Episode 4--An Interview with Randy Allen Harris

The Association for the Rhetoric of Science and Technology (ARST) celebrated 20 years in 2012. The ARST Oral History Project was conceived to document the institutional history of the organization and the larger intellectual history of the rhetoric of science, technology, and medicine. This interview, with Randy Harris, Professor at the University of Waterloo, features discussion of: *how cognitive structuring patterns shape how we argue, think, and believe *on being drawn into rhetoric of science through coincidence *why anything involving John Campbell tends toward the memorable *how Gaonkar got it all wrong, but why the Gaonkar affair was good for business *on rhetoric vs. communication of science, and why Thomas Kuhn was horrified about the "r" word *why doing good work under the rubric of rhetoric will bring the philosophers, historians, and sociologists around *how the relationships of theorists, rather than theories, create the perception of incommensurability *on science as a symbol system, and how rhetoric ought to be the fundamental discipline to investigate it *what rhetoric adds to studies of science and what science adds to rhetoric *on rhetoric of science, emergent technologies, cognitive styles, and orality *why picking up cognitive directions in rhetoric of science would be useful