Toward a Photographic Rhetoric of Nineteenth-Century Scientific and Technical Texts

Abstract

Beginning in the 1850s, authors of American and British scientific and technical publications began to integrate photographs into their texts. These chemical and photo-mechanically reproduced images often functioned as the basis for carefully defined claims for truth. In the natural sciences, in microscopy, in medicine, in the emerging studies of psychology and the social sciences, and in the dissemination and promotion of technological accomplishments, the verity of early published photographs led authors to claim that an image could be equal to its referent in nature, or even exceed its referent when conveying scientific and technical information. This article presents a technological, cultural, and rhetorical history of published photographs based upon twenty-three images selected from a review of forty photographically illustrated texts published between 1854 and 1900.

Toward an Ethical Rhetoric of the Digital Scientific Image: Learning From the Era When Science Met Photoshop

“…Good images increase the credibility of an argument; an author's good scientific reputation can improve a reader's reaction to deviations from imaging norms. These studies and others (e.g., Hutto, 2008;Prelli, 2006;Wickliff, 1996) have increased our understanding of the visual rhetoric of scientific images in a variety of contexts; however, only a few scholars of rhetoric or technical communication have addressed the effect of digital media on the multimodal rhetoric of science. Winn's (2009) case study of the controversy over the ivory-billed woodpecker exemplifies how digital images participate in scientific argumentation in a field that has come to terms with digital photography.…”

“…The next section uses these documents to reconstruct the history of the digital scientific image. Like Wickliff's (1996) account of 19th-century scientific photographs, this history of digital photography reveals how scientific communicators encountered the rhetorical problems and possibilities of a new visual communication tool.…”

A Bibliography of Works Published in the History of Professional Communication from 1994–2009: Part 2

“…In "The Daguerreotype and the Rhetoric of Photographic Technology" (1998) [55], Wickliff examines the 19th-century arguments concerning the nature and rhetorical powers of this new technology. In "Toward a Photographic Rhetoric of Nineteenth-Century Scientific and Technical Texts" (1996) [56], Wickliff reads the photographs of various scientific texts from 19th-century America and Britain and evaluates them culturally and rhetorically to determine their truth claims. Finally, in "Geography, Photography, and Environmental Rhetoric in the American West of 1860-1890 (1997) [57], Wickliff examines the various complex rhetorical strategies used in 19th-century government surveys of this region to impose colonizing metaphors upon it and its resources.…”