WRT333

Evolution of the Journal Article

Syllabus | Table of Pages

If the relative crisis of the Copernican Revolution left Galileo under house arrest and the conservative forces of the Church in power, the world had, nevertheless, moved. Protected to a degree by the power of protestant states and lordly patrons, scientists worked on. In the war between the inquisitive and the Inquisition, scientists were now better prepared by Bacon and Descartes with improved method and a new focus on observation-based deductive reasoning. The printing press was nearly 200 years old by the death of Galileo (1642), and it stood waiting to serve.

If, as D'Alembert suggested (Elements of Philosophy (1759), discussed in Cassirer, 1951) the "Renaissance commenses in the middle of the fifteenth century; the Reformation climaxed in the middle of the sixteenth century; and in the middle of the seventeeth century the Cartesian philosophy triumphantly alters the entire world picture," the torrent that led to the Enlightenment (Cassirer 1951; Gay 1969) coincided with the creation of the first regularly published exchanges on matters scientific, starting in 1665. "In January 1665, Denis de Sallo published the first issue of the French Journal des Sçavans (Journal of the Learned), one of whose stated purposes was "to make known experiments that might serve to explain natural phenomena." Two months later in England, Henry Oldenburg decided to expand his role as unofficial letter box for scientific correspondence in England and Europe and inaugurate the monthly publication of technical letters in Philosophical Transactions—"Giving some accompt of the ... ingenious in many considerable parts of the world." Thus the scientific journal article was born." (Gross et al. 2002)

Feeling the weakening grip of scriptually-established truth, and emboldened by new freedom to observe and to record with impunity, science opened its eyes to a rapidly expanding natural world.

"Natural science from day to day acumulates new riches. Geometry, by extending its limits, has borne its torch into the regions of physical science which lay nearest at hand. The true system of the world [a reference, I believe, to Newton's Principia, published in 1687, laying out the Three Laws of Motion and the idea of gravity] has been recognized, developed, and perfected..... In short, from the earth to Saturn, from the history of the heavens to that of insects, natural philosophy has been revolutionized; and nearly all other fields of knowledge have assumed new forms...." (D'Alembert, in Cassirer, 1951)

But as science took on a philosophical and practical life of its own, it also began to develop its own ways of expressing itself. For our purposes, we can depart the evolution of the subject matter of science, and turn attention to the way in which science was being written.

Of several books on scientific communication written over the past 20 years, we can focus on ideas from two that stand out. Dwight Atkinson's Scientific Discourse in Sociohistorical Context (1999) samples the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London from 1676 to 1975 (i.e., following Oldenburg's path) in an attempt to unify rhetorical and linguistic discourse analysis. Gross et al. (2002), in Communicating Science, broaden this to include analysis of samples from the Académie Royale (de Sallo's path), and german journals; German wasn't a language for scientific publication until the 1700s, says Gross.

Gross et al. briefly review and critique recent texts on scientific rhetorical approaches. Students may wish to review Bazerman (1988), Prelli (1989), and Gross (1990), for earlier, somewhat limited—albeit still considered standard texts of rhetorical analysis—studies of scientific communication. The principle criticism is the limited number and scope of works used as a basis for analysis, a problem overcome by the considerably larger sample sizes and computer-assisted analytic approach of Atkinson and Gross et al.

Both Atkinson and Gross et al. use a sampling of texts—Atkinson grouping in 50 year spans, Gross et al. by century—and a set of markers to distinguish changes in writing. Gross, for example, relies on two categories of traits, communicative and argumentative, further breaking communicative into style and presentation, as he defines:

For our purposes, the evolution can be represented by the two examples Gross et al. use to illustrate the poles of development, texts by Lister (1697) and Goodman and Rich (1962). We will use these for class discussion.

17thCentury

Martin Lister, "An Account of the Nature and Differences of the Juices, more Particularly, of our English Vegetables." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 1697.

Passage 1: "The 21st of April, 1665, about eight in the Morning, I bored a hole in the body of a fair and large Birch, and put a Cork with a Quill in the middle; after a Moment or two it [a sap] began to drop, but yet very softly; Some three Hours after I returned, and it had filled a Pint Glass, and then it droped exceeding fast, viz., every Pulse a Drop: This Liquour is not unpleasant to the Taste, and not thick or troubled; yet it looks as though some few drops of Milk were spilt in a Bason of Fountain Water. Vide Philos. Transact."

Passage 2: "It [the milk of Lactuca syl. costa spinosa] springs out of the Wound thick as Cream and Ropes, and is White, and yet the Milk which came out of the Wounds, made towards the top of the Plant, was plainly streaked or mixt with a purple Juice, as though one had dashed or sprinkled Cream with a few drops of Claret. And indeed, the Skin of the Plant thereabouts was purplish also, perhaps with Veins. Again, in the Shell I drew it, it turned still yellower and thicker, and by and by curdled, that is, the white and thick caseous part did separate from a thin purple Whey. So the Blood also of Animals, whilst warm remains liquid and alike, but so soon as cold, it cakes and has a Serum or Whey separated from it."

20thCentury

Howard Goodman and Alexander Rich. "Formation of a DNA-Soluble RNA Hybrid and Its Relation to the Origin, Evolution, and Degeneracy of Soluble RNA." Proceedings of the national Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A., 1962.

"The unlabeled bacterial DNAs used in this investigation were prepared by the method of Marmur10. Calf thymus and salmon sperm DNA were obtained from Sigma Chemical Company and California Corporation for Biochemical Research, respectively. The DNAs from the bacteriophages were prepared by phenol extraction11. Prior to annealing, the DNA was denatured by heating at 95-98C for 15 min in 0.015 M NaCl, 0.0015 M sodium citrate, pH 7.4, and then quickly chilled in an ice bath. Denaturation was followed by measuring the change in optical density at 260 m-micron."

Gross et al. comment, "In this passage, the facts about the material world are promoted by a syntax that favors the passive voice and emphasizes things and abstractions over people as grammatical subject and complement. This is also a prose constructed largely of complex noun phrases (often with multiple modification) that deviate noticeably from everyday speech: "The unlabeled bacterial DNAs used in this investigation," "the method of Marmur," "Calf thymus and salmon sperm DNA," "Sigma Chemical Company and California Corporation for Biochemical Research," "the DNAs from the bacteriophages," "phenol extraction," and "the change in optical density at 260 mµ." In addition, the strong verbs of Lister—"bore," "put in," drop," "return," fill," "spill"—have been largely replaced by less vivid ones describing common actions in the laboratory: "prepare," "obtain," "follow." Finally, both "calf thymus and salmon sperm DNA" and "phenol extraction" are examples of fused noun strings, a construction entirely absent from the prose of Lister. Only specialized knowledge can help unravel the latter phrase: does it mean extracting phenol or extracting by means of phenol? The above passage also possesses other characteristics we have hypothesized for contemporary scientific style: circumstantial details and poetic metaphors are absent; technical abbreviations, noun strings, and quantification abound; there is one eponym; and two citations appear as superscripted numerals (of a total of 32 in the article)."

Gross et al. also cite the Goodman and Rich introduction, noting how it follows Swales (here) standard formula of established an intellectual territory (molecular genetic research, sentences 1-3), a niche (4-6) and new additions to that niche (7):

"[1] It has been known for a long time that transfer or soluble RNS (sRNA*) molecules play a central role in the organization of amino acids into polypeptide chains during protein synthesis. [2] Individual sRNA molecules combine with a particular amino acid to produce a complex which is active on the ribosomal particle. [3] Recent experiments1 make it likely that a sequence of nucleotides in sRNA carry the specificity for determining the position of the amino acid in the polypeptide chain. [4] However, as yet little is known regarding the origin of sRNA. [5] These molecules could arise from DNA in a manner similar to the production of messenger RNA. [6] On the other hand, it has been demonstrated that the sRNA molecule is largely folded back upon itself with a regular system of hydrogen bonding,2 and this has given rise to the suggestion that RNA may act as a template for manufacturing itself.2,3 [7] These alternative possibilities have prompted us to carry out a series of experiments in which we look for the presence of a complementary sequence of based in the DNA molecule by the formation of spedific hybrids involving sRNA."

Gross et al. note that in this passage, the modern trait of hedging, "to fine-tune their arguments to the state of knowledge," is captured in phrases "It has been known for a long time," "recent experiments make it likely," "little is known regarding the origin of sRNA. These molecules could arise," "it has been demonstrated,' this has given rise to the suggestion," and "these alternative possibilities have prompted us to carry out a series of experiments."

Gross et al. also take pains to point out that although both authors have a centrail empirical faith in the power of observation, Goodman and Rich put more emphasis on using their data (the article if replete with numbers, tables, and graphs) into the context of arguments meant to wring out interpretations of the data, not only in the discussion but also throughout the results section.

We'll amplify this analysis with comments on the style that accompanies the modern objectification of "scientific english" (notes, here).

Further reading: The notes accompanying this week's lectures provide the barest outline of a few structural perspectives on IMRAD articles. For greater depth, consult Day (2006) or the excellent Harmon and Gross (2010).

References