Rhetoric / Communications / Literature & Criticism / Philosophy of Science


 

Understanding Scientific Prose
Edited by Jack Selzer


"Fascinating... I learned a great deal from these approaches, and had enormous fun."—Stephen Jay Gould

Examining science as a rhetorical enterprise, this book seizes upon one scientific essay—"The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme"—and probes it from many angles. Written by prominent evolutionary theorists Stephen Jay Gould and Richard C. Lewontin and first published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London in 1979, the "Spandrels" article is both serious science and vivid prose. Applying methods inspired by Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Ferdinand de Saussure, and others, the contributors employ a range of interpretive strategies. Stephen Jay Gould adds his own comments, and the full text of the essay "Spandrels" is reproduced as an appendix. Applying methods inspired by Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Ferdinand de Saussure, and others, the contributors employ a range of interpretive strategies. Stephen Jay Gould adds his own comments, and the full text of "Spandrels" is reproduced as an appendix.

Jack Selzer is professor of English at Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of Kenneth Burke in Greenwich Village, published by the University of Wisconsin Press, and is currently working on a sequel.

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cover of Selzer's book is dark blue with four nice scientific drawings inset.

Back in print
July 1993
LC: 93-021870 QH
406 pp. 6 x 9 2 halftones, 1 line
ISBN-13: 978-0-299-13904-9
Paper $29.95 s


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