Old/New World Discourse: Science Writing

By creating a graphic description of the travails, through which I've moved, in my seemingly never-ending search for Israeli employment, I have also, unwittingly, created a rhetorical montage of interpersonal experiences. Whereas this great nation has evolved from "pastoral" to "high tech" in several exciting social-economic revolutions, Yours Truly seems to have remained stuck in the hunting and gathering, i.e. in the presocietal stage, of acquiring cash. Thus far, either health troubles or linguistic stumbling (i.e. I'm still catching up on Hebrew), have gotten in my way. In addition, I have been tripped up by some peculiarities of constitution of actual and potential employers, as alluded to in earlier essays.

Consequently, to date, I've taught English as a Foreign Language to university students, in a city far away, mixed it up with Anglo kollel wives, in an American-based college's creative writing program, published articles here and there in trade and in academic periodicals, rejected a book contract for creative nonfiction, am hoping to soon be negotiating a book contract for a novel, rejected the offer of one company to write online for them, was rejected, as a writer, by another company, to write online for them, exposed the questionable ethics of a legal documentation organization, and applied to be part of a collective that writes children's books. Since aliyah, my professional employment experiences have been many and varied. Thus far, among the most interesting of those experiences has been my writing about and teaching of science.

"Science writing," per say, is not the same, connotatively, as is "technical writing."

The latter is usually associated with editing and/or proofreading documents for the computer industry. Erudition in the latter can take the form of a single business-style course or two, or the form of direct entry from a computer science post. The former, alternatively, is usually associated with all manners of creating and refining text for biologists, chemists, physicists, mathematicians, and physicians. Erudition in the former usually requires at least an undergraduate degree in science.

When I was an undergraduate, in the 1970s, I took such a degree. I figured that background would "pay the bills." I worked in technical editing and writing and in science editing and writing.

My technical communication jobs varied per objectives, audiences, and the like. My response to them was predictable; I consistently was disinterested in bettering documentation for end users. Even in the early 1980s, when I was paid well to write about applied science, serving as a fancy consultant, I enjoyed overseeing the vendors who printed the binders used for my product more than I enjoyed fine tuning the engineers' discourse. Even though Computer Cowboy and I were already an item and even though trained technical or science writers were rare and, hence, able to command high salaries, I didn’t enjoy that work.

I did like science writing, though. I had fun polishing a monograph for the head of research at a major medical school and I had fun creating curricula guidelines, for an alternative school, for chemistry, for mathematics, and for biology. Although the science writing paid poorly, relatively speaking, I found it stimulating.

In the mid 80s, excluding my academic writing and my newspaper columns, my work in writing and editing gave way to my teaching about writing and editing. Teaching science and technical writing, as opposed to teaching about the other genres: paid reasonably well, left me reasonably challenged and filled my life with university students. Whereas I went on to specialize in more abstract topics in human communication such as contemporary rhetorical theory, communication ethics, and the history of critical and creative thinking, I was enriched by those years during which I helping engineering and science majors (computer science was not yet a field in which one could receive a degree, at most schools) master the rudiments of peer-review journal articles, conference abstracts, presentations, internal background papers, clinical/statistical reports, and study protocols.

Flash forward to the present. Whereas the mainstay of my income has remained, for decades, teaching postsecondary courses in, respectively, English, Communication, Sociology, and Philosophy departments, I have occasionally indulged my love of science by picking up part-time work: in high school math, in courses ranging from algebra and geometry to first year calculus (Calculus AB), and in high school science, in courses ranging from biology and chemistry to general science. By that time, I had also earned a certificate in herbal medicine, so when the opportunity arose for me to help, a bit, with the planning of a butterfly habitat and with the actualization of a related, botany, curriculum, I gladly seized it. The remuneration and the challenge I received from those tasks varied depending on the venue. More often than not, regardless of the school, the students were great and the material was interesting.

Recently, I've again been hired to teach chemistry (I've also been hired to teach Language and Literature, but that's a more probable employment, given my graduate training). I will try to illuminate, for a handful of visiting North American high school students, the standards from atoms, molecules, and bond types, to kinds of chemical reactions and chemical equilibriums, to rudimentary thermodynamics, and so forth. Throw in solutions (sorry about the pun) about the differences between phases and states, and between heat and temperature, and that’s most of the course (I know; if you hated the gas laws or failed to make friends with any other part of the study of chemistry, quantitative or descriptive, you would rather
"wave" [yes, I'm feeling the energy released by these puns] your hands over the entire topic. Maybe later we can discuss alchemy).

Also recently, I completed some work for a neurobiologist at a world class research institution located in Israel. Neurobiology is interesting, whether it's delineated, as suggested by the Canadian Institute of Health Research, in conjunction with The Canadian Institute of Neuroscience, by molecular, cellular, neurological, psychological, or social concepts. To explain, there are documented, vis-a-vis the scientific method, chemical, biological, physiological, intrapersonal, and interpersonal reasons why someone would engage in an activity. For instance, an individual might choose to write a blog (as opposed to choosing to write something else or as opposed to choosing to use his or her time to do or to not do something else). Each of the aforementioned facets of understanding human behavior provides explanations of particular actions, such as of blog writing, as well as provides explanations of tangential human behaviors. In the case of the blogger, one could argue, even facetiously, that: (female) hormones such as estrogen, stimulate creativity; creativity is more easily expressed by people possessing certain types of receptors in their brains than by persons not possessed of those receptors or by persons possessed of them in smaller or otherwise different quantities, individuals possessed of those chemical/electro interfaces tend to take more risks because of feedback loops that those interfaces create, people who take more risks have a relatively higher number of successes than people who don’t take many risks, etc. To me, such thinking is both fun to read and fun to write. Give me science writing or editing tasks (or other exercises that require me to use the energy packets inside my skull) and I am happy.

Said differently, for instance, by I.A. Richard, in his seminal (at least to us rhetoricians) volumes, The Meaning of Meaning and The Rhetoric of Meaning, scientific language differs from rhetoric in that the first is communication directed toward an exclusive group and the second is communication directed toward the masses. Acrolect language users, unless assigned to pedagogical responsibilities, reserve their (frequently stilted) discourse for "inner circle moments." People privileged to have engrossed themselves in years of specialized study like to talk to themselves (no comment). They save their "fancy talk" for other "fancy people" so that the gist of meaning conveyed by their texts doesn't become diluted (could be a pun or not, depending on whether you are thinking as a member of the science bourgeoisie or as a member of the proletariat.) Such communicators forego the social construction of reality in favor of private assignment of meaning; they elect to convey their ideas in a denser, less parsimonious fashion rather than to make sense to a vaster audience.

As such, problems arise for acrolect language users when they want to communicate with everyone else. Then scholars call in science writers to "translate."

I don't know what I'll be when I grow up. I'm not even sure if I will grow up before I have grandchildren. I do know that science is "cool," that being able to clarify the meaning of one group of thinkers, to another, is interesting and sometimes profitable, and that I limited to finding work in English until my Hebrew improves.

Certainly, if you want to hire a writer/thinker/teacher, fell free to contact me via this publication. Meanwhile, I'll: intermittently review verbs in Ivrit, both ordinary and irregular, continue to play with my molecule building kit, and carry on chasing those spatula-wielding hedgehogs off of my desk and into the rooms of my children.