Abstract

This qualitative research project looks at how rhetoric is used in a science think-tank to formulate knowledge and facilitate interdisciplinary communication. It draws from the author's participant-observer experiences at the Santa Fe Institute since 1997 as a freelance writer, from a series of focused research questions related to rhetoric at the site, and from textual research. The study focuses on metaphor, which is the rhetorical trope that the SFI scientists identified as being of prime importance to their discourse. The central question that emerged is, "What can the rhetorical challenges confronting members of the Santa Fe Institute tell us about the role of rhetoric---particularly metaphor---in science?" ;Results are presented in three sections, reflecting three related methodologies. The first part is a narrative by the author describing the rhetorical lessons learned by the author in writing the occasional article for the Institute and working with members editing those projects. The second and most extensive section is an analysis drawn from the author's interviews with 17 members of the Institute---the majority being scientists. Most of this section explores the role of metaphor in constituting theory at the Institute. The author argues that metaphors carry multiple meanings and inferences, which he calls "harmonics." These harmonics force scientists using metaphors to confront the implications of those terms, a process that is integral to building theory. In the third section of the project, the author examines a key word used at the Institute, the term "complexity," and shows how it has been used in the arts and sciences since Aristotle. This section concludes that abstract terms like "complexity" are not metaphors, although they serve as umbrella terms for new paradigms of thought. ;The author concludes that theory-constituting metaphors are especially important at a postmodern science think tank that is as much a center of philosophy as it is of empirical research. The Institute is deeply involved in refining the ideas shaping a new paradigm in science and society---the paradigm that information exchange creates reality, that information is the new materiality