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Effecting Science in Affective Places: The Rhetoric of Science in American Science and Technology Centers

Herman, Jennifer Linda
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1396961008

Abstract Details

2014, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, English.
My dissertation traces and analyzes the identifications with science that emerge in the rhetorical tradition of the multimodal exhibition of scientific objects, concepts, processes, and practices in the museum context. I demonstrate how multimodal exhibits in science centers have embedded implicit instruction in scientific method and its value; these identifications with science are further reinforced and complicated by wider cultural expectations and ambitions for science and science centers, and how those expectations and ambitions come to be realized in the built spaces of the science centers enclosing the exhibits themselves. I argue that the display of science exhibits within the context of science centers’ built spaces reproduces a rhetorical tradition that encourages visitors to respond according to sense-making conventions that are historic in origins, and which privilege a “folk epistemology of common sense empiricism.” The compelling characterization of science as a process conducted through careful observation and inference was separated from the dominant definition of science when experimental science displaced analytical science and its practice moved from private homes and museums to university laboratories. In the twentieth century, through their reproduction of exhibits’ “naked eye science,” museums—both natural history and the emerging institution of the science center—preserved the now-outdated theory of knowledge-making with objects. As cultural expectations and ideas about science changed during the twentieth century, the needs of local communities hosting science centers changed, and science center institutions and buildings were adapted to address new educational, economic and civic demands. While exhibits’ sense-making functions remained based on the assumption that science is done through careful observation of past events, new architectures and built spaces enclosing those exhibits realized celebratory functions for their surrounding communities, conferring on the exhibits the community’s value for science as a vehicle of economic and social progress, an exciting exploration of received facts, and a process to be mastered by the “noble scientist.” My study reveals not only varying levels of complexity by which communicative modes function together to realize scientific meanings, but also how the convergence of historic, social, and material factors influence the meanings that exhibits and their exhibit designers may make available to visitors. Additionally, because some research suggests that the primary effect of the museum experience is not better understanding of science, but a new excitement or curiosity about it, understanding the affective aspects of identification in science centers can help scholars better understand how attitudes towards science are shaped in specific contexts. The celebratory identifications with science are the most prominent aspect of the museum experience, and as a result, these science centers promote an outdated conception of science that is exciting, but sets up its audience—American children and families, primarily—for unexpected disappointment and frustration when they encounter the true intellectual challenges and laborious repetition of scientific practice. Further, those celebratory functions may be politicized and co-opted by other institutions with motives that run directly counter to those of the science center.
H. Lewis Ulman (Advisor)
Elizabeth Weiser (Committee Member)
Jonathan Buehl (Committee Member)
353 p.
Epistemology; Multimedia Communications; Museum Studies; Rhetoric
rhetoric of science; science accommodation; museum studies; visual rhetoric; material rhetoric; multimodal rhetoric

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Herman, J. L. (2014). Effecting Science in Affective Places: The Rhetoric of Science in American Science and Technology Centers [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1396961008

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Herman, Jennifer. Effecting Science in Affective Places: The Rhetoric of Science in American Science and Technology Centers . 2014. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1396961008.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Herman, Jennifer. "Effecting Science in Affective Places: The Rhetoric of Science in American Science and Technology Centers ." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1396961008

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1396961008
1,097
© 2014, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License Effecting Science in Affective Places: The Rhetoric of Science in American Science and Technology Centers by Jennifer Linda Herman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.