The beauty and nature of science

First let me say that I find it extremely interesting, and thought-provoking, that Carl Sagan's piece begins with a description of a world that the author feared would come into existence, and that very description is the world we seem to live in today: "I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time--when the United Stats is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness." Okay, so maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration of the state of the world at the current moment, but it does seem valid on at least a few points. I don't necessarily have a lot of cool thoughts or ideas surrounding this fear of Sagan's but rather find it interesting that the one thing he fears seems to be slowly becoming the reality of the state of the US.

The readings from last week and this week seem to address, most commonly, the idea that there is a certain beauty and nature to science and the way that it functions. Additionally, this chunk of readings addressed the way in which a writer can convey the beauty and nature of science in a way that hooks a layman reader and keeps them interested in the science being presented.

Beginning with Chapter 4 of A Field Guide for Science Writers I quickly found myself both agreeing and disagreeing with the advice given on how to effectively write a piece of science writing. While I agree that keeping things in layman's terms is important, as is the flow and content of the piece, I don't necessarily agree that a reader needs every single thing spelled out for them in the simplest of terms. The author introduces an A to B, B to C, C to D path of logic for the reader to follow. This is important because it allows the reader to follow a linear stream of thoughts and ideas that are all interconnected, thus making the concept being conveyed more readily understood. Yet when the author of this chapter says, "The reader needs to be held by the hand, and walked through the idea, every step, step by step" (29) I cannot help but disagree with the author. Again, I recognize the value of giving the reader a step-by-step explanation and analysis to follow, yet I also recognize that readers are intelligent and can come to conclusions all on their own. I think that saying the writer must hold the readers hand and pull them through the text word by word is overkill, and underestimates the reasoning capabilities of the readers. I also think that over-explaining or over-simplifying for the reader has the potential of decimating the beauty and nature of the science that the writer is trying to talk about. I think that this concept is best put in The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing, by Lewis Wolpert, "Science often explains the familiar in terms of the unfamiliar" (233).

D2L Sucks

Sooo, I have been trying to access D2L to get the texts for tonight's post; however, it is down... Still. It's no biggie, it's not like I have homework to do or anything. Thanks D2L.

This is how I feel about D2L!

Needless to say, this is me saying that I have no access to our texts and thusly have nothing I can post about for tomorrow's class. Sorry Doug and classmates for not having anything valuable to say about the texts that I have no access to. I also don't have the syllabus saved on my computer (I know, I'm a terrible student!) so I don't even have access to that. Therefore, if the readings for Thursday are from the books, I have no idea and still can't write a post about them. Hopefully D2L will actually be functioning in the next few days so that I can read our texts and find something cool to say about them. Sorry team! But I do have some funny pictures for your enjoyment instead!

More on Narrative Rationality and Rational Narrativity

So for the Digital Rhetoric class, I just (as in 10 minutes ago) put up a really long post about how I feel about how the real world paradigm and the narrative paradigm cannot be entirely separate and exclusive, and how in this world one must accept the reality that these paradigms are co-dependent (see: Writing in the Digital Age) for further details on that. Rather than go into an extended discussion of the very same topic, I am going to elaborate on how my thoughts on this can be related to science writing. I think that when we refer to a piece of science writing as "dry" or "boring" or "mind-numbing" it is because the writing has lost the element of imagination and narrative that is essential to keeping a reader engaged. However, when we find a piece of science writing that highly entertains us, we tend to question the credibility of the piece and the author. So where might be find our happy medium?


Going off of my post from last week, it is pertinent that we as writers engage a good conversation with our readers in order to hold their attention and interest. If a piece of science writing only presents the hard facts, the reader will be inclined to only study the abstract in order to know what is happening within the piece (I'm guilty of doing this myself). If a piece of science writing focuses only on the human elements, and ignores the hard facts, the reader will be inclined to scoff at what has been written and regard the piece of writing as nothing of value. The best way for me to reconcile the differences in the two paradigms presented in Fisher's piece is to propose that a good piece of science writing needs to tell a story, while also presenting the facts, logic, and rationale in equal measure. Graves goes on to reiterate this point, driving it home by quoting Stephen Hawking on page 112 of her piece, "If rhetoric is integral to human thought, then writing becomes a central element of thinking and generating knowledge in all areas of human inquiry" (112). To me, this essentially says that without rhetoric, without narrative, there can be no scientific discovery, no human inquiry.

Science is intimate?

From the first two sentences of this reading, I was hooked on what was going to be said. To call science writing intimate is something I'd never ever imagined would happen. When the author says that science writing is intimate because you are inviting the reader into your mind, it struck a cord with me, but not on a science-y level--and that intrigued me. To me, creative writing has always been what I consider intimate, because I feel that not only do I put a piece of my mind into the writing, but I place a piece of my soul in it too. So right from the start this piece had me intrigued. Further on the first chapter goes, and I find myself referring back to our class discussion on Thursday. This chapter is more about what it takes to be a good writer, than what it takes to be a good science writer. The most beautiful part of the Hancock chapters that we read for today fall right in the first few pages, "If you are bored, the reader will be bored. If you are skating on thin ice, unsure of the information, readers become uneasy. If you are counting on a first draft to be good enough, the reader will flip on by" (pg 3). I found this to be the most vital piece of information that the author could have given to a potential science writer who is not actually invested in the science. For a person like me, who's interest lies in creative writing far more than in technical writing, this struck a cord. I may not always be able to only engage in creative writing, and I may have to dive into some technical work from time to time, but it will never be my sole focus. For someone like me, it is pertinent that I learn to write in such a way that I intrigue not only my readers, but myself. If I cannot get myself interested in whatever I am writing about, that will telegraph to the readers, and they won't be interested either. I will bore both of us to death, and nobody wants that. It is essential that as a person who is not wholly invested in the sciences that I can at least have an engaging conversation with the reader.

The key to a good piece of science writing: an engaging conversation. Well, I think we can all manage that!