Alan G. Gross est professeur de rhétorique et d'études de la communication, dont le travail explore la communication scientifique, la théorie rhétorique et la communication visuelle dans le domaine scientifique. Il étudie comment la connaissance scientifique est construite, interprétée et diffusée. Sa recherche met en lumière la relation complexe entre le langage, la pensée et le progrès scientifique. Ses publications examinent la nature du discours scientifique et son impact sur notre compréhension du monde.
The ability to communicate in print and person is essential to the life of a successful scientist. This title teaches science students and scientists how to improve the clarity, cogency, and communicative power of their words and images. It analyzes the examples of how the best scientists communicate.
The sublime evokes our awe, our terror, and our wonder. Applied first in ancient Greece to the heights of literary expression, in the 18th-century the sublime was extended to nature and to the sciences, enterprises that viewed the natural world as a manifestation of God's goodness, power, and wisdom. In The Scientific Sublime, Alan Gross reveals the modern-day sublime in popular science. He shows how the great popular scientists of our time--Richard Feynman, Stephen Hawking, Steven Weinberg, Brian Greene, Lisa Randall, Rachel Carson, Stephen Jay Gould, Steven Pinker, Richard Dawkins, and E. O. Wilson--evoke the sublime in response to fundamental questions: How did the universe begin? How did life? How did language? These authors maintain a tradition initiated by Joseph Addison, Edmund Burke, Immanuel Kant, and Adam Smith, towering 18th-century figures who adapted the literary sublime first to nature, then to science--though with one crucial difference: religion has been replaced wholly by science. In a final chapter, Gross explores science's attack on religion, an assault that attempts to sweep permanently under the rug two questions science cannot answer: What is the meaning of life? What is the meaning of the good life?
Considers Internet innovation in both the sciences and humanities Proposes a program that exemplifies two paradoxes: a revolutionary program that champions evolutionary change and a program for institutional change that stays well within the powers and prerogatives colleges and universities traditionally possess. Includes video-enriched web site meant to exemplify what is now possible in terms of supplemental information.