When it comes right down to it, science communication is a modern development in the ancient art of rhetoric. However as rhetoric is, at its heart, interested in how an audience may be convinced of a writer’s or speaker’s argument, the question eventually must be asked as to what ethical considerations must be taken into account when communicating scientific information to an audience.
To those of us in America who love the outdoors, who relish the opportunities for discovery and recreation offered by one of the best things the Zeitgeist of the nation has ever created – the National Park System, who think the nation would be a less place ecologically, historically, and spiritually without the vast tracts of shared public lands we hold in common as a citizenry, the present time is one of great trepidation.
After covering such subjects as beetles, frogs, eggs, caterpillars, and even orchids, the University of Chicago Press’ Life-Size series is finally showing signs of going to seed – well, “seeds” actually (sorry, I couldn’t resist).
I could spend paragraphs explaining how significant the recent publication of “Plants of the World; An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Vascular Plants” is to the history of the literature of botany; how it’s “the first book to systematically explore every vascular plant family on earth,” and how it’s “organized in a modern phylogenetic order [with] detailed entries for each family.”