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The lack of attention to the problem of rhetoric, or the simple dichotomy between science and rhetoric, induces a tendency to perceive rhetoric as “merely” rhetorical and to understand scientific truth in terms of a rather blind rhetoric of anti-rhetoric. This tendency, which defines science as the adversary or antithesis of rhetoric, has often been conjoined with a defense of a “plain style” that attempts or pretends to be entirely transparent to its object. It is not uncommon to observe that the anti-rhetoric of plain style or, more elaborately, of “scientificity” is itself a self-denying quest for a certain rhetoric, a rhetoric unadorned by figures, unmoved by emotion, unclouded by images, and universalistic in its conceptual or mathematical scope. (en) |
