Popular Science Writing: A Challenge to Academic Cultures
In Feynman’s popular science works, the aesthetic meets the empirical, as scien- tific knowledge is transmitted through a medium of story. Accepting tenets of both literary works and academic science writing, popular science writing, through its very existence, challenges the dichotomy of scientific versus literary cultures. Popular science writers like Richard Feynman, Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould, Natalie Angier, and Neil DeGrasse Tyson―scientists who have authored books of creative scientific nonfiction for a lay audience―must face conflicting episte- mologies in science and the humanities, paying careful attention to the translation from scientific material to expressive forms. Popular science writers represent a precedent of literary-scientific work that challenges the two cultures’ dichotomy in Western thought.