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Discussion Topic: Baake & Bernhardt | Science Writers Looking for AudienceBaake & Bernhardt Science Writers Looking for Audience
Today, we’re reading Baake & Bernhardt’s “Science Writers Looking for Their Audience” from Metaphor and Knowledge: The Challenges of Writing Science (PDF below). As you formulate your response, you might find the following questions helpful:
1. Baake & Bernhardt refer to Plato’s assumption that rhetoricians (speakers or writers) always set out to be persuasive. Do you think that good science writing should have an underlying persuasive element?
2. Technical writing often begins with questions such as “What is the purpose of the writing?” or “Who is your audience?” What other guiding questions do you use to formulate your writing?
3. In “Commensurability, Comparability, and Communicability,” historian and philosopher of science, Thomas Kuhn (1982), uses the term incommensurability metaphorically, taking the mathematical idea of ‘no common measure’ to mean ‘no common language’. Do you think it is possible to cross boundaries of expertise when writing scientific findings, or do we need to tailor the writing to a specific audience because it is too difficult to bridge the language gap? In other words, what happens to scientific writing when the audience doesn’t share similar expertise?
Kuhn, T. S. (1982). Commensurability, comparability, communicability. In PSA: Proceedings of the biennial meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association (Vol. 1982, No. 2, pp. 668-688). Cambridge University Press.
(Please cite page if you use the book, or any other paper)
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