Thesis (Ph. D.)--Syracuse University, 2009. / "Publication number: AAT 3385836."

Thesis (Ph.D.)--McMaster University, 2003. / Advisor: Joseph Adamson. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 243-258). Also available via World Wide Web.

This dissertation explores how aesthetic claims in scientific arguments help construct scientific ethos through demonstrations of the rhetor's judgment. By examining the works of Josiah Willard Gibbs and Henry Rowland, two prominent nineteenth-century American scientists, through the lens of their formal rhetorical training as students in American universities, this dissertation investigates how aesthetic judgment is enacted in scientific writing and explores the rhetorical history of the terms "simplicity," "brevity," "imagination," and "taste" and their use in scientific arguments. The aesthetic judgment that both scientists demonstrate in their written work reinforced an understanding of scientific ethos. By placing nineteenth-century scientific writing in contact with the rhetorical theories of the time, this dissertation explores the history of aesthetic judgment in rhetoric and its influence on conceptualizations of the faculty of taste. The dissertation illuminates the connections between rhetorical training and the ability to perform appropriate judgment when creating a reliable scientific ethos in writing. Constructing a scientific ethos in writing became increasingly important and complicated during the time of great institutional change in scientific research, which occurred during the second half of the nineteenth century in America. Scientists constructed scientific ethos through demonstrations of aesthetic judgment in order to respond to the exigencies of both institutional pressures and disciplinary expectations. / English

Revision of Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Florida, 1974. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [111]-114) and index.

The purpose of this study was to observe and analyze the process of regional climate adaptation planning and the role of stakeholder deliberation in decision making about adaptation actions. It employed a case study approach based on one of three total study sites of an international, multidisciplinary grant titled, “METROPOLE: An Integrated Framework to Analyze Local Decision Making and Adaptive Capacity to Large-Scale Environmental Change”. The purpose of the case study of this project was to analyze stakeholder deliberation at two workshops at the grant’s Broward County, Florida site regarding two adaptation options: elevation/floodproofing and voluntary buyouts. Analyzing stakeholder deliberation about these two options allowed for the identification of specific barriers to adaptation for stakeholders in this region. These barriers were then used to suggest values regarding adaptation priorities and planning. The primary idea driving this project was that deliberation provides a pragmatic approach to determining stakeholder values and preferences – which ought to be used to inform planning and decision making about climate policy. The ultimate goal of this project was to demonstrate how the rhetorical concepts of situated judgment, persuasion, and deliberation can be applied in adaptation planning processes and therefore, how applied rhetoric contributes to the production of “usable” science, or science that takes decision makers’ preferences and needs into account when making policy decisions. The problem that this project responds to involves three interrelated parts: framing, communication, and policymaking. Currently, climate change framing in the US is largely characterized by “debate” and emphasizes only one aspect of the climate change problem: cause. The second part of the problem pertains to communication and in particular, the way in which scientific and economic data about climate change/adaptation is typically delivered to non-scientific audiences. The third part of the problem as it is addressed in this project pertains to policymaking, or what enables or prevents progress toward effective policymaking. Data collected for this project include: surveys, 10 in-depth interviews, and field notes. The first layer of analysis was facilitated through Decision Explorer, a qualitative software commonly used in strategic management and decision sciences. For this project, Decision Explorer was used to cognitively map and analyze data from the 10 in-depth interviews. The second layer of analysis used NVivo, a qualitative coding software, to organize and code data collected from all sources. The findings of this project concluded that for stakeholders in this region, the four primary barriers to adaptation were: leadership, resources, invisibility/timing, and the limitations of modeling processes. Stakeholders’ primary values about climate adaptation reflected their strong sense of place attachment. These values were expressed in terms of altruistic values, or concerns about how the local implications of climate may affect humans (e.g., how vulnerably located critical infrastructure and weakening transportation infrastructure will affect citizens’ safety and community resilience) and “scientific” values, such as the inclusion of regional scientific factors in climate modeling and adaptation planning. One of the most significant contributions of this project was the development of an approach that leverages the application of rhetorical concepts in science policy planning/decision making. This unique strategy embedded the rhetorical components of deliberation, situated judgment, phronesis and persuasion within the three framing tasks of collective action framing (i.e., diagnostic, prognostic and motivational framing) to illustrate a unique approach for engaging stakeholders in adaptation planning. More broadly, this project responded to calls for social science research to provide useful recommendations about how to facilitate more effective stakeholder engagement and communication about climate adaptation planning and policy.

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The Human Genome Project (HGP), the name given to the scientific program to map and decode all of human genetic material, has been projected to revolutionize the conduct of biological science in the twenty-first century. For several years before its formation in 1990, a federally-funded, systematic study of the human genome was discussed first in the scientific arena and then in the public arena. The central thesis of this dissertation is that the arguments supporting or rejecting creation of the HGP and the rhetorical devices used to further those arguments had a major influence on the shape the HGP took in 1991. The argumentation used both for and against the creation of the HGP before the public as well as on the border between the public and scientific arenas is studied. The rhetorical devices such as metaphor, narrative, and selective word choices used to further these arguments are also examined. In particular, a rhetorical content analysis was performed on the 1986-1991 argumentation available to the most crucial audience for such persuasion: the members of Congress who ultimately voted for or against the program's funding and its establishment as a part of U.S. science policy. The proponents of the HGP, especially after the first year of public debate, presented their arguments in a wider arena of discussion and presented more and more varied arguments to advocate the project. The opposition raised questions that had for the most part been answered earlier in the debate. Often anti-HGP arguments focused on less effective audiences (scientists instead of members of Congress). Opposition to the project didn't become organized until near the end of the time frame studied, too late to have much of an impact on the outcome of the debate. The rhetorical devices studied served to magnify the impact of arguments used: in particular, the metaphor served as a boundary object to bridge discussions between the scientific and the public arenas. Ultimately the victory in the debate over the establishment of the HGP was awarded to the promulgators of the strongest underlying metaphor--the idealized excitement and profit of exploration of unknown territory--and the benefits to come from filling in and conquering the unknown areas of the human genetic map, territory the U.S. was eager to claim for its own. / Ph. D.

Jean de Meun's continuation of the Roman de la rose (The Romance of the Rose), written in Paris in the 1270s, presents a vast amount of philosophy and natural science in vernacular poetry, while engaging thoroughly with contemporary, local philosophical and institutional debates. Taking this into consideration, this study investigates how the Rose depends for its meaning on questions around human nature, natural philosophy, and the philosophy of language that were being discussed and debated in the University of Paris at the time of its composition. It suggests a reading of the poem as a work of philosophy that uses Aristotelian ideas of nature and what is natural to present a moral framework – at times explicitly, at times implicitly – within which to assess and critique human behaviour. The concepts of the unnatural and the artificial are used to discuss sin and its effects on sexuality – a key concern of the Rose – and on language. The Rose is shown to present itself as artificial and compromised, yet nevertheless capable of leading imperfect and compromised humans to moral behaviour and towards knowledge which can only ever be imperfect. It is read as a presenting a rhetorical kind of philosophy that is sui generis and that appeals to human desire as well as to the intellect. The specific issue of usury and its relation to avarice is examined, studying contemporary theological and philosophical treatments of the question, in order to illustrate similarities and contrasts in the Rose's theoretical methodology to more orthodox modes of philosophical enquiry. Finally, the poem's valorisation of pleasure and of the perversity inherent in artificial productions is explored to show how poetry, though deviating from the strictures of dialectical language, is nevertheless productive and generative.