josiah Willard Gibbs and Henry Rowland, two prominent nineteenth-century American scientists, through the lens of their formal rhetorical training as students in American universities, this dissertation investigates how aesthetic judgment is enacted in scientific writing and explores the rhetorical history of the terms "simplicity," "brevity," "imagination," and "taste" and their use in scientific arguments. The aesthetic judgment that both scientists demonstrate in their written work reinforced an understanding of scientific ethos. By placing nineteenth-century scientific writing in contact with the rhetorical theories of the time, this dissertation explores the history of aesthetic judgment in rhetoric and its influence on conceptualizations of the faculty of taste. The dissertation illuminates the connections between rhetorical training and the ability to perform appropriate judgment when creating a reliable scientific ethos in writing. Constructing a scientific ethos in writing became increasingly important and complicated during the time of great institutional change in scientific research, which occurred during the second half of the nineteenth century in America. Scientists constructed scientific ethos through demonstrations of aesthetic judgment in order to respond to the exigencies of both institutional pressures and disciplinary expectations.

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Description Surveys the works of Josiah Willard Gibbs and Henry Rowland, focusing on the rhetorical history of the terms “simplicity,” “brevity,” “imagination,” and “taste” and their use in scientific arguments. Cited in ProQuest Diss. & Thes. (2012). ProQuest Doc. ID 1095389043.


Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001560527/

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Authors & Contributors
Ayala, Francisco José
Barahona, Ana Echeverría
Cachón, Vladimir
Craciun, Adriana
Doyle, Richard M.
Dumin, Lauara Marie
Journals
Configurations: A Journal of Literature, Science, and Technology
Interdisciplinary Science Reviews
British Journal for the History of Science
East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal
Eighteenth-Century Studies
History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences
Publishers
Brown University
Oklahoma State University
Duke University Press
Harvard University Press
Parlor Press
University of South Carolina Press
Concepts
Rhetoric in scientific discourse
Linguistic or semantic analysis
Metaphors; analogies
Communication of scientific ideas
Translations
Science and religion
People
Keller, Evelyn Fox
Chambers, Robert
Eldredge, Niles
Gould, Stephen Jay
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Navier, Claude Louis Marie Henri
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, late
21st century
17th century
18th century
20th century
Places
United States
China
Institutions
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (United States)
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