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New Faculty Member Jonathan Buehl Wins National Dissertation Award
The project, Instrument to Evidence to Argument, examines how scientists use images to make arguments about invisible things. Visualizing invisible phenomena can create a host of rhetorical problems for scientists. Colleagues need to be convinced that new technologies generate credible visual evidence; data need to be mediated and remediated to become effective arguments; images need to be modified for rhetorical purposes without crossing the line between ethical enhancement and fraud.
Instrument to Evidence to Argument approaches such rhetorical problems by documenting and theorizing about the production, reception, and circulation of using case studies of x-ray diffraction photographs, maps of seafloor magnetism, and digital visualizations of clouds. Using these representational technologies, authors visualized the invisible to make new knowledge claims. In the early twentieth century, rival scientists used the same x-ray image of a crystal to make very different arguments about both the crystal's molecular configuration and the nature of x-rays. In the middle of the twentieth century, geophysicists remediated maps and graphs of magnetic data to support formerly discredited hypotheses about the forces moving the continents. Twenty-first-century climate scientists used satellite images to challenge assumptions about the boundaries of clouds--an important component of climate models. In each case, rhetorical visualizations were essential to the success scientific interpretations.
Dr. Joyce Carter (Associate Professor, Texas Tech) chaired the award committee and presented the award to Jonathan at CCCC. In her remarks, Dr. Carter described the project as:
"Centering on three cases that embody the evolving role of visual "evidence" in scientific arguments, Buehl convincingly argues that studying the context and reception of such scientific arguments can help us better understand the implications of new visual methods and guide our ethical practices. He makes rigorous use of argumentation studies, visual rhetoric, historical research, and rhetoric of science while remaining firmly grounded in solid rhetorical theory. This work will undoubtedly have a significant disciplinary impact at the intersections of history of science, rhetoric, and visual communication."
Congratulations Dr. Buehl!
