ABSTRACT
The rhetorical analysis of science is made plausible by the close connection between science and rhetoric in the ancient world. Whether, after rhetorical analysis is completed, there will be left in scientific texts any constraints not the result of prior persuasion, any “natural” constraints, remains, for the moment, an open question. In a neo-Aristotelian rhetoric of science, the apparatus of classical rhetoric must be generally applicable; a formulation must be developed that is recognizably classical and, at the same time, a theory of the constitution of scientific texts. To practice the rhetoric of science, then, is to make the Rhetoric the master guide to the exegesis of scientific texts. Rhetoric of science differs from literature and science, a branch of study that also “stars” its texts. There is a final stasis applicable to both rhetoric and science: whether a particular court has jurisdiction.
