Scientific Knowledge, Popularisation, and the Use of Metaphors: Modern genetics in popular science magazines

Abstract

The article reports an empirical study of how authors in popular science magazines attempt to render scientific knowledge intelligible to wide audiences. In bridging the two domains of “popular” and “scientific” knowledge, respectively, metaphor becomes central. We ask the empirical question of what metaphors are used when communicating about modern genetics (DNA and related terms), and what images of human beings are produced. The results show that this field is rich in metaphors and such resources play an important role when recontextualising genetics from one domain to the other. Anthropomorphic metaphors are frequent and genes and DNA are made into intentional agents that decide, choose, and remember. One level of description (molecular) is conflated with a totally different one (intentionality). Other metaphors come from the field of communication (genes as text, letter, library), architecture, and several other fields. The results testify to the role of specific cultural categories when narrating abstract phenomena. It is also argued that popularisation seems to imply making the representation model invisible, and in this sense the model is presented as a claim about ontology.

Keywords:

• DNA
• Gene
• Metaphor
• Popular science

Acknowledgements

The research reported here has been funded by the Swedish Research Council through a grant to the Network for Sociocultural Studies (NSKS). We wish to thank the three anonymous reviewers, especially the geneticist, who made a number of clarifications.

Notes

1. In the information column of the magazine, it is claimed that: “The articles in the magazine are written by astronomers, physicists, doctors, geologists, biologists, anthropologists, mathematicians, archaeologists, and science journalists” (our translation). However, since no further information on this matter is given, either here or in relation to individual articles, this claim cannot be confirmed. (In relation to this quote, it should also be pointed out that the Swedish word vetenskap, in contrast to the English word “science”, includes the humanities.)

2. Actually the search yields 40 hits, 30 of these from 1994 to 2003. However, three articles are from a special supplement that at the time of study could be ordered only from the magazine. Since neither the research library nor the city library had this supplement, these articles were not included in this study.

3. Consider also, for example, what Walter Gilbert (who won a Nobel Prize for developing a technique for DNA sequencing) writes in a chapter entitled “A vision of the grail”: “Three billion bases of sequence can be put on a single compact disc (CD), and one will be able to pull a CD out of one's pocket and say, ‘Here is a human being; it's me!’” (Gilbert, 1992, p. 96).