SCIENCE, LITERATURE, AND THE “LITERATURE OF SCIENCE”

Agosto de 2015

Susan Haack

from Max Delbrück’s speech accepting the Nobel Prize (1969) in biological physics

“The scientist addresses an infinitesimal audience of fellow composers. His

message is not devoid of universality, but its universality is disembodied and

anonymous…”

“While the artist’s communication is

linked forever with its original form, that of

the scientist is modified, amplified, fused with the ideas and results of others,

and melts into the stream of knowledge…”

as they investigate the world

• scientists create a vast “labyrinth of signs”

• of words, chemical formulae, mathematical symbols, computer images, etc., etc.

• sometimes described as “the literature of science”

as so often, I’m reminded of

Peirce’s wonderful sketch….

noticing that writing plays this role in science

• some literary scholars and rhetoricians

• have turned their attention to this “literature”

• nothing wrong with that, as such….

but

• some, unhappily, have treated the scientific enterprise

• as just like writing imaginative literature

• and scientific texts as just like literary texts

• when they are Unlike in significant ways

leading Max Perutz to complain

that rhetoric of science is “a piece of humbug masquerading as an academic discipline”

“humbug”?

made famous in English by Scrooge,

in Dickens’s Christmas

Carol---”Bah! Humbug!” (roughly =

nonsense, foolishness)

the novel

the author

if we could get clearer

about the differences, and the similarities, between science and literature

perhaps we could figure out

where radical rhetoric of science goes wrong … and what a reasonable rhetoric of science

would be

Part 1: Similarities and Differences

(i) both writers of literature, and scientists

scientists engage in writing, as well as inquiry

recording and communicating the results of their investigations

& novelists, playwrights, etc.

engage in inquiry, as well as writing…

e.g., in the case of Michener’s historico-

geographical novels, into the history of a place and

its people

or, with different kinds of novel or play

by watching people, thinking what makes them tick

e.g., with this novel

… informed by imagining what would be different, and how, if people didn’t come in two sexes, but were hermaphrodite

… one chapter begins, “My landlady was a

voluble man”

BUT

• the word “science” picks out a loose federation of kinds of inquiry

• while the word “literature” picks out a loose federation of kinds of writing

• (I’m using “literature” to mean “imaginative literature,” the fictional)

to be sure

• the inquiry in which writers of imaginative literature engage

• is essential to their enterprise

• but as a means to the end of writing edifying, entertaining, provocative, expressive, moving, illuminating novels, plays, etc.

&

• the writing in which scientists engage is essential to their enterprise, too

• but as a means to the end of finding out significant, explanatory truths, well-warranted by evidence, about the world and how it works

(ii) both literature and science require

a scientist imagines

structures, classifications, laws which, if he’s successful, are real; and explanations and theories

which, if he’s successful, are true

but

then he must go beyond speculation to check his theory, etc., against the

world, in “a kind of dialogue between the possible and

the actual” (as Sir Peter Medawar puts it)

while a writer imagines

people, events, stories which, if he’s successful, are illuminating about real human beings and real

human actions

&

• while a scientist would be disconcerted to discover that the laws, etc., he imagined are NOT real

• a writer would be no less disconcerted to discover that the people and events he imagined WERE real

this is not to deny

that novels, etc., are often set in real places, and involve real events

… as with this novel of Wallace’s, set in

Stockholm, about Nobel Prize winners

(iii) scientists, like writers, use metaphors

• e.g., the chaperone molecule, the Invisible Hand, parental investment

• but scientific metaphors are (or should be) a tool for the development of a literally true account

while

a writer extends, expands, explores his metaphors, as Shakespeare does in a wonderful exchange of

insults between Helena and Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream

maypole?

“maypole dancing” is a part of traditional celebrations of May

Day in England

(iv) scientific and literary texts differ

scientific texts are

• putatively truth-stating

• putatively refer to stuff, things, events in the real world

• evidence-presenting

literary texts are• not (mainly) truth-

stating

• not (mainly) referring to real stuff, things, etc.

• not evidence-presenting

&

• while scientific texts are usually aimed at an audience of others in the field

• & written in a direct, explicit, dry, closed style

• works of literature are not aimed at other authors, but at---well, at readers

• & usually written in a more oblique, implicit, warm, open style

but doesn’t imaginative literature teach us truths?

---of course it does! Literature can teach us a lot about ourselves and

others (& offer extensive vicarious experience).

But a novel doesn’t (usually) STATE the

truths we learn, but CONVEYS them obliquely

compare, for example

Lurie’s novel (L) with Festinger’s social-psychological study (R)

a writer of fiction

• pretends to refer (= fiction, not fraud!), pretends to state truths

• & thereby obliquely conveys truths (real ones!)—or, of course, falsehoods

• not mysterious literary truths, but regular truths about human beings, etc.

e.g.

the (very familiar!) truths about homo

academicus that David Lodge conveys in this

hilarious novel about a US and a UK professor

exchanging positions for a year

I don’t think

• there are truths only literature can convey

• though some truths are much more easily conveyed obliquely, and through the detail of a fictional story

• than they can be stated explicitly

as with this wonderful novel---

the best description of self-deception,

hypocrisy, and sham inquiry in the English

language

NB: THIS IS NOT TO SAY that all truths fall within the scope of the sciences to discover

that scientific “style of no style”

• (though sometimes disguising a lack of rigor)

• gives priority, since the goal is informing others, to the explicit, literal, cognitive, direct

• imagine Watson and Crick trying to explain the structure of DNA in iambic pentameter!

there can be mismatch

between style and content; e.g., in this

novel by Robert Tressell---which is a little too obtrusively

direct, “didactic”

similarly

• we might criticize a scientific article as “too rhetorical” if it tries to persuade by eloquence rather than evidence

• though a better way to pull the wool over readers’ eyes is to adopt that bland, neutral style, as Jacques Benveniste does in his crazy article about homeopathy!

Part 2: Reasonable Rhetoric of Science

what would a reasonable rhetoric of science be?

something very different from John

Limon’s study of “The Double Helix as

Literature,” playing with the conceit of

Watson and Crick as a “base pair,” and … !

or

S. Michael Halloran’s suggestion that

Watson and Crick set off a Kuhnian

revolution by daring to using “we,” and

describing their model as “of considerable

biological interest”

or

Alan Gross’s suggestion that the

idea that there even is such a molecule as

DNA is just an illusion created by words and diagrams in Watson

and Crick’s paper

a reasonable rhetoric of science

• sensitive to the differences between different kinds of text

• the relation of style to purpose and audience

• & the evolution of scientific language as scientific knowledge grows

could contribute to

our understanding of scientific communication

the ideal

• is for transmission of information within the scientific community

• to be as epistemologically efficient as possible

• (though of course epistemologically successful transmission of results depends on the audience as well as the presenter)

e.g.

Marshall Nirenberg’s first presentation of his paper on the coding problem---to a tiny audience, half of whom look to be asleep;

but which, luckily, included Crick, who

realized what Nirenberg had achieved!

there’s a real difference between

• a scientific claim coming to be accepted because strong evidence is clearly presented in a paper or lecture

• & a scientific claim coming to be accepted in the absence of good evidence because it is promoted by emotive language, snazzy metaphors, melodramatic press conferences, etc.

but in practice

• there’s rarely clean division of cases

• & the usual contrast between “mere” rhetoric and logic leaves a lot to be desired

• & not only because of the two uses (Platonic and Aristotelian) of “rhetoric”

e.g.

casting aspersions on someone’s competence can’t always be dismissed as mere name-calling, because warrant

depends in part on each scientist’s (usually implicit) grounds for assuming the competence of others on whose work he

depends

it’s a bit like

working on an airline-magazine crossword puzzle that another passenger already started!

nor is clear presentation of evidence

well-described as “logic”; formal-logical cogency is necessary, but not sufficient

because

• evidence ramifies in all directions (more like a crossword than a proof)

• &---most important here---supportiveness of evidence is vocabulary-sensitive

• (see the linguistic archeology of “messenger RNA” in the paper)

a good vocabulary matters

• contrary to Kuhn, Feyerabend, etc., “meaning-variance” can be a good thing

• or of course a bad; just as scientific metaphors can be good, or bad, better or worse

• which reveals that

unlike the radical rhetoric of science

• about which Perutz protests

• reasonable rhetoric of science would acknowledge that rationality can be enabled by epistemologically-efficient transmission

• OR hampered by epistemologically-inefficient transmission

& that scientific terms

• may take on information OR misinformation

• & sometimes (most often, in the social sciences), may take on unhelpful evaluative coloration

for, after all

science is neither sacred nor a confidence trick, but a remarkable, but fallible, human cognitive enterprise

¡muchisimas gracias por vuestra atención!