SUSAN HAACK
Science, Literature, and the "Literature of
Science"
A
s
THEY INVESTIGATE
how the world is, scientists create an enor–
mously complex labyrinth of signs-of words, chemical formu–
lae, mathematical symbols, computer images, and so forth . And
so, noticing that writing plays a significant role in the scientific enter–
prise, literary scholars and rhetoricians have turned their attention to
the" literature of science." But some, unfortunately, have treated science
as like imaginative literature, and scientific texts as like literary texts, in
ways in which they are unlike; and this assimilation has tempted some
into the kinds of relativist and irrealist extravagances that prompt Max
Perutz to protest the whole project of rhetoric of science as "a piece of
humbug masquerading as an academic discipline." Perhaps, however, if
we were clearer about the differences between science and literature and
between scientific and literary texts, we might begin to see what a rea–
sonable rhetoric of science would be, and do.
SCIENTISTS ENGAGE IN WRITING,
and novelists, playwrights, etc., engage
in inquiry. 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. In its broadest usage, "literature" refers to writing of
just about any kind, as when we speak of "keeping up with the litera–
ture" on our subject; and the word is also used honorifically, to refer to
aesthetically admirable writing on whatever topic. But when, in what
follows, I write of "imaginative literature," my main concern will be the
differences between science and fiction.
The inquiry in which writers of imaginative literature engage
(whether informal observation and pondering over the quirks of human
nature, or systematic research into a place or time) is essential to their
Editor's Note: "Science, Literature, and the 'Literature of Science'" was
originally presented in May
1999
at the annual meeting of the American
Council of Learned Societies.
