The Sciences and the Humanities: Building a Bridge between the “Two Cultures” through Rhetoric

Abstract

The sciences and the humanities are treated as two incompatible discourses and the former enjoys a superior status both within and outside the academic society. This dominance of science as a discourse synonymous with knowledge while humanities and its methods are devaluated come from the assumption that scientific domain is a linear progression of facts discovered using a rational methodology. Thus, it’s worthwhile to lay bare the ruptures and the remedial rhetoric that lie behind the façade of ‘objectivity’ and ‘rationality’ in science in order to revise the existing academic framework. My attempt here is to re-articulate the discourse of science as shaped and subject to elements traditionally thought to be extra scientific or even anti-scientific in the positivist notion of science. Drawing from the postpositivist philosophy of science put forth by Michael Polanyi, Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend which dismisses an objective methodology in science, this paper argues that rhetoric plays a constitutive role in scientific knowledge by making scientific progress possible. By establishing rhetoric rather than methodology as the decisive element in the advancement of science, the boundaries between science and non-science begin to blur.