Speaking to New Scientific Communities: Indirect Values in Scientific Argument and Josiah Willard Gibbs’ Simplicity and Coherence
Speaking to New Scientific Communities: Indirect Values in Scientific Argument and Josiah Willard Gibbs’ Simplicity and Coherence

Summary/Abstract: Scholars in the rhetoric of science have called for more attention to the contexts of scientific writing to better understand rhetors and audiences (Ceccarelli 2001; Fahnestock 2009). This approach is useful for analyzing the writing of 19th-century American scientists and their audiences because of then common undergraduate courses in rhetoric, which college-educated individuals would have had as a shared educational experience. Noted for devising a system to determine phase change states in matter, Josiah Willard Gibbs was considered to be a singular intellect in the 19th-century. His prose was criticized for being difficult to read, but he often referred to “simplicity” in his papers, suggesting that issues of presentation were a primary concern for him. This article contextualizes Gibbs’ scientific arguments within the rhetorical concepts operating in the 19th-century and taught in the college courses of the time. Indirect values are utilized in scientific rhetoric and help to develop an understanding of potential connections between rhetorical education and scientific argument.

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