Arguing with Numbers

The Intersections of Rhetoric and Mathematics

James Wynn editor G Mitchell Reyes editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Pennsylvania State University Press

Published:15th Apr '21

Should be back in stock very soon

This hardback is available in another edition too:

Arguing with Numbers cover

A collection of essays which deploy rhetorical lenses to explore how mathematics influences the values and beliefs with which we assess the world and make decisions, as well as how our values and beliefs influence the kinds of mathematical instruments we construct and accept.

As discrete fields of inquiry, rhetoric and mathematics have long been considered antithetical to each other. That is, if mathematics explains or describes the phenomena it studies with certainty, persuasion is not needed. This volume calls into question the view that mathematics is free of rhetoric.

Through nine studies of the intersections between these two disciplines, Arguing with Numbers shows that mathematics is in fact deeply rhetorical. Using rhetoric as a lens to analyze mathematically based arguments in public policy, political and economic theory, and even literature, the essays in this volume reveal how mathematics influences the values and beliefs with which we assess the world and make decisions and how our worldviews influence the kinds of mathematical instruments we construct and accept. In addition, contributors examine how concepts of rhetoric—such as analogy and visuality—have been employed in mathematical and scientific reasoning, including in the theorems of mathematical physicists and the geometrical diagramming of natural scientists. Challenging academic orthodoxy, these scholars reject a math-equals-truth reduction in favor of a more constructivist theory of mathematics as dynamic, evolving, and powerfully persuasive.

By bringing these disparate lines of inquiry into conversation with one another, Arguing with Numbers provides inspiration to students, established scholars, and anyone inside or outside rhetorical studies who might be interested in exploring the intersections between the two disciplines.

In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume are Catherine Chaput, Crystal Broch Colombini, Nathan Crick, Michael Dreher, Jeanne Fahnestock, Andrew C. Jones, Joseph Little, and Edward Schiappa.

Arguing with Numbers is a major contribution to the rhetoric of science, technology, and medicine and is full of important resources for teaching communication to math and engineering students. We can only hope, too, that it will become a foundational book, fostering the further growth of a rhetorical subfield investigating mathematics, related formal systems, and the disciplines that study them.”

—Randy Allen Harris, editor of Rhetoric and Incommensurability

ISBN: 9780271088815

Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 28mm

Weight: 567g

302 pages