Knowledge and Performance in Argument: Disciplinarity and Proto-Theory

Studies in the rhetoric of science share a common ancestry with studies in epistemic rhetoric, namely, the analysis of arguments. Recognizing this lineage makes it less likely that rhetoric of science will be absorbed by other disciplinary projects. Scientific arguments thematize the pursuit of knowledge, and are invented and performed within an interplay of knowing and doubting. That interplay is structured by disciplines in the academy, and by proto-theory in the general culture.