science vs. romance (poetry)
Subject: science vs. literary journals (with props to my lady Alexis Clements, lover of science and writing, for the info and the always excellent mail & e-mails. She rules)
From the Nobel info on 'Roald Hoffman' a Jewish Pole who went to Moscow University and won the big prize:
" One thing is certainly not true: that scientists have some greater
insight into the workings of nature than poets. Interestingly, I find
that many humanists deep down feel that scientists have such inner knowledge that is barred to them. Perhaps we scientists do, but in such carefully circumscribed pieces of the universe! Poetry soars, all around the tangible, in deep dark, through a world we reveal and make.
"It should be said that building a career in poetry is much harder
than in science. In the best chemical journal in the world the acceptance rate for full articles is 65%, for communications 35%. In a routine literary journal, far from the best, the acceptance rate for poems is below 5%.
"Writing, "the message that abandons", has become increasingly
important to me. I expect to publish four books for a general or
literary audience in the next few years. Science will figure in these,
but only as a part, a vital part, of the risky enterprise of being
human."
whole thing here
Oh, scientists, I've said it before but how I love them!
From the Nobel info on 'Roald Hoffman' a Jewish Pole who went to Moscow University and won the big prize:
" One thing is certainly not true: that scientists have some greater
insight into the workings of nature than poets. Interestingly, I find
that many humanists deep down feel that scientists have such inner knowledge that is barred to them. Perhaps we scientists do, but in such carefully circumscribed pieces of the universe! Poetry soars, all around the tangible, in deep dark, through a world we reveal and make.
"It should be said that building a career in poetry is much harder
than in science. In the best chemical journal in the world the acceptance rate for full articles is 65%, for communications 35%. In a routine literary journal, far from the best, the acceptance rate for poems is below 5%.
"Writing, "the message that abandons", has become increasingly
important to me. I expect to publish four books for a general or
literary audience in the next few years. Science will figure in these,
but only as a part, a vital part, of the risky enterprise of being
human."
whole thing here
Oh, scientists, I've said it before but how I love them!
posted by Beverly Writer at 7/14/2005
3 Comments:
needless to say, i have sent this article to my scientist boss (oh and for those of you who don't know me, i'm the investigator put on the chuggen case) my boss' response was that scientists just can't rhyme
i don't know nothin' about no chuggens.
I am going to use this as a place to vent about the evils of scientific writing. Which is a better title for a paper:
"The Copper Tapeworm", or "A Twisted Pair Cryogenic Filter"? The first sounds interesting, and evokes an image that works great to describe the filter in our paper, the second sounds like something out of your highschool sceince textbook. But of course it's the second that ends up having to be used for the published version (the version we distributed to coleagues directly has the first title). Which is better to describe a simple line drawing that roughly depicts our experiment: "cartoon", or "conceptual diagram"? Oh, yeah--conceptual fucking diagram all the way. The problem with peer review is that sometimes your peers are a bunch of jackasses.
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