Richard Dawkins On Science Writing

otee writes "Richard Dawkins asks the question: Why hasn't a Nobel Prize been awarded to a scientist for literary work? He suspects that it simply hasn't occurred to the judges. Read the well written article at The Edge Website for information about good (science) writing."

Comments

Are scientific articles really literature?

[neglige]

I, for one, welcome our well-written scientific article overlords, but do these articles really fall into the same category as, for example, poems? The aims are very different. Scientific publications are there to make a statement, to get a point across, to share knowledge. Literature on the other hand is more emotional and less bound to "rules" (for lack of a better word), it has more freedom.

Or to put it differently: a play by Shakespeare may make you cry, because of the emotions the play has stirred in you. If you cry over a scientific article, it is mostly because of the bad writing or obvious mistakes.

The article also comments on the subject of readability of scientific publications, but this is IMHO another debate ;)

Re:Are scientific articles really literature?

[tgv]

That still doesn't make it literature. Although you can differ about the definition of "literature", take a look at this definition from WordNet. I think people here are confusing meanings 1 and 3. There is no Nobel prize for any other meaning than #1.

newspaper drivel

[RalfM]

It's obvious why this was published in The Telegraph first. It's not obvious how it made it to The Edge.

However useful science may be, and however relevant to everyday life, that is the least important thing about it. Science is, above all, wonderful. You may write to inform. You should write to inspire.

As a scientist, I have to interpret this as being about entertainers, not scientists and not novelists: "What is your motivation? Writing, inspired by science? Science, inspired by the search for knowledge? Entertainment, inspired by wanting to inspire people?"

Personally I suspect that he is wanting to strike back at literature for having both artistic and academic outcomes. :-)

R

Re:Russel got one

[Anonymous Coward]

There is also the Steele prize which is awarded for mathematical exposition(as well as liftime achievement, and seminal contribution to research).

Then I'll Nominate:

[bhima]

I'd have to Nominate Kip Thorne and John Gribbon. Mostly for proving to my younger brother than all of my blathering about science *was* fascinating, well that and teaching him how stars work (blinded by the light). I suppose Brian Green's "Elegant Universe" should be in the list.

But sadly my hero Carl Sagan never was able to capture any of my siblings interest due to the fact that they could never get over the "billions & billions" thing.

Anyone else have suggestions?

Don't get greedy...

[beeplet]

When someone writes a popular science book that is breathtaking in the way of, say, "One Hundred Years of Solitude," I would be happy to see the author win a Nobel Prize. In the meantime, there are plenty of other prizes specifically for non-fiction. They don't have million-dollar awards, but if you're only doing it for the prize money, chances are your writing doesn't meet the criteria of "idealistic tendencies" that the Nobel literature prize specifies...

Read Nodel's Will . . . .

[StateOfTheUnion]

From the Nobel E-museum

Literature is one of the five prize areas mentioned in Alfred Nobel's will. The will was, however, partly incomplete. Nobel simply stated that prizes be given to those who, during the preceding year, "shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind" and that one part be given to the person who "shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction."

Though this statement is somewhat subjective, based on Nobel's will, can anyone put together a compelling argument that any scientific publication fits Nobel's critieria for the prize in Literature? I am doubtful . . . remember, for the prize in Literature, the way that it is written is probably more important than the science that is presented . . .

I hate to rain on the parade but when has scientific writing ever taken literature in an ideal direction?

Re:Read Nodel's Will . . . .

[Finuvir]

Literature is about style rather than content, so the prize would surely go to whoever brings tha style of writing in an ideal direction. Yet the works that win their writers literature prizes rarely display the necessary element of style called simplification. That's Dawkins' point. There's a whole area of literature going unnoticed because it's too diferent from the previous winners.

Science as literature?

[1iar_parad0x]

I know Bertrand Russell wasn't quite a scientist, but he certainly wrote quite a bit about it.

Now for my rant... Why it's hard to view scientific literature as literature.

I'm taking a break from finishing my term paper for an English class. In fact, this semester, I'm a part-time student, and I'm only taking English classes (gasp!). One of the things I have noticed this semester is how English professors solve problems. Sure, English professors like to examine problems, just not in a rigourous way. When examining problems from the eyes of an English professor, anecdotes are often evidence enough. Often times, these professors beg the question, leave paradoxes unanswered, generalize from the specific to the particular, and perform other such logical fallacies in their thinking. The sheer aesthetics of their analysis often have greater weight that the results themselves.

Poetry is about aesthetics; science is about explanation. The genius of literature is in its exposition. It's all about style. In science, genius is predictability. Literature embraces long-winded, prolix treatments of subject matter, in science this practice is abhorred. Literature can be paradoxical. It can defy the fundamental laws of logic. Science cannot. Science is built upon logic and its beauty is derived from it.

IMHO Raymond Smullyan's "First-Order Logic" is the best math book I've ever read (I've read quite a bit of mathematical literature). It's terse, rigourous, and concise. It has the most informational bang for my buck. I like my mathematics that way. Such a description horrifies the average English major. Sure, I like elaborate prose in my Shakespeare. The bard was famous for his elaborate sentence constructions. However, it's often hard to parse. Sometimes, I appreciate Shakespeare just for the rhythm of his work or his plays on words. I also appreciate the sound of Shakespeare when performed by a good actor. Science and Mathematics aren't appreciated in that way.

The best science fiction examines the human condition. That's why Star Trek:TNG is such a classic, while the new drivel from the Star Trek universe is such a bore. I appreciate work where the main characters are scientists or the plot is placed in the backdrop of science. I don't appreciate the technobable (often purely fictitious) of many pulp sci-fi authors. In fact, the best sci-fi authors often drop the sci-fi from their title. Ellison and Asimov both preferred to be thought of as writers of the general sort. Ultimately, the best science fiction is good fiction.

The most popular discoveries of science tell us something about ourselves. Why have Einstein, Godel, and Darwin been publicly canonized, while Gauss, Fermi, Von Neumann, and Hilbert have not. It's because the former's work was philosophy quantified, while the latter's work was quantified philosophy. The former gave us bold facts about our universe that could be described in human terms, while the latter gave us universally inhuman feats that can only be described by specialists of their respective fields.

Poetry and science meet when aesthetics and explanation intersect. Since literature is about human experience, the poetry of science is literature that describes the human element of exploration. Richard Feynman once remarked [I'm paraphrasing, but its derived from that famous BBC interview|special he gave] that he too could see beauty in nature. However, unlike the poet he could appreciate nature on a deeper level. He could peer inside the petals of a flower and see the beauty of the chemistry inside. That same beauty was the inspiration of much of his "amateur" art work. However, his beauty is one of order. Its aesthetic is the human need for exploration. Ultimately, if any scientist wants to win the Nobel Prize for literature, he will need to produce a literary work about science, not scientific literature.