ABSTRACT
Rhetoric of inquiry is a transdisciplinary perspective that understands all scholarly communication as rhetorical; it is, as the editors say in their introduction, “comparative epistemology”. There are at least two types of arguments against expanding rhetoric as the Wisconsin series proposes, and both are related to issues in the history of rhetoric. First is an essentialist argument, or argument from definition. The second type of argument is from circumstance. The Wisconsin series on the rhetoric of the human sciences provides material for exploring these issues concerning the relationship between science, rhetoric, and versions of history. Since rhetoric of inquiry is supposed to “encompass the interdependence of inquiry and communication” it would seem able to include disciplines outside the “human sciences,” like mathematics, and the biological and physical sciences. The rhetoric of inquiry project requires treating the discourse of scholarship as an analogue or extension of public discourse.
