In finalizing my paper and presentation, I've come to a realization about science, rhetoric and visualizations/new media. Throughout the course, we have studied and learned about scholars who made it their life's work to understand and generate new knowledge and new ways to transfer that knowledge. Without the tools of new media, they relied largely on their own voices and the handwritten word. The delivery of information, even when steeped in controversy, kept the conversation going. There was a longing for 'truth' as well as clarity and the lines between science and philosophy were blurred. But, as science and technology have evolved to provide our society with more answers about how we are all connected, have we become more disconnected from the information? Can we apply rhetorical strategies to scientific communication to re-create the splendor and drama of the great classical rhetoricians and philosophers we have been studying?
In my paper, I discuss how how the subjects of science and cooking are related, while the tools and techniques used to deliver information and stories about the two are very different. Recipes, stories, photographs of food are often a beginning. A picture of freshly baked bread may create a desire to a) buy bread, b) eat a piece of bread, c) bake bread, d) look up a recipe for bread, e) socialize, just to name a few. In contrast, during our course, there was an opportunity to view the 'blood' moon and stories about why this particular scientific phenomena occurred occupied the news for no more than 24 hours. These discussions about the moon, were not a beginning, but rather an end. I suspect that knowing that the moon might glow deep orange or red was 'cool', but it did not evoke an overall sense of 'wanting to know more' for most people. There was no story that accompanied the 'blood' moon, just scientific facts about why the phenomena was happening.
I imagine that the rhetoricians we have been studying might have the subjects of bread and the moon reversed. I can envision scholars breaking bread together, but not really thinking too much about how the bread was made or even the recipes used to make it. Bread was a necessity, but not a story. But a red moon.....now that would have certainly evoked lengthy discussions about religion, philosophy and science. I can even picture crowds gathering to hear the rhetoricians deliver the information and create a kind of 'call to action'. The scientific phenomena of the 'blood' moon would be a beginning and the bread would be just bread.
Science, scientific discoveries and scientific phenomena, have lost their mystique and narrative qualities when presented to a general audience, but I believe we can change this by adapting various rhetorical strategies such as arrangement to help an audience feel like they are part of the scientific conversation, not just an audience of the information.
