Developments and trends in the Rhetoric of Science

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

1. See Battistini (2000), Jones (1930), Nate (2001), Nicolson (1946, 1960), Stark (2009), and Vickers and Struever (1985) for treatments of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

2. See Brantlinger (1989), Chapple (1986), Christie and Shuttleworth (1989), Martin and Veel (1998), and Myers (1985) for discussions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

3. See Levine’s refutation of C.P. Snow’s influential idea that science and culture, or, more specifically, science and literature, form ‘two cultures’. As Levine writes in his 1987 introductory essay to One Culture, ‘it is possible and fruitful to understand how literature and science are mutually shaped by their participation in the culture at large – in the intellectual, moral, aesthetic, social, economic, and political communities which both generate and take their shape from them’ (5–6).

4. One notes the long-lived BBC natural history documentaries by David Attenborough, as well as the growing popularity of platforms like ted.com, used to disseminate scientific knowledge on a global scale.

5. See the 10 controversies discussed by Hellman (1998) and those in Harris (1997).

6. Wilberforce famously ridiculed Darwin’s theory, culminating in the question as to whether Huxley claimed his descent from a monkey through his grandfather or his grandmother. For Huxley’s version see Leonard Huxley (2012: 268). For a general discussion of Huxley’s rhetoric and the popularisation of Victorian science, see Block (1989).

7. See Huxley, ‘Science and Culture’ (1880) and Arnold’s response in ‘Literature and Science’ (1882); Snow’s ‘The Two Cultures’ (Rede Lecture, 1959); Leavis’s reaction appeared in the Times Literary Supplement in 1962.

8. On graphs and figures in scientific argument and more generally on the language of mathematics, see Bastide (2001) and O’Halloran (2005).

9. See also Atkinson (1999) on how science discourse in the Philosophical Transactions has changed over time.

10. For a discussion of the Royal Society’s ideas about language, thought and style see Hüllen (1989).

11. See, for example, Berkenkotter (2007), Campagna et al. (2012) and Swales (1990) on genre; Hyland and Bondi (2006) on academic discourse; Fahnestock (1999), Freddi (2011), Gross (1990; 2006; 2011), and Miller and Charney (2007) on scientific communication.

12. See also Campbell (1997) and, for a lexical analysis of The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man, Freddi (2008).

13. See, for example, Calsamiglia (2003), Halliday and Martin (1993), Martin and Veel (1998), Myers (1990), and Shinn and Whitley (1985).

14. See Freddi’s (2011) analysis of analogical reasoning in Richard Feynman’s lectures on physics.

15. In his study of historical examples, Myers (1989) has highlighted the use of dialogue for didactic purposes, as in Maria Edgeworth’s Harry and Lucy, which uses a fictionalised teaching scenario and stages its characters as representing ‘ignorance and knowledge: the learner who knows nothing, and the teacher who knows everything’ (174). On the forms of science popularisation, see also Moirand (2003) and Myers (2003).

16. See Charney (2003) and Montemayor-Borsinger (2012) for analyses of its popularising strategies.

17. See, for instance, the digitised Walking with Dinosaurs series and the six-part Space series with actor Sam Neill as presenter; both are BBC productions. On early BBC science broadcasts, see the recent article by Jones (2012).

18. See poems collected in Bush’s (1962) and in Heath-Stubbs and Salman’s (1984) anthologies. Verse was even used by scientists themselves: Erasmus Darwin presented his ideas in poems such as ‘The Botanic Garden’ (1792).

19. See, for instance, Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen (1998), which manages to render the difficulties of quantum physics and the uncertainty principle by translating it into a human issue. Consisting mainly of dialogues between Bohr and Heisenberg, the play even plays with the notion of a sober language of science when the two scientists decide to explain everything to Margrethe ‘in plain language’. Bohr: ‘… You know how strongly I believe that we don’t do science for ourselves, that we do it so we can explain to others … / Heisenberg: In plain language. / Bohr: In plain language. Not your view, I know – you’d be happy to describe what you were up to purely in differential equations if you could – but for Margrethe’s sake …’ (38).

20. See, for instance, Evans (1954), works by Carlisle (1980), Cosslett (1982), Davie (1963), Eastwood (1961) and Ingersoll (1992).

21. The relations of literature and the arts to the sciences and technology are investigated by specialised platforms such as Configurations: A Journal of Literature, Science, and Technology. Founded in 1993, the journal promotes interdisciplinary research on the interplay between arts and humanities and sciences.

22. Given the range of literary ways to speak about science, it is unsurprising that a vast amount of research on literature and science has accumulated. See Schatzberger, Waite and Johnson’s 1987 bibliography; in particular, research has explored the impact of science on literature: see Jones (1966) and Nicolson (1946) on the impact of Newton in the eighteenth century; Beer (1983), Cosslett (1982) and Levine (1988) on the impact of Darwin in the nineteenth century; other aspects of Victorian science and its reception in literature have been discussed by Brantlinger (1989) and Myers (1985); finally, Shaffer 1998 is a collection of essays on literature and science.

23. For an example of this type of work see also Barbara Korte and Christian Mair’s 2010 publication on linguistics and cultural studies.