Thematic Repetition as Rhetorical Technique

Abstract

While several strategies have been credited for enhancing the rhetorical acceptability of important historical works in scientific and technical writing, little attention has been paid to William Harvey's On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals. A close examination of his work shows his fear of publication (because of his contemporaries' long-held beliefs about the order of the body and its functions) and his strategies for reducing resistance to his ideas: appropriate circular references and metaphors and organizational techniques that clarify and enhance not only his thesis—that the blood circulates through the body—but also demonstrate the circular pattern as part of God's natural order for the universe.