Science Talk: Changing Notions of Science in American Culture (review)

In Science Talk, Daniel Patrick Thurs tracks important changes in the use of the word “science” and associated rhetoric in U.S. print since the early nineteenth century. He marks their course through a few select, supposedly signal, defining or illustrative topics of controversy that filled pages of his chief primary source—popular magazines. Historians of American cultures will readily recognize the chronological sequence in the table of contents:

1. 1. Phrenology: A Science for Everyone

2. 2. Evolution: Struggling for Design

3. 3. Relativity: A Science Set Apart

4. 4. UFOs: In the Shadow of Science

5. 5. Intelligent Design: The Evolution of Science Talk

As the subtitles suggest and the introduction explains, Thurs emphasizes that the word “science” both evolved in meaning and, at any given moment, had contestable uses.

Mindful of that diversity, a reader may find the selection of topics curious. For example, since the referent of the word “science” was not clearly bound in the 1830s, it may matter to us as little as it did to contemporaries that phrenology had any particular relation to “science,” much less to broader “notions” of it in “American culture” at-large. From that point of view, other topics (such as medicine or industry) might seem a fairer choice to represent science talk 150 years ago. On the other hand, “science” has obviously mattered a lot in recent debates surrounding ID. In light of precedents, a closer parallel for the recent past might be SATs or the South Beach Diet.

In some measure, though too, that inconsistency in the relationship between the term and a signal instance is precisely the point: The relationship evolved over time. In nearly two hundred years, popular discussions of science in the U.S. turned with a series of stock moves, rhetorical tools in the “boundary-work” trade. In public controversies (as well as a host of social changes that deserve more attention), the terms “science” and “scientist” have come to have “stronger” (more precise and persuasive) referents. Therein, too, lies the “paradox” that is the centerpiece of Science Talk: The very moves that have made science more useful for adjudicating some disputes have also rendered it more isolated or even irrelevant for others.

That conclusion will hardly surprise readers who are familiar with rhetorical, discursive, or cognitive approaches to cultural studies. Such a dynamic is just about always to be expected. More valuable, I think, is consideration of the specific, persistent sorts of boundary work that have figured in these disputes. For example, how important is it to connect or to distinguish “science” from induction or theory, religion or common sense, heroic or anonymous practitioners, exclusive or democratic processes? How important should it be? (And, I would add, don’t the actual stakes matter?) Thurs seldom goes beyond identifying these issues.

These are valuable questions, but I suspect that readers will find more useful answers in the work of Ronald Numbers, the advisor for the 2004 dissertation from which Science Talk is derived. What is missing, I think, is a broader sample of both popular and scientific discourse, and more pointed engagement with the substance and import as well as the ways to spin science in American history.