| Theodosius Dobzhansky's 1936 Genetics and the Origin of Species inspired collaboration between geneticists and naturalists in the study of evolution, signaling the start of "The Evolutionary Synthesis." Similarly, Erwin Schrodinger's 1944 What is Life? inspired interdisciplinary activity between the physicists and biologists who built the field of molecular biology. This study produces a close rhetorical analysis of these two influential monographs. The results of this study will be of interest to four audiences. To the rhetorician, this dissertation proposes a critical practice that avoids some of the difficulties of textual criticism, but does so without abandoning a commitment to close textual analysis. For example, by refracting a reading through intertextual antecedents and responses, rather than through an implied author, this study is sensitive to contextual influences that impacted the text and its reception. To the rhetorician of science, this dissertation offers the study of an unexamined genre: the interdisciplinary inspirational monograph. By examining scientific discourse that works to inspire action rather than to authorize a truth claim, this study expands our exploration of texts that are rhetorically significant to the development of science. To the historian or philosopher of science, this dissertation offers a solution to conflicts over the value and meaning of these two texts. More generally, by developing a micro-level analysis that explains why texts like Dobzhansky's and Schrodinger's work in the way they do, this study offers a new way of mediating conflicting cognitive and political accounts of scientific development. Finally, to the scholar of interdisciplinarity, this dissertation offers a new focus on the power of polysemous rhetorical constructions. If the aim of a scientific text is to inspire action rather than authorize a particular interpretation of natural order, exegetical equality is not a standard that needs to be met. This study suggests that an interdisciplinary call to action that invites different and sometimes conflicting readings by two interpretive communities may be the most effective motivater of collaborative action. |
