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Issue 11(1), February 2004
Book review: Communicating science
Editorial: What are we teaching our kids?
Online updates: information of interest on the Web
Contact and copyright information
By Michael Truscello (mj2trusc@artsmail.uwaterloo.ca)
[Reprinted, with permission, from Technical Communication]
Gross, A.G.; Harmon, J.E.; Reidy, M. 2002. Communicating science: the scientific article from the 17th century to the present. Oxford University Press, N.Y., N.Y. 267 p. including index. [ISBN 0-19-513454-0. $60.00 USD.]
According to its preface, the primary audience for Communicating science is “students and scholars interested in scientific communication from a combined historical, rhetorical, social, and linguistic perspective”. Scholars with these interests will certainly recognize the primary author, Alan G. Gross, whose book The rhetoric of science (Harvard University Press 1990) is a seminal text in the field of the rhetoric of science.
Communicating science will interest rhetoric and communications scholars for at least two reasons. First, for rhetorical scholars who are interested in the linguistic features of the scientific article, it expands the number of articles surveyed and provides a more inclusive methodology that encompasses articles in English, French, and German. Second, it offers a theory to explain just how and why the scientific article has changed over the past 335 years.
The book succeeds in meticulously unpacking the argumentative strategies that have evolved over the centuries in attempts to express an increasingly complex set of knowledge claims, the statements science makes about reality. However, it is less successful in its attempt to explain the development of the scientific article as “an instance of evolutionary change”. The latter theory feels somewhat sketchy, but it does manage to provide a foundation for other researchers to explore and expand.
The authors structure their text according to two fundamental questions: “(1) In the scientific article viewed over time, what are the trends in style, presentation, and argument—the traditional components of rhetoric? (2) Can the trends, or patterns of development, that our analysis uncovers be explained?”
The first question determines the organization of the central chapters of the book, which follow the scientific article from the 17th to the 20th century. For each century, the authors arrange the discussion according to style and presentation, then allocate a chapter devoted to argument. The analysis for each century moves from issues of syntax, to the ways in which the text is organized and data arranged, to the “actual ensemble of means scientists employ to support their claims”.
To the nonspecialist, much of the core of the book can feel like a tedious articulation of general principles. Although it’s nice to know that to be verbs occurred in 22.6% of the passages of the 17th-century English scientific articles surveyed, or that complex subject noun phrases occurred 17 times per 100 words in articles written between 1876 and 1900, general readers might simply skip to the book’s conclusions. Here they learn that across the centuries scientific articles became increasingly impersonal through the use of passive voice, that they became more nominal than verbal, and that their sentence syntax actually became simpler when measured in terms of sentence length and clausal density. That said, I do not wish to diminish the value of the authors’ rigorous approach to the subject. The somewhat surprising result here is that contemporary scientific articles are actually syntactically simpler than ever; what makes them difficult to read is the technical language, not the style.
Professional communicators, often students of visual rhetoric and authors such as Edward Tufte and Richard Buchanan, may find value in examining the historical development of visual representation in scientific articles. The authors make a rather provocative claim worth investigating: “As a result of [this] increased visual component, the modern scientific article has now become almost as much about interpreting information in figures and tables as about reading straight text”. In addition, the visual component of scientific articles is expected to change as Web publication becomes more common for scientific journals.
The authors expect this convergence with electronic publishing to “accelerate modularization” and allow for “visual images that move and make sounds”, among other prophesies. Their epilogue to Communicating science forms a potential bridge with the concerns of technical communication studies.
There are two central theoretical ambiguities within Communicating science: the notion of “cognitive complexity” and the use of “selection theory” to explain the development of the scientific article. The authors posit: “The greatest evolutionary change in the 20th century has occurred in our measures related to cognitive complexity. As science has grown more theoretically and methodologically complex, its grammar has adapted by adding substantially to the complexity in its noun phrases and by deployment of specialized literary devices...” “Cognitive complexity” is not simply a euphemism for “more theoretical terms”: it gets its own entry in the index, perhaps suggesting that it is a key concept. However, the exact nature of its importance is never explained. What is the relationship between mind and language being expressed here?
The authors attempt to explain the changing features of the scientific article as responses to evolutionary selection pressures. Here they use the ideas of philosophers Stephen Toulmin, David Hull, James Griesemer, and William Wimsatt. The article is the organism in this analogy, and the properties of the article genre, or the features of style, presentation, and argument, constitute the phenotype. The application of selection theory to classical rhetorical theory is ingenious and theoretically generative, but here it is an unfinished project.
The authors provide the following qualification of their efforts: “But while we do not insist that our evolutionary explanation is correct, we do insist that the problem of explaining change is real, and that, since, at the moment, no plausible explanatory scheme exists other than evolution, a refinement of our exploratory attempt seems the only route to explanatory progress”. When they apply this theory to a case study in the final chapter, the results prove only that selection theory offers a compelling method for organizing classical rhetoric but ultimately provides no more explanatory power than any historicist account could offer.
Clearly, there is more work to be done with this theory of genre change, especially since Gross and company claim that selection theory is the best explanation not only for argumentative practices in science but for everything else as well. I suspect that the idea of “cognitive complexity” may be pointing toward the type of connection between language, embodiment, and consciousness made most recently by cognitive linguists George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in Philosophy in the flesh (Basic Books 1999), and perhaps as an extension of a rhetorical study such as Jeanne Fahnestock’s Rhetorical figures in science (Oxford University Press 1999).
If someone such as Gross could articulate “cognitive complexity” in this manner—suggesting that rhetoric is not just a byproduct of thought, but a direct embodiment of thought processes—then the use of selection theory to explain change in a rhetorical genre might seem more grounded and revolutionary. If science is not just rhetoric, as Gross and company argue, then it seems they must do more to explain the other half of the equation, the part that is not rhetorical, to realize the epistemological efficacy of selection theory as it is applied here.
Michael Truscello is an English Language and Literature doctoral candidate at the University of Waterloo. He researches multimedia design, rhetoric of science, and science and technology studies. As a writer and designer with Online-Learning.com, he coauthored an online usability testing course. He belongs to the Southwestern Ontario STC chapter.
By Geoff Hart (ghart@videotron.ca)
When my son was born nearly 14 years ago, I resolved to be a modern, liberal man of the nineties and do my best to avoid imposing various odious cultural stereotypes on him. Thus, over the first few years of Matt’s life, my wife and I furnished him with an ample supply of doe-eyed stuffed animals in addition to all the usual appurtenances of the modern male child, such as action figures and clanky metal cars and trucks. When my daughter arrived a couple years later, we reversed the process and made sure she had plenty of access to things that weren’t soft and cuddly. In addition to all the new toys provided by doting grandparents, Alison got her very own monster trucks and Princess Leia action figure (compete with “blaster”), and had free access to all her brother’s bricabrac, as Matt was eager to share with his new sister.
As a reader of things scientific, you’ve probably read enough about elegant theories demolished by inconvenient facts that you can imagine the results. Matt pretty much ignored anything soft and cuddly, whereas Alison played with cars and Star Wars stuff mostly to be social with Matt; left to her own devices, she gravitated naturally to the soft and cuddly, and only rarely persuaded Matt to abandon his interests in things that go clank and boom to play with her toys instead. I still retain enough of my scientific training to recognize this for the anecdotal evidence that it is, but the experience did convince me that there’s a significant biological component that determines how our biological sex expresses itself in overt behaviors. On the other hand, both kids absolutely adored Lego, and spent hours happily building houses, spaceships, and the occasional rectilinear and extremely pointillistic animal. Apparently one mustn’t read too much into the notion of biology as destiny either.
Over the years, it’s becoming increasingly clear to me that social factors play a huge role in how our children express their underlying biology. Matt, for example, has fallen in with the computer gaming crowd, and spends far too much of his time blasting anything that moves on a variety of computer screens. Alison, on the other hand, has arrived at that awkward age when body image becomes a significant and very troubling fact. None of my family has ever wasted much time bewailing the issue of weight, so the message that she’s fat must apparently have come from elsewhere.
From her peer group? Most probably. Much though we parents try to provide a safe, nurturing, supportive, accepting, uncritical home environment, we all eventually face the fact that what our children learn at home provides only the foundation for what they’ll become. Most children now spend at least as much time outside the home, under someone else’s influence, as they spend at home; many spend far more time away from home than with their parents.
Disturbingly, many of the messages they receive and many of the forces that shape them are outside our control. We can burn our television and cancel our subscription to People magazine, but the notion of anorexia as being the desired social norm for female bodies will slip past such crude attempts to filter the messages our children receive. There’s not much we can do about this either, since the mass media have long since escaped our control and exert an increasingly pernicious influence on our minds. But we can at least pay close attention to those our children interact with on a daily basis—including ourselves—and make sure we’re happy with the messages our children are receiving.
Take, for example, the notion of education in the sciences. It’s now broadly known that science teachers tend to provide stronger encouragement to boys than to girls who might otherwise pursue an interest in the sciences. We can’t always influence those teachers, but we can take other steps, such as talking to our children to discover whether their teachers have been afflicted by this attitude, and by encouraging female mentors (scientists or women interested in and educated in science) to volunteer their time within the educational environment.
Equally importantly, we can find out whether we’re sending the wrong signals ourselves without being aware of it. This potential problem became apparent to me when I read of a study published in the January 2003 issue of Developmental Psychology, which reported that parents used more technical and precise language when doing science experiments with their sons than with their daughters. (At least they were doing such experiments with their daughters, though this finding is biased by the fact that children were selected for the study based on a demonstrated interest in science. How many young girls never even had this opportunity presented to them?) This suggests that the parents, whether consciously or not, were assuming that the technical jargon of science would communicate more effectively with their sons than with their daughters.
It’s not possible to objectively assess our own communication style, but with a little help from someone else (a partner or spouse, perhaps) who has been asked to pay attention to what we’re doing, we can at least identify whether we’re passing on our own socially conditioned biases to yet another generation. And we can take overt measures to correct the problem; for example, when my daughter briefly expressed an interest in nursing, I asked her why she wouldn’t consider becoming a doctor instead. I made it clear that although nursing is fine choice of profession, she shouldn’t narrow her options unduly at this point. When we read books together, I quiz her on the tough words to make sure she understands them, and shamelessly indulge in my own evangelical love of etymology if she doesn’t. I encourage you to make similar efforts with your own children (and in the context of this editorial, particularly with your daughters). Children are far too important for us to leave their intellectual development to someone else. After all, scientific communication is about more than just preparing that next journal article; sometimes it’s about preparing that next generation of writers (or editors) of journal articles.
by Geoff Hart (ghart@videotron.ca)
As you may have noticed from the e-mail address, I’m no longer working at FERIC. I’ve embraced the carefree life of the freelancer—though experienced colleagues know well that the root “free” is somewhat misleading in both words. Still, I’m enjoying the freelance life thus far, and that’s a positive sign.
If you’ve tried to reach me at my old address and failed, it’s not because I’m ignoring you. Try again at my new address.
Compiled by Geoff Hart (ghart@videotron.ca)
Ever thought you’d make a great geek, if only you could afford the time and tuition to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology? Well now you can, virtually speaking, and for not much more than the cost of your Internet subscription fee. MIT has made public the course materials for a wide range of their academic programs. For details and to browse the list of offerings, point your browser to the MIT Web site: http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html
For those interested in learning more about medical devices, there’s now an alternative to traveling to medical conferences. The Clinical Device Forum (www.clinicaldevice.com/) offers an online forum for those interested in this field to discuss issues such as clinical evaluations of devices, and the diverse ethical, scientific, regulatory, and management issues related to their development and use. Membership is open to anyone involved in research in this field, free of charge.
For more information, contact Nancy Stark, the organizer of the forum (njstark@clinicaldevice.com).
Speaking of conferences, wouldn’t it be nice if you knew what conferences in your field of interest were in the planning stages? Now you can find out. Science has put its own list of conferences online (http://recruit.sciencemag.org/feature/meetings/meetings.shl), free to all. In addition to a searchable database of meetings, you can also use the Web site to search for jobs. (Job tip from the trenches: Is an organization hiring new scientists? Perhaps they’ll also be hiring scientific communicators. No harm in asking!)
“Herbert Simon did not seem inclined to explain his premise when he wrote: ‘The computer is a member of an important family of artifacts called symbol systems. ... Another important member of the family (some of us think, anthropomorphically, it is the most important), is the human mind and brain.’ Simon could begin a thought by saying, ‘If computers are organized somewhat in the image of man’ without going on to question that ‘if’. In existence barely twenty-five years, the machine that was designed to be our other—the not-human, accurate in a world where to be human is to err—had become the very analogue of human intelligence, the image of man.”—Ellen Ullman, Programming the post-human
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“Sentience is the crest of the body, not its crown. It is integral to the substrate from which it arose, not something that can be taken off and placed elsewhere. We drag along inside us the brains of reptiles, the tails of tadpoles, the DNA of fungi and mice; our cells are permuted paramecia; our salty blood is what’s left of our birth in the sea. Genetically, we are barely more than roundworms. Evolution, that sloppy programmer, has seen fit to create us as a wild amalgam of everthing that came before us: the whole history of life on Earth lives on, written in our bodies. And who is to say which piece of this history can be excised, separated, deemed ‘useless’ as an essential part of our nature and being?”—Ellen Ullman, Programming the post-human
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“Students that scored well on [science knowledge tests] were no more or less skeptical of pseudoscientific claims than students that scored very poorly. Apparently, the students were not able to apply their scientific knowledge to evaluate these pseudoscientific claims. We suggest that this inability stems in part from the way that science is traditionally presented to students: students are taught what to think but not how to think.”—W. Richard Walker et al. (Skeptic, Vol. 9, No. 3)
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“The universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”—J.B.S. Haldane
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“If cults were typically founded in response to disaster or plague, why are cults proliferating today? What calamity is driving people into them? The answer seems to be a general aphoria: a loss of meaning or of nerve, a thirst for simple answers in the face of overwhelming complexity.”—Daniel Dennett, Appraising Grace, Sciences
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“The kernel of truth is imbedded [sic] in the center of a large ball of confusion that is burrowed into from all directions by people of diverse persuasions and talents. Only when they finally meet at the center will there be agreement.”—George W. Thomson, The Brocken Specter, Acceptable Compromise, and Other Illusions
The Exchange is published on behalf of the Scientific Communication special interest group of the Society for Technical Communication. Material in the Exchange can be reprinted without permission if credit is given to the author and a copy of the reprint is sent to the editor. Please send comments, letters, and articles to the editor.
Editor, publisher, and SIG manager:
Geoff Hart, c/o FERIC, 580 boul. St-Jean, Pointe-Claire, Québec, H9R 3J9 Canada (ghart@videotron.ca)
Webmaster:
Geoff Hart, c/o FERIC, 580 boul. St-Jean, Pointe-Claire, Québec, H9R 3J9 Canada (ghart@videotron.ca)
© 2004, Society for Technical Communication (901 North Stuart St., Suite 904, Arlington, Virginia 22203-1822 U.S.A., 703-522-4114, 703-522-2075 fax, www.stc.org)
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