Stony Brook University - SUNY Digital Repository
Stony Brook University - SUNY Digital Repository Stony Brook University - SUNY Digital Repository
had become, throughout the 19 th century and into the 20 th , defined by a very “scientific” strain of certainty. In Connors’ 1983 article “Composition Studies and Science,” he explored the question of “why all practitioners within the social sciences and composition studies in particular have wished to reach out to the natural sciences” (17). To begin to seek out some answers, he offered a quotation from “conservative” rhetorician Richard Weaver: “Physical science was beginning to change the face of the earth, and it was adding greatly to the wealthproducing machinery of mankind. It was very human for a group engaged in developing a body of knowledge to wish to hitch its wagon to that star" (17). Following Weaver’s metaphor, Connors further explained such an “attraction”: The immense romance of the natural sciences is very difficult for any of the social sciences to resist, and it is not unnatural that composition studies should feel a powerful attraction in that direction. […] Given the chaotic, anti-empirical, confused, and at times mindless history of the teaching of writing, it is not surprising to find that as we develop our body of knowledge we are tempted by the vast successes of the natural sciences. (17-8) For Connors, those “natural sciences” offered the promise of what he called “universal scientific maturity” and, for the likes of composition, it stood as a solution to crises of credibility, utility, and even simple identity. But this answer in the form of science to such professional and cultural dilemmas would prove to be an all too unfortunate illusion. The 58
field of composition was not, as Connors saw it, a “rigorous scientific discipline” and, because of that “fact,” while it could aspire to the same objectivity and universality, the same certainty, that science would seem to engender, it could never achieve them. Although Connors’ intention was to question the then (and perhaps still) common use by composition scholars of Thomas Kuhn’s theories of the “paradigm” and its subsequent “shift” from his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in the wake of Maxine Hairston’s renowned 1982 article for College Composition and Communication, “The Winds of Change: Thomas Kuhn and the Revolution in the Teaching of Writing,” I believe his article has a good deal of significance for an understanding of the influence that those “natural sciences” had upon rhetoric well more than a hundred years before either Hairston or Kuhn. For Connors, rhetoric’s movement towards “scientism” had detrimental consequences: In our laudable desire to improve our discipline we must not lose sight of the danger of falling into scientistic fallacies and trying to enforce empirical canons that must, if they are to be useful, grow naturally from previously-solved puzzles. We must beware worshipping what Suzanne Langer calls 'The Idols of the Laboratory' - Physicalism, Methodology, Jargon, Objectivity, Mathematization - the enshrining of which values (so necessary in natural sciences) in human sciences leads only to a blindered pseudocertainty. (18) This “blindered pseudo-certainty” that Connors warns 20 th century compositionists about is the same thing Sharon Crowley 59
- Page 15 and 16: the same old thing all over again.
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- Page 49 and 50: making and doing” (6). And for De
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field of composition was not, as Connors saw it, a “rigorous<br />
scientific discipline” and, because of that “fact,” while it<br />
could aspire to the same objectivity and universality, the same<br />
certainty, that science would seem to engender, it could never<br />
achieve them.<br />
Although Connors’ intention was to question the then (and<br />
perhaps still) common use by composition scholars of Thomas<br />
Kuhn’s theories of the “paradigm” and its subsequent “shift”<br />
from his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in the wake of<br />
Maxine Hairston’s renowned 1982 article for College Composition<br />
and Communication, “The Winds of Change: Thomas Kuhn and the<br />
Revolution in the Teaching of Writing,” I believe his article<br />
has a good deal of significance for an understanding of the<br />
influence that those “natural sciences” had upon rhetoric well<br />
more than a hundred years before either Hairston or Kuhn. For<br />
Connors, rhetoric’s movement towards “scientism” had detrimental<br />
consequences:<br />
In our laudable desire to improve our discipline we<br />
must not lose sight of the danger of falling into<br />
scientistic fallacies and trying to enforce empirical<br />
canons that must, if they are to be useful, grow<br />
naturally from previously-solved puzzles. We must<br />
beware worshipping what Suzanne Langer calls 'The<br />
Idols of the Laboratory' - Physicalism, Methodology,<br />
Jargon, Objectivity, Mathematization - the enshrining<br />
of which values (so necessary in natural sciences) in<br />
human sciences leads only to a blindered pseudocertainty.<br />
(18)<br />
This “blindered pseudo-certainty” that Connors warns 20 th<br />
century<br />
compositionists about is the same thing Sharon Crowley<br />
59
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