Lenoir Timothy (Editor). Inscribing Science: Scientific Texts and the Materiality of Communication

Stanford University Press, 1998. — xviii, 457 pages. — ISBN13: 978-0804727778.Metaphors of inscription and writing figure prominently in all levels of discourse in and about science. The description of nature as a book written in the language of mathematics has been a common trope since at least the time of Galileo, a metaphor supplemented in our own day by the characterization of DNA sequences as the code for the book of life, decipherable in terms of protein semantic units. An important recent direction in the fields of science and literature studies is to consider such descriptions as more than metaphoric, as revelatory of the processes of signification in science more generally. Nearly everywhere we look, the “semiotic turn” is upon us. Recent science and technology studies have been characterized by a rich diversity of research directions, manifesting several trends apparently counter to one another. On the one hand stands the rich tradition of detailed microstudies of experiments, instruments, and scientific practice; on the other hand are grouped studies grander in scope, aimed at examining science within the framework of cultural production. This volume of sixteen essays seeks common ground among these different approaches by juxtaposing work from historically focused science and literature studies with work inspired by poststructuralist philosophy and semiotics.Inscription Practices and Materialities of Communication
The Language of Strange Facts in Early Modern Science
Shaping Information: Mathematics, Computing, and Typography
The Technology of Mathematical Persuasion
On the Take-off of Operators
Switchboards and Sex: The Nut(t) Case
Politics on the Topographer's Table: The Helvetic Triangulation of Cartography, Politics, and Representation
Writing Darwin's Islands: England and the Insular Condition
Illustration as Strategy in Charles Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
The Leviathan of Parsons town: Literary Technology and Scientific Representation
Technology, Aesthetics, and the Development of Astrophotography at the Lick Observatory
Standards and Semiotics
Experimental Systems, Graphematic Spaces
Emergent Power: Vitality and Theology in Artificial Life
Science and Writing: Two National Narratives of Failure
Perception Versus Experience: Moving Pictures and Their Resistance to Interpretation