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Rhetoric of science is a body of scholarly literature exploring the notion that the practice of science is a rhetorical activity. It emerged after a number of similarly oriented topics of research and discussion during the late 20th century, including the sociology of scientific knowledge, history of science, and philosophy of science, but it is practiced most typically by rhetoricians in academic departments of English, speech, and communication.

Rhetoric is best known as a discipline that studies the means and ends (i. e., methods and goals) of persuasion. Science, meanwhile, is typically considered to be the discovery and recording of knowledge about nature. A major contention of the rhetoric of science is that the practice of science itself is, to varying degrees, persuasive. The study of science from the viewpoint of rhetoric variously examines modes of inquiry, logic, argumentation, the ethos of scientific practitioners, the structures of scientific publications, and the character of scientific discourse and debates. For instance, scientists must convince their community of scientists that their research is based on sound scientific method. In terms of rhetoric, the scientific method involves problem solution topoi (the materials of discourse) that demonstrate observational and experimental competence (arrangement or order of discourse or method), and as a means of persuasion, offer explanatory and predictive power. Experimental competence is itself a persuasive topos. Carolyn Miller has emphasized genres within technology and the influence of technology on genre change. Jeanne Fahnestock has identified the use of classical rhetoric in scientific reasoning and argument. Greg Myers has studied how scientific publications, grants, and other scientific texts are the result of social processes and the pragmatics of politeness in scientific discussions. Charles Bazerman's examination of the evolution of the varieties of writing characterized as experimental report through the first century and a half of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, the formation of social roles and norms concerning the publication of this journal, the Physical Review since its founding in 1893, and the evolution of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, along with scrutiny of works by Newton and Compton, and an analysis of the reading habits of physicists indicate the many social, organizational, ideological, political, theoretical, methodological, evidentiary, intertextual and intellectual factors that have influenced the character of writing and rhetoric. Bazerman's work has built upon these studies to consider the way knowledge is methodically produced and communicatively circulated in various activity systems. His work follows the lead of Ludwik Fleck on Thought Collectives and thought styles, structuration theory and phenomenology. Other rhetoricians consider the rhetoric of science effectively beginning with Thomas Kuhn'sThe Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). Kuhn first examines "normal" science, that is, practices which he considered routine, patterned and accessible with a specific method of problem solving. Normal science advances by building on past knowledge, through the accretion of further discoveries in a knowledge base. That is to say, Kuhn sought first to understand the traditions and established practices of science. The critical work of Herbert W. Simons – "Are Scientists Rhetors in Disguise?" in Rhetoric in Transition (1980) – and subsequent works show that Kuhn's Structure is fully rhetorical. The work of Thomas Kuhn was extended by Richard Rorty (1979, 1989), and this work was to prove fruitful in defining the means and ends of rhetoric in scientific discourse (Jasinski "Intro" xvi). Rorty, who invented the phrase "rhetorical turn", was also interested in assessing periods of scientific stability and instability. Another component of the shift in science that occurred during the past concerns the claim that there is no single scientific method, but rather a plurality of methods or styles. (Newton, Descartes, argument fields in optics), John Angus Campbell (Darwin), and Michael Halloran (Watson and Crick). J. C. Maxwell introduced differentiable vector fields E and B to express Michael Faraday's findings about an electric field E and a magnetic field B. Thomas K. Simpson has described his rhetorical methods, first with a guided study, then a literary appreciation of A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (1873), and with a book attending to the mathematical rhetoric. Other major themes in rhetoric of science include the investigation of the accomplishments and suasive abilities of individuals (ethos) who have become influential in their respective sciences as well as an age old concern of rhetoric of science – public science policy. Science policy involves deliberative issues, and the first rhetorical study of science policy was made in 1953 by Richard M. Weaver. Among others, Helen Longino's work on public policy implications of low level radiation continues this tradition. The reconstitution of rhetorical theory around the lines of invention (inventio), argumentation and stylistic adaptation is occurring currently (Simons 6). The major question is whether training in rhetoric can in fact help scholars and investigators make intelligent choices between rival theories, methods or data collection, and incommensurate values (Simons 14). Rhetoric of science is also an important theoretical body for rhetoric and composition studies in higher education. This body of work examines how to best prepare communicators for participation with science, such as in the work of Michael Zerbe, Carl Herndl, and Caroline Gottschalk Druschke. Through rhetorical historiography Madison Jones seeks to unearth the influence of other disciplines, such as ecology, on the ways contemporary rhetoricians theorize and define rhetorical inquiry. Interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary collaboration in science also complicates rhetoric and composition pedagogy and provides a new emphasis on collaborative writing across scientific disciplines and with community groups and stakeholds.

Considering science fin terms of texts exhibiting epistemology based on prediction and control offers new comprehensive ways to consider the function of rhetoric of science (Gross "The Origin" 91–92). Epistemic rhetoric of science, in a broader context, confronts issues pertaining to truth, relativism, and knowledge. Rhetoric of science, as a type of inquiry, does not consider natural science texts as a means of conveying knowledge, but rather it considers these texts as exhibiting persuasive structures. Although the natural sciences and humanities differ in a fundamental manner, the enterprise of science can be considered hermeneutically as a stream of texts which exhibit an epistemology based on understanding (Gross "On the Shoulders 21). Its task then is the rhetorical reconstruction of the means by which scientists convince themselves and others that their knowledge claims and assertions are an integral part of privileged activity of the community of thinkers with which they are allied (Gross "The Origin" 91). In an article titled "On Viewing Rhetoric as Epistemic" (1967), Robert L. Scott offers "that truth can arise only from cooperative critical inquiry" (Harris "Knowing" 164). Scott's probe of the issues of belief, knowledge and argumentation substantiates that rhetoric is epistemic. This train of thought goes back to Gorgias who noted that truth is a product of discourse, not a substance added to it (Harris "Knowing" 164). Scientific discourse is built on accountability of empirical fact which is presented to a scientific community. Each form of communication is a type of genre that fosters human interaction and relations. An example is the emerging form of the experimental report (Bazerman "Reporting" 171–176). The suite of genres to which the rhetoric of science comes to bear on health care and scientific communities is legion. Aristotle could never accept the unavailability of certain knowledge, although most now believe the contrary (Gross "On Shoulders" 20). That is to say, Aristotle would have rejected the main concern of rhetoric of science: knowledge. Kuhn's work attempts to show that incommensurable paradigms can be rationally compared by revealing the compatibility of attribute lists of say a species outlined in a pre Darwinian and a post Darwinian milieu accounted for in two incommensurable taxonomies, and that this compatibility is the platform for rational comparison between rival taxonomies. Kuhn's work was influential for rhetoricians, sociologists, and historians (and, in a lesser manner, philosophers) for the development of a rhetorical perspective. His opinion concerning perception, concept acquisition and language suggest, according to Paul Hoyningen Huene's analysis of Kuhn's philosophy, a cognitive perspective. argues that, when rhetoric is understood this way, it can be discussed whether the way scientists interact e. g., through certain scientific institutions like peer review causes them to make their claims in an efficient or an inefficient way, that is, whether the 'rhetorical games' are more analogous to invisible hand processes, or to prisoner's dilemma games. If the former is the case, then we can assert that scientific 'conversation' is organised in such a manner that the strategic use of language by scientists causes them to attain cognitive progress, and if the opposite is the case, then this would be an argument to reform scientific institutions.

Corresponding to distinct lines of reasoning, figures of speech are evident in scientific arguments. The same cognitive and verbal skills that are of service to one line of inquiry – political, economic or popular – are of service to science (Fahnestock 43). This implies that there is less of a division between science and the humanities than anticipated initially. Argumentatively useful figures of speech are found everywhere in scientific writing. Theodosius Dobzhansky in Genetics and the Origin of Species offers a means of reconciliation between Mendelian mutation and Darwinian natural selection. By remaining sensitive to the interests of naturalists and geneticists, Dobzhansky – through a subtle strategy of polysemy – allowed a peaceful solution to a battle between two scientific territories. His expressed objective was to review the genetic information bearing on the problem of organic diversity. The building blocks of Dobzhansky's interdisciplinary influence that included much development in two scientific camps were the result of the compositional choices he made. He uses, for instance, prolepsis to make arguments that introduced his research findings, and he provided a metaphoric map as a means to guide his audience. This new topic of inquiry investigates the role of rhetoric and discourse as an integral part of the Materialism of scientific practice. This method considers how the methods of natural sciences came into being, and the particular role interaction among scientists and scientific institutions has to play. New materialist rhetoric of science include those proponents who consider the progress of the natural sciences as having been obtained at a high cost, a cost that limits the scope and vision of science. Work in this area often draws on scholarship by Bruno Latour, Steve Woolgar, Annemarie Mol, and other new materialist scholars from science and technology studies. Work in new materialist rhetoric of science tends to be very critical of a perceived over reliance on language in more conservative variants of rhetoric of science and has significantly criticized long standing areas of inquiry such as incommensurability studies.

Renewed interest today in rhetoric of science is its positioning as a hermeneutic meta discourse rather than a substantive discourse practice. In his analysis of this 'case', Gaonkar looks at rhetoric's essential character first in traditional sense (Aristotilean and Ciceronian). Then he examined at the practice of rhetoric and the model of persuasive speech from the point of agency (productive orientation) or who controls the speech (means of communication). The rhetorical tradition is one of practice, while the theory evinces practice and teaching (Gross "Intro" Rhetorical 6–11). Gaonkar asserts that rhetoric considered as a tradition (Aristotilean and Ciceronia), and from the point of view of interpretation (not production or agency), rhetorical theory is "thin." He argues that rhetoric appears as a slightly disguised language of criticism in such a way that it is applicable to almost any discourse. However, the new materialist approach, itself, has been subjected to significant criticism within the field, and identified as a radical variant. The question as to the adequacy of rhetoric in its encounter with scientific texts (natural sciences) is problematic for two reasons. The first concerns traditional rhetoric and its capacity to analyze scientific texts. Secondly, the answer to the question relies on an attack of the epistomological presuppositions of a classical rhetoric of science. For this reason, the radical critique is a demand for the renewal of rhetorical theory.

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