21 - Science Essays

Summary

In 1993, a volume of essays was published, discussing, inter alia, the importance, style, narrativity, rhetoric and impact of a single controversial scientific paper, Stephen Jay Gould and Richard C. Lewontin’s ‘The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm’. Gould himself contributed an essay in which he addressed the paper’s historical context but also included sub-chapters with ‘Some Personal Thoughts and Admissions’ and ‘Random (and Therefore Nonadaptive) Jottings on Commentaries’. One of the aspects he stresses is the specific language, rhetoric and imagery chosen for the argument:

Something … about ‘Spandrels’ is decidedly unusual, even provocative: its style – particularly its metaphors, literary and cultural allusions, and brashly personal language. … This does fly in the face of the most cherished and widely obeyed convention that good science is impersonal and that the intrusion of self can only denote partiality and attendant flawed reasoning.

He later adds, ‘Scientists, for the most part, simply do not acknowledge that the form and language of an argument (as opposed to its logic and empirical content) could have anything to do with its effectiveness.’ At the end of the essay, he returns to this point and once more emphasizes the role of style:

I believe that the success of ‘Spandrels’ arises not so much from its ‘pure’ science, or even from the logic of its argument, but most of all from its rhetoric (in the honorable, not the pejorative, sense) and its humanistic imagery. The very aspect of writing that rhetoricians treasure and analyze, but that we scientists ignore and disparage, has caught our colleagues unawares and won attention for ‘Spandrels.’

The uncommon features of ‘Spandrels’ that Gould addresses, that is the figurative and personal language, the use of rhetoric and an eloquent style, are frequently associated with the essay, and, following his argument, the juxtaposition of science and the essay in the title of my own contribution to this volume may indicate an oxymoron or, at least, an exception from very rigid rules. After all, William H. Gass made it quite clear that a

certain scientific or philosophical rigor is … foreign to the essay; ill-suited, as when a brash young student challenges even one’s most phatic observations on the weather with demands for clarity, precision, and proof.