Author |
Otis, Laura |
Year |
2010 |
Journal |
Isis 101
|
Pages |
570 to 577 |
Volume |
101 |
Keywords |
|
Abstract
Article's abstract:With their common focus on narrative, literary scholars and historians
of science share a close relationship with language and can offer each other valuable
interpretive insights. Particularly revealing in each field are scientists' and literary
writers' changing uses of metaphor, which is critical to each kind of scholarship
since both disciplines place such a high value on cultural context. Any crossâdisciplinary
help, however, needs to take into account the essential differences between the fields:
contrasting views of what constitutes evidence and varying relationships with the
past. Since both kinds of scholarship involve creating as well as analyzing narratives,
each field has developed its own sense of pacing and significance, and their differing
approaches to truth deserve respect.