Shaping Science with Rhetoric: The Case of Dobzhansky, Schrodinger, and Wilson.

• Author: Lyne, John
• Position: Book Reviews

Shaping Science with Rhetoric: The Case of Dobzhansky, Schrodinger, and Wilson. By Leah Ceccarelli. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001; pp. xi + 204. $55.00; paper $20.00.

Ceccarelli maintains that science, at least in moments of interdisciplinary negotiation, can demonstrably be shaped by rhetoric. Shaping, in the relevant sense, is a form of persuasive action, rather than the solution to an epistemological problem. The case is based on three bold-to-audacious books by twentieth century scientists championing interdisciplinary research. Ceccarelli quickly convinces her reader that a close examination of these works and their reception will repay the efforts of the rhetorically-minded. She also reflects on the implications of the sort of analysis she has so ably undertaken.

The first text, Genetics and the Origins of Species (1937), by the Russian-trained geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky, was a watershed in the formation of the "modern synthesis" that brought Darwinian natural selection and Medelian genetics together. Dobzhansky was one of the few scientists in the 1930s who had credibility with both naturalists and geneticists and was therefore in a good position to mediate between two rival approaches to the understanding of biological change. The geneticists saw things on the scale of the laboratory and from the vantage of the genes, whereas naturalists looked at the grand sweep of natural selection. Each side thought it had the better grasp of mechanisms of change. The development of population genetics by W. S. Haldane, R. S. Fisher, and Sewall Wright was the conceptual groundwork that made a rapproachement possible, but this work had not made its way into the thinking of some of the scientists whose recruitment would be necessary to the synthesis. Dobzhansky, Ceccarelli s hows, understood the audience(s) that needed to be reached, and he successfully crafted his book to influence the two alienated sides.

One is struck here by testimony from a range of well-known biologists asserting that Genetic Origins was an important influence on them and on their peers. And we are led through both contemporary and subsequent reactions to the work in reviews and other writings, giving evidence of its widespread influence. Yet this influence was not based on any new scientific evidence in the usual sense. So we are asked to consider what accounts for the book's impact among scientists. The answer, in part at least, lies in Dobzhansky's deft...