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135Persuasion and peer review in science: Habermas's ideal speech situation appliedHistory of the Human Sciences 3 (2): 195-209. 1990.
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116Reinventing Certainty: The Significance of Ian Hacking's RealismPSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1990. 1990.This paper examines Ian Hacking's arguments in favor of entity realism. It shows that his examples from science do not support his realism. Furthermore, his proposed criterion of experimental use is neither sufficient nor necessary for conferring a privileged status on his preferred unobservables. Nonetheless his insight is genuine; it may be most profitably seen as part of a more general effort to create a space for a new form of scientific and philosophical certainty, one that does not require…Read more
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77Rhetoric, narrative, and the lifeworld: The construction of collective identityPhilosophy and Rhetoric 43 (2). 2010.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Rhetoric, Narrative, and the Lifeworld: The Construction of Collective IdentityAlan G. GrossAt the beginning of King Lear, at the point of ceding his throne to his three daughters, Lear asks each for a public acknowledgment of her love. Goneril and Regan flatter their father with effusive declarations, but Lear’s youngest, and his favorite, Cordelia, refuses to do so:I love your Majesty According to my bond; no more or less..........…Read more
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73Rhetoric as a technique and a mode of truth: Reflections on chaïm PerelmanPhilosophy and Rhetoric 33 (4): 319-335. 2000.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 33.4 (2000) 319-335 [Access article in PDF] Rhetoric as a Technique and a Mode of Truth: Reflections on Chaïm Perelman Alan Gross In memoriam: Henry Johnstone, fons et origo.In one of his many criticisms of The New Rhetoric, the philosopher Henry W. Johnstone Jr. complains about its chapter "The Dissociation of Concepts" that "one is never sure whether [Chaïm Perelman is] thinking of rhetoric primarily as a te…Read more
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57The Rhetoric of Science. 1996.Alan Gross applies the principles of rhetoric to the interpretation of classical and contemporary scientific texts to show how they persuade both author and audience. This invigorating consideration of the ways in which scientists--from Copernicus to Darwin to Newton to James Watson--establish authority and convince one another and us of the truth they describe may very well lead to a remodeling of our understanding of science and its place in society.
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56Adaptation in evolutionary epistemology: Clarifying Hull's model (review)Biology and Philosophy 3 (2): 185-186. 1988.
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51Douglas Walton, The Appeal to Pity: Argumentum ad MisericordiamPragmatics and Cognition 7 (1): 223-226. 1999.
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46Review of van Eemeren & Houtlosser (2002): Dialectic and Rhetoric: The Warp and Woof of Argumentation Analysis (review)Pragmatics and Cognition 11 (2): 386-390. 2003.
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42Review of Hyland (1998): Hedging in Scientific Research Articles (review)Pragmatics and Cognition 8 (2): 446-450. 2000.
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40Rereading Aristotle's Rhetoric (edited book)Southern Illinois University Press. 2000.In this collection edited by Alan G. Gross and Arthur E. Walzer, scholars in communication, rhetoric and composition, and philosophy seek to “reread” Aristotle’s Rhetoric from a purely rhetorical perspective.
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39The Challenger Disaster And The Revival Of Rhetoric In Organizational LifeArgumentation 11 (1): 85-93. 1997.Explanations of the cause of the Challenger disaster by the Presidential Commission and by communication scholars are flawed. These explanations are characterized by a common tendency to emphasize the technical and procedural aspects of organizational life at the expense of the cognitive and ethical. Rightly construed, the Challenger disaster illustrates both the need for a revived art of rhetoric and the importance of putting in place the political and social conditions that make this art effic…Read more
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38Do Disputes over Priority Tell Us Anything about Science?Science in Context 11 (2): 161-179. 1998.The ArgumentConflicts between scientists over credit for their discoveries are conflicts, not merely in, but of science because discovery is not a historical event, but a retrospective social judgment. There is no objective moment of discovery; rather, discovery is established by means of a hermeneutics, a way of reading scientific articles. The priority conflict between Roger Guillemin and Andrew Schally over the discovery of the brain hormone, TRF, serves as an example. The work of Robert Mert…Read more
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38Some Limits of Non-dualismConstructivist Foundations 8 (2): 242-246. 2013.Context: Josef Mitterer’s non-dualism advocates a method of analysis as distinct from a metaphysical position. As such it bears resemblance to my earlier work. Problem: Is there only the world of discourse or is there a sense in which some facts and some theories are beyond argument and will remain so? Approach: In my analysis I try to apply Mitterer’s ideas to science, philosophy, and literary criticism. Results: I claim that it is not possible to argue against certain scientific facts or again…Read more
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38The conceptual unity of Aristotle's rhetoricPhilosophy and Rhetoric 34 (4): 275-291. 2001.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 34.4 (2001) 275-291 [Access article in PDF] The Conceptual Unity of Aristotle's Rhetoric 1 - [PDF] Alan G. Gross and Marcelo Dascal The standard view--that the Rhetoric lacks conceptual unity--has strong and prestigious support, stretching over most of the century. To David Ross in 1923 the unity of the Rhetoric was practical, not theoretical; to misunderstand this fact was to see this work, mistakenly, as "a …Read more
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35Rhetoric, Narrative, and the Lifeworld: The Construction of Collective IdentityPhilosophy and Rhetoric 43 (2): 118-138. 2010.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Rhetoric, Narrative, and the Lifeworld: The Construction of Collective IdentityAlan G. GrossAt the beginning of King Lear, at the point of ceding his throne to his three daughters, Lear asks each for a public acknowledgment of her love. Goneril and Regan flatter their father with effusive declarations, but Lear’s youngest, and his favorite, Cordelia, refuses to do so:I love your Majesty According to my bond; no more or less..........…Read more
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35The science wars and the ethics of book reviewingPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 30 (3): 445-450. 2000.
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34Book Review: Landau, Iddo. (2006). Is Philosophy Androcentric? University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State Press (review)Philosophy of the Social Sciences 38 (3): 400-404. 2008.
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28The Verbal and the Visual in Science: A Heideggerian PerspectiveScience in Context 19 (4): 443-474. 2006.ArgumentHeidegger's philosophy of science is notable for the prominence it gives to visuals and visualization. This is because for Heidegger, truth – including scientific truth – is the consequence of unconcealment, the lifting of a veil. But as scientific truth is a special kind, its visualization is also special: scientific truth reveals itself to us as, in Heidegger's words, “a calculable nexus of forces.” This nexus unconceals itself largely by means of instrumentation: it is this process of…Read more
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26A Model for the Division of Semiotic Labor in Scientific Argument: The Interaction of Words and ImagesScience in Context 24 (4): 517-544. 2011.ArgumentA growing cross-disciplinary literature has acknowledged the importance of verbal-visual interaction in the creation and communication of scientific texts. I contend that the proper understanding of these texts must flow from a hermeneutic model that takes verbal-visual interaction seriously, one that is firmly grounded in cognitive constraints and affordances. The model I propose has two modules, one for perception, derived from Gestalt psychology, the other for cognition, derived from …Read more
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24Philosophy versus Science: The Species Debate and the Practice of TaxonomyPSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1988. 1988.A reading of a sample of taxonomical papers leads to the conclusion that new species identification is both taxonomically plausible and philosophically incoherent. As a result, taxonomy becomes a science that apparently violates a necessary condition of its rationality. It is this apparent violation that is the focus of the philosophical debate, a debate whose goal for taxonomy is theoretical coherence at a global level. In this paper, I assess the appropriateness of this goal.
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21Systematically Distorted Communication: An Impediment to Social and Political ChangeInformal Logic 30 (4): 335-360. 2010.Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; ms…Read more
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21Shaping written knowledge: The genre and activity of the experimental article in scienceStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 21 (2): 341-349. 1990.
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20Communicating Science: The Scientific Article From the 17th Century to the PresentOxford University Press USA. 2002.This book describes the development of the scientific article from its modest beginnings to the global phenomenon that it has become today. The authors focus on changes in the style, organization, and argumentative structure of scientific communication over time. This outstanding resource is the definitive study on the rhetoric of science.
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University of MinnesotaRegular Faculty
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Biology |
General Philosophy of Science |