Scientists argue, in private, in public, in the pages of journals and books.
They sway and are swayed. That's how they do science, far more profoundly than by staring into beakers or out of telescopes. What issues forth, as data, as theory, as law, is the residue of the strongest communal arguments they can muster. And a growing number of historians, philosophers, sociologists, even English professors, are talking that talk. Even the desiccated remnants of scientific suasions that make it into the books are stunningly obvious as soon as you abandon the notion that language is something you look past rather than something you look with.