Bono James J
Departments of History and Medicine, University at Buffalo, State University of New York, Buffalo, New York 14260-4130, USA.
Isis. 2010 Sep;101(3):555-9. doi: 10.1086/655792.
As a field of study, literature and science has gradually expanded to encompass both the impact of science on literary culture and the literary-linguistic practices intrinsic to the production of scientific knowledge. Such transformations both reinforce and fundamentally recalibrate the detailed attention focused on scientific practice by historians of science since the 1980s. As a result, this essay and the Focus section it introduces suggest that history of science and literature and science are, in fact, interdependent fields. Attention to their convergences will yield better understanding of the performative dimensions of scientific practices and thence of science itself as a form of making of knowledge of things and events in the world of nature. Science as a form of making involves the convergence of things, material practices, and a panoply of meaningful artifacts-instruments of thought and action-that refuse any simple dichotomy between "text" and "action."
作为一个研究领域，文学与科学已逐渐扩展，涵盖了科学对文学文化的影响以及科学知识生产中固有的文学语言实践。自20世纪80年代以来，这些转变既强化了科学史家对科学实践的细致关注，又从根本上对其进行了重新校准。因此，本文及其所介绍的焦点板块表明，科学史与文学与科学实际上是相互依存的领域。关注它们的交汇点将有助于更好地理解科学实践的表演性维度，进而更好地理解科学本身，将其视为一种认识自然界中事物和事件的知识形式。作为一种制造形式的科学涉及事物、物质实践以及一系列有意义的人工制品——思想和行动的工具——它们拒绝在“文本”和“行动”之间进行任何简单的二分法。
