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BIOLOGY AND LITERATURE: VIEWS OF NATURE RIVERS SINGLETON, JR.* Introduction At the beginning ofmy freshman year in college, I was fortunate to be one of the first to hear the radio signal of the recently launched Russian satellite, Sputnik I. This satellite was to have a profound effect on my life because it caused this country to put into place a large, and I believe quite successful, scientific educational system. On attaining the undergraduate degree, I entered graduate training in biochemistry at a major midwestern university. After an interruption for military service, I returned to graduate school to complete the doctorate, subsequently following die usual route of postdoctoral work and an academic research career. Currently, I spend a major share of my time doing research in microbial biochemistry and physiology. The point of these autobiographical comments is that, like any number ofmy contemporaries and colleagues, I am the product ofan American scientific educational system which has produced a vast and highly successful scientific establishment. This establishment has contributed gready to man's understanding of his place in the universe and a fair measure of control of that universe. But despite the wealth of scientific knowledge produced by this establishment, science has frequently lost contact with the wellspring of humanistic tradition that led to its creation [I]. The sciences and the humanities often appear as two combatant camps, unable to appreciate, or even comprehend, the language or methods ofeach other. Snow [2] described the relationship as two separate cultures, each widi its own language, goals, traditions, and values— each isolated and independent from the other. The author thanks his colleagues from the English Department, D. Heyward Brock and Ronald Martin, for participating in both the joys and trials of interdisciplinary teaching and for critically reading this manuscript. The author also thanks Carol Slater, of Alma College, and N. J. Berrill, of Swarthmore, for their comments and suggestions. A preliminary presentation of the ideas contained here was made at Alma College. *School of Life and Health Sciences and Center for Science and Culture, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware 19716.© 1985 by the University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 003 1-5982/85/2802-0428$0 1 .00 Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 28, 2 ¦ Winter 1985 | 303 In recent years I have become involved in an attempt to deal with the gulf between science and the humanities. In collaboration with colleagues from the Department of English, I have been team-teaching an introductory writing course, required ofall entering freshmen (English1 10: Critical Reading and Writing). I believe courses of this type offer a unique teaching opportunity for the scientist to communicate the nature of science to both the science and the nonscience student and to help reconstruct the bridge between the sciences and the humanities. In this essay I elaborate on my experience in this course in order to encourage others who find dissatisfaction with their own educational experience (whether it be scientific or humanistic) to attempt similar projects. Most colleges and universities today have a general writing requirement that must be completed by all degree-track students regardless of major. Whether known as "Critical Reading and Writing," "Freshman Composition," or by some other rubric, this course is usually a nuts-andbolts one in which the student learns the mechanics of putting words into sentences and sentences together into some coherent form in order to express ideas and arguments cogently. Because of the need to focus on the mechanics of writing, such a course is often considered to be soft in academic content and, for many students, fails to provide intellectual stimulation. Sometimes there are problems with this kind of course for students who enter college with high verbal abilities as indicated by a reasonably high verbal SAT score. Many argue that these students should be exempt from an introductory writing requirement. Yet, while such students may have left high school with a command of the mechanics of writing, they frequently are not truly effective writers and need the discipline of an introductory writing course to sharpen their compositional skills. To become more effective writers, they need the discipline of writing in a controlled environment, subject to careful analysis and criticism. Since...

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