| This study asks whether the discovery techniques of science are applicable and useful to rhetorical invention, the art of discovering the subject matter of discourse. The close connection between rhetorical and scientific discovery suggests a strong and reasonable basis for developing heuristic procedures common to both disciplines.;The pre-writing or discovery phase of composition--consisting of selecting a topic, formulating a thesis, and gathering supporting data--closely approximates the Baconian method of observation, hypothesis, and experiment. The creative mechanisms or heuristics of the scientist--called here "Copernican Shifts," "Watsonian Models," "Mendeleevian Patterns and Anomalies," and "Einsteinian Connections"--lend themselves to the discovery process of the writer in each of the discourses. In brief, both the formal method and the creative intuition of the scientist's discovery process can be applied to the discovery process of the writer.;Very briefly, the study is structured as follows.;Chapter I introduces rhetorical invention and synopsizes the work of scholars in diverse disciplines contributing to the growing research on discovery procedures.;Scientific discovery--consisting of the dual process of scientific method and creative intuition--shares values, thought, and methods with the discovery process of composition. The scientist and the writer both perform the same investigative act of observing, hypothesizing, and formulating. Ideally, the scientist and the writer, participating in a rigorous discovery process, must ascertain the truth in a universe of change and diversity, must scrupulously maintain the habit of truth, and must appeal to an ethical, "universal" audience for consensual approval.;Chapter II analyzes Plato's Phaedrus in order to establish a sound and traditional groundwork for viewing rhetoric as a process of "knowing" or "discovering" the truth.;Chapter III analyzes the writings of scientist, Jacob Bronowski, who views science as a process or a "language" of moral discovery. Like Plato, Bronowski insists upon the habit of truth. In Bronowski and Plato one can view science and rhetoric as twin paradigms of moral discovery.;Chapter IV, expanding the scope of scientific discovery, analyzes the discovery theories of N. R. Hanson, Thomas Kuhn, Arthur Koestler, and Richard Blackwell. An examination of these theorists, as well as W. J. J. Gordon, S. Toulmin, D. W. Theobald, Bronowski, G. Polya, and others, strongly suggests a fundamental relationship between scientific discovery and metaphorical thought.;Chapter V, applying the morals, thought, and methods of scientific discovery to rhetorical invention, begins by demonstrating how the ethics of both science and rhetoric are guided and safeguarded by a scrupulous, "universal" audience. The thought of scientific discovery--namely common-sense knowledge and scientific knowledge as defined by E. Nagel and B. J. F. Lonergan--is applied to the writer. The dual method of scientific discovery, both the scientific method and the mechanisms of creative intuition, are explained and related to the discovery process of the writer. A brief appendix illustrates these scientific discovery methods in specific composition topics for each of the discourses.;The basic claim of this study is to suggest an important and useful connection between rhetorical and scientific discovery. |
