Steven Darian “Understanding the Language of Science"
University of Texas Press | 2003-08-01 | ISBN: 0292716184 | 262 pages | PDF | 2,9 MB
"To my knowledge, there has never [before] been a volume that analyzes,
in one place, the actual language of science—those elements of thinking
that are acknowledged to be the basis of scientific thought. . . .
[Thus] this is a very important book, contributing to several fields:
science, education, rhetoric, medicine, and perhaps even philosophy. .
. . Darian's erudition is truly astonishing."
—Celest A. Martin, Associate Professor, College Writing Program, University of Rhode Island
From astronomy to zoology, the practice of science proceeds from
scientific ways of thinking. These patterns of thought, such as
defining and classifying, hypothesizing and experimenting, form the
building blocks of all scientific endeavor. Understanding how they work
is therefore an essential foundation for everyone involved in
scientific study or teaching, from elementary school students to
classroom teachers and professional scientists.
In this book, Steven Darian examines the language of science in order
to analyze the patterns of thinking that underlie scientific endeavor.
He draws examples from university science textbooks in a variety of
disciplines, since these offer a common, even canonical, language for
scientific expression. Darian identifies and focuses in depth on nine
patterns—defining, classifying, using figurative language, determining
cause and effect, hypothesizing, experimenting, visualizing,
quantifying, and comparing—and shows how they interact in practice. He
also traces how these thought modes developed historically from
Pythagoras through Newton.
