“Objectivity cannot be equated with mental blankness; rather, objectivity resides in recognizing your preferences and then subjecting them to especially harsh scrutiny—and also in a willingness to revise or abandon your theories when the tests fail (as they usually do).”
—Stephen Jay Gould
Years ago, I had the fortune to meet someone I believe to be a 20th Century Renaissance Man (if there could be such a mixture): Stephen Jay Gould. In 2000, Dr. Gould received an STC Honorary Fellowship. (I led the committee who championed him to the STC Board of Directors.) A gentleman of grace and charm, he joined our conference in Orlando at Disney World where I had the honor of meeting him, dining with him, and introducing him to our members. It was one of the great experiences of my life. To this day, I treasure those few hours as ones that helped me recognize the beauty and benefits of good technical communication.
In addition to being a forward-thinking brilliant scientist, evolutionary theorist, and paleontologist, Dr. Gould was a renowned nature and science essayist. Unfortunately, he died in 2002 of cancer at the young age of 60. But in his 60 years, he made a huge impact on science and writing both in popular culture and in scientific circles. He not only appeared in an episode of The Simpsons, but he also was named as one of America’s “living legends” by the U.S. Congress. In addition to his scientific papers, Dr. Gould wrote for Scientific American, The Atlantic Monthly, New Scientist, and Natural History magazine; most of his books were compilations of those articles.
The reason I mention him here is this: He made science education interesting because he knew how to make language fun. Because his writing presented complex ideas, his work is not easy to read—but it is delightful to read. Within his chosen fields of study, he referenced things that were easily understood by his readers—baseball, buildings, literature, mythology. For instance, to show how more recently evolved species within a family group steadily decrease in size, he compared that process to how Hershey avoided price rises by making Hershey bars smaller while keeping the cost static.
Recently I asked my Basics of Technical Editing class to read a few articles written by Dr. Gould and comment on them in the discussion board from an editorial viewpoint.
Some of my students knew of Gould, but most of them did not. A few mentioned that they needed a dictionary to comprehend his writing, but not one complained! Many vowed to read more of his work to improve their own writing. The students noted his use of parallelism, matching verb phrases, em dashes, metaphors, and analogies. One student even rewrote a few of his phrases substituting more commonly known words than the original. (Despite her accuracy of wording, to me, the original had more power and grace.) I love it that the students were excited to have “found” him; one student noted that the lesson he learned as a budding technical communicator is that “language can and should be fun…. One doesn’t have to dumb language down in order to communicate complex issues.”
How true! If you haven’t read Dr. Gould, I invite you to do so. Here’s a link to the Unofficial Stephen Jay Gould Archive. If you believe that language is fun, that learning complex ideas can be eased by appropriate story telling, and that we still have literary geniuses amongst us, I know you’ll delight in the experience.