Rhetoric & Technical Communication
Rhetoric & Technical Communication
Toscano, Aaron, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Dept. of English

Resources and Daily Activities

  • Conference Presentations
    • PCA/ACA Conference Presentation 2022
    • PCAS/ACAS Presentation 2021
    • SEACS 2021 Presentation
    • South Atlantic MLA Conference 2022
  • Dr. Toscano’s Homepage
  • ENGL 2116-014: Introduction to Technical Communication
    • February 1st: Reflection on Workplace Messages
    • January 11th: More Introduction to Class
    • January 18th: Audience & Purpose
    • January 23rd: Résumés and Cover Letters
      • Duty Format for Résumés
      • Peter Profit’s Cover Letter
    • January 25th: More on Résumés and Cover Letters
    • January 30th: Achieving a Readable Style
      • Euphemisms
      • Prose Practice for Next Class
      • Prose Revision Assignment
      • Revising Prose: Efficiency, Accuracy, and Good
      • Sentence Clarity
    • January 9th: Introduction to the Class
    • Major Assignments
  • ENGL 4182/5182: Information Design & Digital Publishing
    • August 21st: Introduction to the Course
      • Rhetorical Principles of Information Design
    • August 28th: Introduction to Information Design
      • Prejudice and Rhetoric
      • Robin Williams’s Principles of Design
    • Classmates Webpages (Fall 2017)
    • December 4th: Presentations
    • Major Assignments for ENGL 4182/5182 (Fall 2017)
    • November 13th: More on Color
      • Designing with Color
      • Important Images
    • November 20th: Extra-Textual Elements
    • November 27th: Presentation/Portfolio Workshop
    • November 6th: In Living Color
    • October 16th: Type Fever
      • Typography
    • October 23rd: More on Type
    • October 2nd: MIDTERM FUN!!!
    • October 30th: Working with Graphics
      • Beerknurd Calendar 2018
    • September 11th: Talking about Design without Using “Thingy”
      • Theory, theory, practice
    • September 18th: The Whole Document
    • September 25th: Page Design
  • ENGL 4183/5183: Editing with Digital Technologies
    • August 24th: Introduction to the Class
    • August 31st: Rhetoric, Words, and Composing
    • Major Assignments for ENGL 4183/5183 (Fall 2022)
      • Rhetoric of Fear
    • November 16th: Voice and Other Nebulous Writing Terms
      • Finding Dominant Rhetorical Appeals
    • November 2nd: Rhetorical Effects of Punctuation
    • November 30th: Words and Word Classes
    • November 9th: Cohesive Rhythm
    • October 12th: Choosing Adjectivals
    • October 19th: Choosing Nominals
    • October 26th: Stylistic Variations
    • October 5th: Midterm Exam
    • September 14th: Verb is the Word!
    • September 21st: Coordination and Subordination
    • September 28th: Form and Function
    • September 7th: Sentence Patterns
  • ENGL 4275: Rhetoric of Technology
    • April 13th: Authorities in Science and Technology
    • April 15th: Articles on Violence in Video Games
    • April 20th: Presentations
    • April 6th: Technology in the home
    • April 8th: Writing Discussion
    • Assignments for ENGL 4275
    • February 10th: Religion of Technology Part 3 of 3
    • February 12th: Is Love a Technology?
    • February 17th: Technology and Gender
    • February 19th: Technology and Expediency
    • February 24th: Semester Review
    • February 3rd: Religion of Technology Part 1 of 3
    • February 5th: Religion of Technology Part 2 of 3
    • January 13th: Technology and Meaning, a Humanist perspective
    • January 15th: Technology and Democracy
    • January 22nd: The Politics of Technology
    • January 27th: Discussion on Writing as Thinking
    • January 29th: Technology and Postmodernism
    • January 8th: Introduction to the Course
    • March 11th: Writing and Other Fun
    • March 16th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 1 of 2
    • March 18th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 2 of 2
    • March 23rd: Inception (2010)
    • March 25th: Writing and Reflecting Discussion
    • March 30th & April 1st: Count Zero
    • March 9th: William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984)
  • ENGL 6166: Rhetorical Theory
    • April 12th: Knoblauch. Ch. 4 and Ch. 5
    • April 19th: Jacques Derrida’s Positions
    • April 26th:  Feminisms and Rhetorics
    • April 5th: Knoblauch. Ch. 3 and More Constitutive Rhetoric
    • February 15th: Isocrates (Part 2)
    • February 1st: Aristotle’s On Rhetoric Books 2 & 3
      • Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 2
      • Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 3
    • February 22nd: St. Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine [Rhetoric]
    • February 8th: Isocrates (Part 1)-2nd Half of Class
    • January 11th: Introduction to Class
    • January 18th: Plato’s Phaedrus
    • January 25th: Aristotle’s On Rhetoric Book 1
    • March 15th: Descartes, Rene, Discourse on Method
    • March 1st: Knoblauch. Ch. 1 and 2
    • March 22nd: Mary Wollstonecraft
    • March 29th: Second Wave Feminist Rhetoric
    • May 3rd: Knoblauch. Ch. 6, 7, and “Afterword”
    • Rhetorical Theory Assignments
  • ENGL/COMM/WRDS: The Rhetoric of Fear
    • January 10th: Introduction to the Class
    • January 17th: Scapegoats & Conspiracies
    • January 24th: The Rhetoric of Fear and Fallacies Part 1
    • January 31st: Fallacies Part 2 and American Politics Part 1
    • Major Assignments
  • LBST 2212-124, 125, 126, & 127
    • August 21st: Introduction to Class
    • August 23rd: Humanistic Approach to Science Fiction
    • August 26th: Robots and Zombies
    • August 28th: Futurism, an Introduction
    • August 30th: R. A. Lafferty “Slow Tuesday Night” (1965)
    • December 2nd: Technological Augmentation
    • December 4th: Posthumanism
    • November 11th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 2)
    • November 13th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 2 con’t)
    • November 18th: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Part 1)
      • More Questions than Answers
    • November 1st: Games Reality Plays (part II)
    • November 20th: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Part 2)
    • November 6th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 1)
    • October 14th: More Autonomous Fun
    • October 16th: Autonomous Conclusion
    • October 21st: Sci Fi in the Domestic Sphere
    • October 23rd: Social Aphasia
    • October 25th: Dust in the Wind
    • October 28th: Gender Liminality and Roles
    • October 2nd: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
    • October 30th: Games Reality Plays (part I)
    • October 9th: Approaching Autonomous
      • Analyzing Prose in Autonomous
    • September 11th: The Time Machine
    • September 16th: The Alien Other
    • September 18th: Post-apocalyptic Worlds
    • September 20th: Dystopian Visions
    • September 23rd: World’s Beyond
    • September 25th: Gender Studies and Science Fiction
    • September 30th: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
    • September 4th: Science Fiction and Social Breakdown
      • More on Ellison
      • More on Forster
    • September 9th: The Time Machine
  • LBST 2213-110: Science, Technology, and Society
    • August 22nd: Science and Technology from a Humanistic Perspective
    • August 24th: Science and Technology, a Humanistic Approach
    • August 29th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 2
    • August 31st: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 3 and 4
    • December 5th: Video Games and Violence, a more nuanced view
    • November 14th: Boulle, Pierre. Planet of the Apes. (1964) Ch. 27-end
    • November 16th: Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1818. Preface-Ch. 8
    • November 21st: Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1818. Ch. 9-Ch. 16
    • November 28th: Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Ch. 17-Ch. 24
    • November 30th: Violence in Video Games
    • November 7th: Boulle, Pierre. Planet of the Apes Ch. 1-17
    • November 9th: Boulle, Pierre. Planet of the Apes, Ch. 18-26
    • October 12th: Lies Economics Tells
    • October 17th: Brief Histories of Medicine, Salerno, and Galen
    • October 19th: Politicizing Science and Medicine
    • October 24th: COVID-19 Facial Covering Rhetoric
    • October 26th: Wells, H. G. Time Machine. Ch. 1-5
    • October 31st: Wells, H. G. The Time Machine Ch. 6-The End
    • October 3rd: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 7 and Conclusion
    • September 12th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 7 and Conclusion
    • September 19th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Prefaces and Ch. 1
    • September 26th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 2
    • September 28th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 5 and 6
    • September 7th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 5 and 6
  • New Media: Gender, Culture, Technology (Spring 2021)
    • April 13th: Virtually ‘Real’ Environments
    • April 20th: Rhetoric/Composition Defines New Media
    • April 27th: Sub/Cultural Politics, Hegemony, and Agency
    • April 6th: Capitalist Realism
    • February 16: Misunderstanding the Internet
    • February 23rd: Our Public Sphere and the Media
    • February 2nd: Introduction to Cultural Studies
    • January 26th: Introduction to New Media
    • Major Assignments for New Media (Spring 2021)
    • March 16th: Identity Politics
    • March 23rd: Social Construction of Gender and Sexuality
    • March 2nd: Foundational Thinkers in Cultural Studies
    • March 30th: Hyperreality
    • March 9th: Globalization & Postmodernism
    • May 4th: Wrapping Up The Semester
      • Jodi Dean “The The Illusion of Democracy” & “Communicative Capitalism”
      • Social Construction of Sexuality
  • Science Fiction in American Culture (Summer I–2020)
    • Assignments for Science Fiction in American Culture
    • Cultural Studies and Science Fiction Films
    • June 10th: Interstellar and Exploration themes
    • June 11th: Bicentennial Man
    • June 15th: I’m Only Human…Or am I?
    • June 16th: Wall-E and Environment
    • June 17th: Wall-E (2008) and Technology
    • June 18th: Interactivity in Video Games
    • June 1st: Firefly (2002) and Myth
    • June 2nd: “Johnny Mnemonic”
    • June 3rd: “New Rose Hotel”
    • June 4th: “Burning Chrome”
    • June 8th: Conformity and Monotony
    • June 9th: Cultural Constructions of Beauty
    • May 18th: Introduction to Class
    • May 19th: American Culture, an Introduction
    • May 20th: The Matrix
    • May 21st: Gender and Science Fiction
    • May 25th: Goals for I, Robot
    • May 26th: Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot
    • May 27th: Hackers and Slackers
    • May 30th: Inception
  • Teaching Portfolio
  • Topics for Analysis
    • A Practical Editing Situation
    • American Culture, an Introduction
    • Efficiency in Writing Reviews
    • Feminism, An Introduction
    • Fordism/Taylorism
    • Frankenstein Part I
    • Frankenstein Part II
    • Futurism Introduction
    • Isaac Asimov’s “A Cult of Ignorance”
    • Langdon Winner Summary: The Politics of Technology
    • Marxist Theory (cultural analysis)
    • Oral Presentations
    • Oratory and Argument Analysis
    • Our Public Sphere
    • Postmodernism Introduction
    • Protesting Confederate Place
    • Punctuation Refresher
    • QT, the Existential Robot
    • Religion of Technology Discussion
    • Rhetoric, an Introduction
      • Analyzing the Culture of Technical Writer Ads
      • Rhetoric of Technology
      • Visual Culture
      • Visual Perception
      • Visual Perception, Culture, and Rhetoric
      • Visual Rhetoric
      • Visuals for Technical Communication
      • World War I Propaganda
    • The Great I, Robot Discussion
      • I, Robot Short Essay Topics
    • The Rhetoric of Video Games: A Cultural Perspective
      • Civilization, an Analysis
    • The Sopranos
    • Why Science Fiction?
    • Zombies and Consumption Satire
  • Video Games & American Culture
    • April 14th: Phallocentrism
    • April 21st: Video Games and Neoliberalism
    • April 7th: Video Games and Conquest
    • Assignments for Video Games & American Culture
    • February 10th: Aesthetics and Culture
    • February 17th: Narrative and Catharsis
    • February 24th: Serious Games
    • February 3rd: More History of Video Games
    • January 13th: Introduction to the course
    • January 20th: Introduction to Video Game Studies
    • January 27th: Games & Culture
      • Marxism for Video Game Analysis
      • Postmodernism for Video Game Analysis
    • March 24th: Realism, Interpretation(s), and Meaning Making
    • March 31st: Feminist Perspectives and Politics
    • March 3rd: Risky Business?

Contact Me

Office: Fretwell 255F
Email: atoscano@uncc.edu
LBST 2213-110: Science, Technology, and Society » August 24th: Science and Technology, a Humanistic Approach

August 24th: Science and Technology, a Humanistic Approach

Vocabulary for Our Areas of Study

Let’s discuss definitions for a moment. Although this course can’t possibly provide you with all the appropriate definitions for each of your disciplines, I hope to get you to recognize that different disciplines have different assumptions that inform the way the define a concept. For instance, “games” in economic (and psychology…to an extent) refer to analysis of the ways people make choices in a given situation. For popular culture “games” are video games, but, within the various fields that study games, researchers focus on different areas. I research games as products of a culture and how they convey meaning; whereas, other English Studies researchers look at how players make meaning in game play. Again, try to at least recognize that definitions and assumptions are disciplinary specific.

  • society: a defined group of people sharing an area, organizational system, or set of associations; a community.
    • Merriam-Webster’s Definition
    • Oxford English Dictionary’s Definition (accessible on campus or when logged onto Atkins Library)
    • “Society” for social scientists often refers to the quantifiable–countable–aspects of a group, such as a nation. Consider demographics (age, gender, income), employment, education level, etc.
  • culture: the characteristics, customs, beliefs, and shared history of a group; a community.
    • Merriam-Webster’s Definition
    • Oxford English Dictionary’s Definition
    • “Culture” is often considered the qualitative aspects of a group. These might be prevailing assumptions of flavors: entertainment, religion, assumptions, etc.
  • Scientific Method: an ongoing process of (usually) empirical methods to acquire knowledge through appropriate hypothesis, observation, testing, and expert consensus.
  • Replicability: scientific observations and tests must be independently verified by repeating the original experiment.
    • This is part of the peer-review process of scientific discourse.
  • Rhetoric: understanding and/or employing the available means of persuasion; moving an audience (technical or not) to believe, support, or understand a topic.
    • Ethos: presentation of one’s character and credibility (title, reputation, area of expertise, etc.)
    • Pathos: appeals to emotion
    • Logos: appeals to logic and statement of facts (statistics, observations, verifiable laws/phenomenon, etc.)
  • Pseudoscience: a collection of beliefs or practices mistakenly regarded as being based on scientific method, replicability, and/or expert consensus.
  • Empiricism: the theory that all knowledge comes from the senses and observable phenomena.
  • Positivism: the philosophy that all valid knowledge is derived from the scientific method following strict observation and experimentation.
    • We will return to this when we think about the possibility of memory transfer in worms…didn’t scientists observe this transfer?
  • Technological determinism: the assumption that technologies are created devoid of social/cultural forces; technologies don’t come about in a vacuum devoid of (often hegemonic) social demands.

Prefaces—How to Read the Book

There are more quotations below than you should expect for future readings. Because this is the first time we’re covering Collins & Pinch, I’ve decided to include more quotations from the chapter than usual. My assumption is that you’ve read the the Prefaces, Introduction, and Ch. 1, so we don’t need to go over every single detail of the chapter.

Because this is a 100% online asynchronous class, I can’t ask questions in real time and solicit feedback. I will, however, “ask” questions on these pages for you to think about further. For instance, while reading the chapter or notes for today, you should reflect on memory transfer from a molecular point of view. Consider what’s going on in our brains (or the brains of other animals) and how that memory event could get transferred. What are the implications of having a substance that transfers memory? What’s the difference between instinct and learned behavior? How might instinct be inherited?

If you’re curious, here’s a video of an old experiment on training rats from Yale University, Institute of Human Relations study by Neal E. Miller and Gardner L. Hart (0.15-4:15).

Preface to 2nd Ed.

  • p. xiii: Collins & Pinch had scientists review their work, and the scientists offered their criticism. The authors claim they “examine each serious criticism, either accepting it and making a change or putting the sociologist/historian’s point of view.” What they mean is that some criticism is a matter of a priori assumption based on one’s discipline’s approach to knowledge. Simply put, scientists think differently about these subjects than do historians and sociologists.
  • p. xiv: Their audience—average citizens. Their “book [is] mainly of benefit to the citizen and the novice, not the experienced scientist at the research front.”

Preface to 1st Canto Ed.

  • p. xv: “Most science is uncontroversial.”
  • p. xv-xvi: “For citizens who want to take part in the democratic process of a technological society, all the science they need to know about is controversial.”
    • Don’t gloss over “democratic process” in that last sentence. Collins & Pinch have taken Asimov’s argument to heart and decided to help the public achieve their right to know by communicating to a lay (general, non-scientific) audience.

Preface & Acknowledgements

  • p. xvii: “…how much authority to grant to experts.”
  • p. xvii-xix: This preface identifies where they went to find out about the sciences they discuss. They interviewed scientists for some accounts and read descriptions for other accounts. They aren’t trying to replicate experiments; instead, they’re looking at how the science was communicated. They have critical distance as historians/sociologists.

Introduction

  • p. 1: False Dichotomy—“Science seems to be either all good or all bad.”
  • p. 1-2: Science as a golem. Think of Frankenstein…created by a human and powerful but not able to control himself.
  • p. 2: “the golem…is not an evil creature but it is a little daft….We must not expect too much.”
  • p. 3: Collins & Pinch aren’t telling you what to think. They’re trying to show you there’s more to scientific discovery than clear, clean trajectories guided by scientific method.

Ch. 1 “Edible Knowledge”

  • p. 5: Desire to find a way to “pass on our memories directly…without needing to spend years building the foundations first.”
  • p. 5: Assumption that memories are encoded in chemicals.
  • p. 5-6: “memories could be extracted from the brain of one creature and given to a second creature with beneficial effects.”
    Think of the science fiction narratives this brings up. Humans can basically download information, thus, avoiding the learning process.
  • p. 8-9: Critiques of worm memory transfer.
    1) Worms don’t digest, they transplant large pieces and incorporate them into their bodies.
    2) “Planarian worms were too primitive to be trained.”
    3) “Different trainers may obtain widely differing outcomes from training regimes.”
  • p. 9: prima facie—at first sight
    ad hoc—for a specific purpose and no other
  • p. 9: Golden hands argument. Skeptics consider this argument—that only certain people can competently do an experiment (or train the worms)—to be a red flag.
  • p. 9: Bioassay—an analysis where “the existence and quantity of a drug is determined by its effects on living matter or whole organisms.”
    Instead of the experiments transferring memory or learned behavior, the substances injected into the subjects yield results of such-and-such chemical causing such-and-such results. Memory isn’t transferred, but the experiment (like a drug) affects the organism.
  • p. 10: More problems with training worms. Apparently, worms like slime, so they tend to follow the slime trails of other worms. If slime trails go right, worms will go right.
    • Retort: we’ll clean the troughs…too much cleaning makes the worms “unhappy.” Maybe they need it to be clean but not too clean.
      The Goldilocks effect is similar to “the Golden Hands” argument—not to clean, not too dirty.
    • p. 11: A huge number of variables needed to be controlled for, and this led to both sides arguing for their stance.
      The proponents claimed these variables came about because others were doing the experiments incorrectly, and the critics used them as reasons why “others fail[ed] to replicate the original findings.”
    • Notice how this could delve into a perpetually moving target…
  • p. 11-12: “Up to 70 variables were cited at one time or another to account for discrepancies in experimental results.”
  • p. 12: “The greater number of potential variables, the harder it is to decide whether one really replicates the conditions of another.” Without replicating the experiment, other scientists won’t accept the findings of the original group.
  • p. 12-13: The Worm Runner’s Digest hurt the credibility (the ethos) of McConnell. It included “science” and cartoons and letters to the editor.
  • p. 13-14: The controversy ended because scientists moved on to memory transfer in mammals, so worms weren’t as exciting.
  • p. 14: passionate crying out in protest.
  • p. 15: Ungar’s experiment with morphine “might be thought of as doing a complicated bioassay rather than an experiment in the transfer of learning.” After all, he’s injecting the brains of rats given lots of morphine to build up a tolerance.
  • p. 16: Scientific personalities and cliques—getting dissed or welcomed at the bar…Scientific personalities affect how one views/accepts findings.
  • p. 17: “The sheer number and weight of experimental replications is not usually enough to persuade the scientific community to believe in some unorthodox finding.” Scientists have worldviews, which don’t incorporate ideas counter to their assumptions.
  • p. 18: Scientist disposition is often “to start with grounds for not believing” an experiment that’s unorthodox or just new.
  • p. 18-19: Stanford group, led by Avram Goldstein, replicated the experiments—even went to the lab of Dr. Ungar to follow their steps—but couldn’t corroborate the results.
  • p. 20: Different measurements between Ungar and Stanford. Ungar recorded the length of time rats spent in the dark box; whereas, the Stanford group measured how long it took for the rats to go into the dark box (latency).
  • p. 21: Psychologists in the field were interested in how memory worked and the difference between sensitization and specificity.
    • Sensitization is the learning that happens after being trained.
    • Specificity states that animals injected with the material from the dead hosts would yield specific behaviors. What if the injection produced different results under different circumstances?
  • p. 22: McConnell, a psychologist, wanted to find out if “grade-A learning” could be transferred.
    Ungar, a pharmacologist, “wanted to isolate, analyse and synthesise* active molecules.” He wanted “to find some reproducible transfer effect and study the chemical that was responsible for it.”
    • *Collins & Pinch’s book uses British spellings, so, when I quote them, I use their spelling conventions.
  • p. 22: Ungar had 4000 trained rat brains, a significant financial cost.
  • p. 22: Too much to consider and too many competing theories. “So often in contested science, there is so much detail that is contestable that experiments can force no-one to agree that anything significant has been found.
  • p. 22-23: Ungar claimed to have isolated Scotophobin, a substance in the brain responsible for fear of the dark, but too many questions surrounded its efficacy. “Several dozens of experiments are known, but there is sufficient ambiguity for both believers and sceptics to draw comfort from the results.”
  • p. 23: Ungar’s death ended the search for memory-transfer chemicals. It was too costly for other labs to do the experiments.
  • p. 24: Although the memory-transfer science was never verified, it wasn’t falsified completely. No decisive negation exists.
  • p. 25: The publication Nature published a 5-page paper by Ungar about Scotophobin, but the journal also published a 15-page criticism of the science.
    Basically, the scientific authority, from the powerful position as editor/referee of scientific discourse, disputed Ungar’s claims.
  • p. 25: Memory transfer wasn’t disproved based on “decisive technical evidence….the principal experimenters lost their credibility….it just ceased to occupy the scientific imagination.”

What do you think? How does memory transfer? Wait a minute! Don’t we lose memories?

Dark Matter

This article on Dark Matter isn’t required reading, but it’s a contemporary discussion demonstrating the imagination that scientists have when approaching and speculating upon their research.

Next Class

Make sure you keep up with the reading on the syllabus and the class website. Also, please do your Weekly Discussion Post #1: “Introduce Yourself” on Canvas. I’ll open up the webpages for next week before Monday. On August 29th, I’ll have notes on Collins & Pinch’s The Golem: What You Should Know about Science Chapter 2. I’ll have Chapters 3 & 4 notes on Wednesday, August 31st.

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