Introduction to the Symposium on Engaged Rhetoric of Science, Technology, Engineering and Medicine

Abstract

This article argues for an engaged rhetoric of science, technology, engineering and medicine (RSTEM) that collaborates with science in the development and execution of research projects. It traces the emergence of an engaged RSTEM through recent disciplinary history and identifies Bruno Latour and Harry Collins and Robert Evans' work as watershed moments that influence this commitment to collaboration. In reviewing the history of critique in the discipline, it argues that we have practical and political common ground with science that can supersede the necessity of critique. Finally, it addresses the difficult questions of why we as a discipline and as individual scholars would engage with science, what we have to contribute to scientific projects and where engaged scholars fit into interdisciplinary projects and into the credit cycle of the research university.