WRT533: Notes

Science, Culture, and the Business of Scientific Writing
1/23/2009

You and I are mortals. We all have finite, terribly short life spans in which we must gain some measure of self-awareness (as a child and young adult) and define some set of personal purposes in life (as a maturing adult), leaving virtually no time in which to turn our intended purposes into enduring contributions. For me—and I assume this applies to you—the task of defining purposes only makes sense if I make two assumptions. One is that life gains most of its worth from a social perspective (i.e., strictly selfish purposes have less value than purposes that help other people, including future generations). The other is that I am capable of adding something useful to society (i.e., the years I spent getting an education have created productive potential).

By social perspective, I mean that what I do affects other people, people alive now, and people alive in the future. The opposite perspective, socially myopic, is to focus all of my concerns on myself, and on the present, but there seem to be too many people doing that, and I don't seem to be able to develop any profound sense of respect for them. Particularly, since I've gained the responsibility for the daily rearing chores for children of my own, I am more and more concerned for others (mainly kids) and for their future.

For a profession, I practice science. I study nature, trying to discover useful things that others haven't yet noticed. My experience says that there are still an overwhelming number of such things to be discovered (or an overwhelming number that my predecessors once discovered but forgot to write down). I have been well-trained—in a university like this one, one of many being maintained to serve society’s many needs—to make my studies scientific, and to prepare them for addition to a global and enduring accumulation of human scientific knowledge. That is, I'm reasonably sure that I am prepared to "do science" correctly, so that what I do has value, as I add to knowledge (subtract from ignorance) in a permanent way by publishing my thoughts and discoveries.

The way that I practice science is fundamentally different from the way that other men (and it was mostly men in the times I'm referring to) practiced science prior to the modern era. [That there is a relation between this patriarchal history and the exceeding length of the "dark" and "middle" ages is subject for another day's discussion.] If you don't know what I mean by modern era in reference to science, you must read Bertrand Russell's chapter "The Rise of Science" in his A History of Western Philosophy. Prior to Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton, science was quite different. Prior to these (essentially seventeenth century) scientists, science had changed little from its Aristotelian roots, even in the face of absorption in the theology of the sixteenth century. That is, prior to the modern era, science was a business dedicated to demonstration of known truths. For example, the task of the early astronomers was simply to measure the movement of the stars around the earth, to document the works of a celestial creator, to participate in a general social effort to uncover and to appreciate various forms of divine truth.

During the seventeenth century, scientists got better at their business, as a result of improvements in technology, and as a result of a significant improvement in methods. The astronomers are generally credited with taking the lead. They took advantage of the excellent lens-making abilities of Tycho Brahe, who not only excelled as an artisan, but also as an observer. Patient and more precise observation soon led to trouble, however, as repeatable observations suggested that truth was not ordained, and that truths other than those taught in the medieval centers of learning were both possible and likely (the radical departure from the truth that the heavens revolved around the earth, for example, caused years of upheaval).

As they thought about their observations, seventeenth century scientists developed a better pattern of reasoning. Both Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes initially accepted the pre modern presumption that it was their role to help demonstrate the known truths, as revealed in scripture. As they set out to review proper procedures for the reasoning necessary to carry out this mission, they made lasting contributions improving deductive logic, creating that which we now call the scientific method.

Because of Bacon and Descartes’s (and contemporaries) reasoning on methods, science in the past 300 years has been dominated by a philosophy that seeks truth, but that begins with a fundamentally skeptical attitude about what that truth is. The scientific method begins with an understanding about what the truth might be, based on things that we have seen around us. It then formulates a specific test of that truth, setting forth as a statement a specific hypothesis to be tested. Modern science is essentially a reductionist procedure, one where each hypothesis to be tested is as simple as possible, subject to as few confounding or confusing effects as possible, systematically eliminating that which might stand in the way of opening the test to the possibility of alternative hypotheses. Science today demands precision in the establishment of the terms under which an hypothesis is tested. That is, we are bound to be careful in setting up the conditions for each experiment, to isolate the experiment from stimuli that do not relate directly to the hypothesis. Similarly, we are bound to be as precise as possible and neutral (free of personal bias, a goal seldom attained emotionally, but often attainable practically) in observing the results of our experiment, in order that we not confuse observation with a priori assignations of known truths. Finally, we are continually bound to subject our observations to further tests, to alternative explanations, etc., leading to a continual assault upon existing knowledge.

It is from this understanding of the role of science that we are forced to view the role of writing in the sciences. That is, the work of the modern scientist only makes sense when it is clear that the work is part of an ongoing process, one that involves both predecessors and followers. Science requires culture. That is, it requires the transmittal of knowledge from each generation to the next, including repeatedly testable hypotheses and detailed reports of the outcomes of tests or of new observations. We scientists must write, not to embalm ourselves in immortal words, but because science itself requires it.