Jonah Lehrer's "The Future of Reading" is a short opinion piece on the unintended but disappointing results of electronic reading devices (such as Kindles). This piece is clearly intended to be scientific discourse by nature of the topic, evidence offered, and its place of publication. It was published on science blog and appeals to a readership made primarily of people interested in neuroscience.
Lehrer’s article complicated the reader’s understanding of the physical book vs. Kindle/Nook debate. He takes the debate far beyond the usual new vs. old, traditional vs. innovative, though he acknowledges that such a debate exists and gives his position in that debate. It's easy to appeal to the audience's possible nostalgia for books by speaking to the tactile senses involved in reading, perhaps by writing about favorite memories of reading as a child, idyllic scenes of old bookstores, and the like. Lehrer mentions that he is a tradition book-lover (revealing a bias in favor of books), but instead, Lehrer appeals to the scientific argument for books. This is a surprise, at least to me, and possibly to many readers. I did not realize that there are viable scientific reasons to read real books, rather than e-books.
Lehrer’s piece certainly acts as scientific simply by the nature of the evidence given. It does not follow traditional Baconian induction-influenced arrangement, but it does answer all of the stases questions posed by Fahnstock and Secor. States, these authors tell us, are a “format for the arrangement of an argument” (429).
The first question posed by Fahnstock/Secor on page 129 is simply, “What are they?” In the case of Lehrer’s article, “they” refers to electronic reading devices. Fahstock and Secor’s fist None of these questions surprise the reader, nor do they offer any stunning analytical insights. Interestingly, Lehrer’s piece follows Fahnstock and Secor’s assertion about states pattern, but it does not seem so at first glance. According to Fahnstock and Secor, “The stasis pattern not only generates these questions but also determines the order in which they are asked. Questions of fact must be addressed before questions of value or policy can be addressed” (429).
It seems that Lehrer assumes that the audience already knows the answer to the first several questions – questions of fact – that Fahnstock and Secor assert must come first in the arrangement of an argument. The audience to which Lehrer is writing (especially since his article appears in an online science blog) is fairly technologically savvy. They do not need an explanation of how Nooks and Kindles work, who uses them, and how they came to be. It is quite likely, in fact, that many members of the audience already use these devices. Formally answering these first few questions of fact would be redundant and boring for the intended audience.
However, Fahnstock and Secor don’t mention that sometimes the questions of stases may need to be answered for more than one topic in the same article. In this article, the basic, fact-level questions do need to be answered for the secondary topic – how the brain processes written language. On this topic, understanding exactly how the brain processes work is necessary to his argument: the vast majority of his audience does not know the ins and outs of written language processing as it applies to reading e-texts and traditional texts.
Fahnstock and Secor write that articles in the scientific sphere occupy primarily the realms of fact, definition, and cause (432). While Lehrer’s article definitely includes these, he does not stop there. To do so would be extraordinarily dull. It is necessary in this case to address questions of value and policy: otherwise, the audience might understand the relationship between the neuroscience of how people read and how that is loosely related to using Kindles and Nooks, but the argument would stop there – basically, the point of the article would be, “People’s brains read differently when e-book devices are used.” No value judgment would be made, and no policy (or corrective action) could be introduced.
The audience to which Lehrer is writing enables him to skip part of the stases arrangement set forth by Fahnstock and Secor without detracting from his argument – in fact, in this case skipping the basic questions strengthens his appeals. Although Lehrer is writing on a scientific topic to a neuroscience community, he clearly addresses “upper level” stases of value and policy that Fahnstock and Secor believe to appear only (or nearly only) in literature. He offer his argument for value: he sees the worth of e-books (easy access, portable, adaptable to different situations), but articulates that such value is not worth the trade-off. It’s too easy to read e-books, and something major (and neurological) is lost in the process. He also offers solutions to the problem (policy stases).
Lehrer’s article does follow elements of Fahnstock and Secor’s definition of stases, both as it applies to literary and scientific rhetoric. Through using the stases questions (though not necessarily exactly as Fahnstock and Secor intended), Lehrer demonstrates that rhetorical nature of scientific writing truly expands far past Fahnstock and Secor’s definition: it’s not free of value judgments and policy statements simply by nature of appearing in the scientific sphere, and those stases questions from page 429 don’t apply only to the main topic.
In some ways, Fahnstock and Secor seem to have tunnel vision when it comes to scientific rhetoric - they assume that it all falls neatly into one category and one level of complexity (Perhaps they have not read Kinneavy's "Basic Aims of Discourse?") To be fair, Fahnstock and Secor wrote about scientific discourse in the late 1980's, well before the advent of scientific blogging. Still, their writing about stases can assist a reader in understanding the aims and questions answered in scientific discourse; however, the reader has to avoid into the incorrect assumption that all scientific rhetoric must fit into their definition. It's limited.
Jonah Lehrer's "The Future of Reading," from Wired Science blog: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/09/the-future-of-reading-2/
Fahnstock, Jeanne and Marie Secor. "The Stases in Scientific and Literary Argument." Written Communication 5.4 (Oct. 1988): 427-443.
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