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The Rhetoric of Evolutionary Theory

  • Thematic Issue Article: The Meaning of "Theory" in Biology
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Abstract

I argue that Darwinian evolutionary theory has a rhetorical dimension and that rhetorical criticism plays a role in how evolutionary science acquires knowledge. I define what I mean by rhetoric by considering Darwin’s Origin. I use the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis to show how rhetoric conceived as situated and addressed argumentation enters into evolutionary theorizing. Finally, I argue that rhetorical criticism helps judge the success, limits, and failures of these theories.

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Notes

  1. We know that Darwin read Whately’s Elements of Logic but not whether he read its sister text, Elements of Rhetoric.

  2. Since the 1960s, philosophy of science has been increasingly less focused on theories. One result has been debate about the nature and status of laws. According to the models-based semantic view of theories law define the terms on which models are built; they do not directly state facts about the world (Lloyd 1988). For a discussion of this subject and a review of modeling in general, see Frigg and Hartmann (2012). On mechanisms, see (Bechtel and Richardson 1992; Machamer et al. 2000; Woodward 2002).

  3. For this threefold distinction among spheres of discourse and the norms of argumentation proper to each—dialogue in the personal, demonstration in the scientific-technical, and deliberation by debate leading to decision under uncertainty in the public sphere—see Goodnight (1982).

  4. In expressive rhetorical theories, metaphors convince audiences in conjunction with the rhetorical figure of hypotyposis: vivid description of scenes, such as the rainforest Darwin describes in Voyage of the Beagle (Campbell 1990).

  5. See Black (1962), Hesse (1966), and Ricoeur (1978) for an “interactive” theory of metaphor in which comparans and comparandum are said to fuse into a new image that brings into view a meaning not found in either of its two halves.

  6. Huxley, Spencer, and Wallace, who jointly promoted “survival of the fittest,” did not understand natural selection quite the way Darwin did. If they had they might not have been so quick to frame selection as survival of the fittest (Depew 2009).

  7. Dobzhansky (1962), like others of his generation of population-genetic Darwinians, was more inclined to reform eugenics, mostly by redefining it, than to discard it. He saw Muller, Huxley, and the cytologist Cyril Darlington as throwbacks. The next generation liked to crow that it had performed the politically praiseworthy job of refuting the very possibility of eugenics.

  8. Gould and Dawkins tended to use their popular writings as forums of this sort. Today’s evolutionary psychologists are even more egregious.

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Acknowledgments

I wish to thank the organizers of the conference from which this article sprang for inviting me to address this topic and the editors of this special issue for helpful criticism of earlier drafts. Special thanks, in addition, to John Angus Campbell, Helen Longino, and Bruce H. Weber.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Project on the Rhetoric of Inquiry, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA

    David J. Depew

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Depew, D.J. The Rhetoric of Evolutionary Theory. Biol Theory 7, 380–389 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13752-012-0054-2

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