Spreading Chaos Popularization

Written Communication
http://wcx.sagepub.com Spreading Chaos: The Role of Popularizations in the Diffusion of Scientific Ideas
Danette Paul Written Communication 2004; 21; 32 DOI: 10.1177/0741088303261035 The online version of this article can be found at: http://wcx.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/21/1/32
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WRITTEN COMMUNICA TION / JANUARY 2004
The Role of Popularizations in the Diffusion of Scientific Ideas

Brigham Young University
Scientific popularizations are generally considered translations (often dubious ones) of scientific research for a lay audience. This study explores the role popularizations play within scientific discourse, specifically in the development of chaos theory. The methods included a review of the popular and the semipopular books on chaos theory from 1975 to 1995, interviews with key figures, and an analysis of the citations in scientific research journals to Gleicks well-known popularization, Chaos: Making a New Science. The results indicate that popularizations take different forms as a scientific revolution develops into normal science. At various points, popularizations are used by scientists to find a broad, interdisciplinary, scientific audience, to show interest in the field, to disseminate lines of inquiry, and to help establish the authors priority claim. Keywords: rhetoric; popular science; scientific rhetoric; Gleick; citation; popularization
Spreading Chaos
DANETTE PAUL
According to the dominant (Hilgartner, 1990) or the canonical view (Grundmann & Cavaill, 2000; Myers, 2003), scientific popularizations are generally considered translations (often dubious ones) of scientific research for a lay audience. As several scholars have noted, this canonical view of popularization relies on several assumptions. First, popularizations are touted as a necessary bridge for the increasing gap between the specialized knowledge of scientists and the common knowledge of the general public. Second, the general public, the audience for popularization, is homogeneously uninformed on topics of science (i.e., a blank slate) (Myers, 2003). Third, popularizations, particularly in the 20th century, are a one-way exchange of ideas from
Authors Note: I acknowledge with thanks Cory Brown, Noella Jeo, and Jane Birch for their help with gathering, coding, and rating the data in this study.
WRITTEN COMMUNICATION, Vol. 21 No. 1, January 2004 32-68 DOI: 10.1177/0741088303261035 2004 Sage Publications
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scientists to the public. Fourth, the purpose of scientific popularizations is to promote science by creating interest in the general public (Bensaude-Vincent, 2001). Fifth, scientists involvement with popularizations is relatively recent and is primarily to gain more public support in times of shrinking budgets (Grundmann & Cavaill, 2000). Finally, popularizations generally lose something in the translation (see discussions in Charney, 2003, and Fahnestock, 1993). However, several scholars, including Hilgartner (1990), Grundmann and Cavaill (2000), Bensaude-Vincent (2001), Gulich (2003), and most recently Myers (2003), have challenged the assumptions underlying the canonical view. Hilgartner has argued that popularization is a matter of degree (p. 528) rather than of a genre clearly distinct from science. Grundmann and Cavaill have questioned the assumption that popularizations are communicating only with the general public. Bensaude-Vincent has disputed the inevitability of a gap between the knowledge of scientists and that of the public. And Gulich has shown that the exchange between experts and nonexperts can be dynamic rather than unilateral. Although these studies present important challenges to the assumptions about popularization, they generally focus on what is considered the primary purpose of popularizationsto educate, persuade, or communicate with the general public. Although Bensaude-Vincent, Grundmann and Cavaill, and Myers all recognize scientists as potential readers of popularizations, they do not consider the possible consequences these readers have for science; in other words, they do not consider what, if any, role popularizations play within the scientific community. To determine what role popularizations play within a scientific community, I examine the relatively recent development of nonlinear dynamical systems, commonly called chaos theory (beginning in approximately 1975).1 In this study, I argue that popularizations played an important role in diffusing concepts of chaos theory within and across disciplinary boundaries in science itself. I begin by briefly looking at the development of the canonical view of popularizations, then challenge that view with an analysis of the role of popularizations in the development of the chaos theory, including interviews with James Yorke, the mathematician who, with coauthor Li, first named the phenomenon chaos, and with science writer James Gleick, author of the best-selling 1987 popularization, Chaos: Making a New Science, and finally, by examining the citations of Gleicks Chaos. I argue that although the text of Chaos and the interview with Gleick
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indicate that Gleick holds a canonical view of popularization (a translation of science for a lay audience), scientists and mathematicians used this popularization both as a teaching tool and as a credible source for research.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CANONICAL VIEW OF POPULARIZATIONS
To claim that popularizations play a role in scientific research, beyond simply creating interest in the general public, seems almost nonsensical. After all, scientific popularizations are defined as science addressed to a general, lay, or nonexpert audience. Or as Myers (2003) puts it, popularizations are defined in terms of what they are not and what they are not is science (p. 265). However, studies of science demonstrate that, historically, both popular science and popularizations have played an important role in scientific development. In this brief review, I will demonstrate that the conflation of the issues of accessibility, quality, and insider social status2 over time eventually led to the so-called traditional perspective of popularizations as either watered-down or inaccurate science with little effect on scientific discourse. Bensaude-Vincent (2001) argues that the roles and the audiences for popular science have changed over time (also see Gibbons et al., 1994, and Grundmann & Cavaill, 2000). According to BensaudeVincent, in the 18th century, there were no clear-cut demarcations between amateurs and scientists (p. 102). Consequently, all discussions of science were accessible to all educated and interested persons. In other word, the audience for science was an enlightened public. Bensaude-Vincents (2001) discussion of French science and Bazermans (1989) and Atkinsons (1999) historical studies of the Royal Society in England demonstrate not only that amateurs played a vital role in the development of science but also that amateurs and public discussions of scientific topics helped create a critical mass for creating a scientific community and for disseminating information.3 Therefore, access and quality were not limited to a group of scientific insiders. The demarcation of gentlemen amateurs and of men of science into two distinct social groups began the development of two somewhat contradictory trends at the end of the 18th century and during the
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19th century.4 On one hand, the professionalization of science slowly began creating a distinction between insiders and outsiders. For example, beginning in the 1820s, the Royal Society began to limit the influence of amateurs (Gregory & Miller, 1998). Over the course of the 19th century, standardized training and methods and the use of specialized language limited the publics ability to access scientific information. On the other hand, the rising middle class, along with increasing literacy and the promotion of science as an extension of common sense, created a trend during this same period to put science within everyones reach (Bensaude-Vincent, 2001, p. 103). These two movements led to popular science and academic science gradually [forming] two distinct but parallel networks (p. 105) and created the need for popularizations to bridge the gap between scientists and the public. Thus, the audience for science was both scientists and the consuming masses. Although issues of accessibility and of insider social status arose during the 19th century, these issues were not necessarily linked to quality. For example, William Whewell, scientist and philosopher of science who was active in the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and Mary Somerville, who translated LaPlaces Mcanique Cleste, both made what were generally considered quality contributions to science, although their work was primarily addressed to a popular audience.5 In addition, many of the most important scientific arguments of the day, such as Darwins Origins of the Species (1958), were published for a general educated readership (see Campbell, 1987). Thus, in the 19th century it was possible to make a contribution to science via popular science and even in popularizations. But by the end of the century, the motive for doing so was becoming increasingly suspect among scientists. When science became standardized in the 20th century with rigorous training, regulated scientific practices, and peer-reviewed forums, the publics ability to participate in science or to have access to scientific texts was severely limited by the highly specialized language, expensive equipment, and counterintuitive theories, such as the new physics. These features, which excluded the public from participation, also led to a conflation of accessibility, quality, and insider social status. In this conflation, accessible texts (such as popularizations) necessarily lack quality, whereas insider status in science ensures quality, creating a seemingly unbridgeable gap between scientists and the lay audience. Bensaude-Vincent (2001) notes that
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the term popular science no longer refers to any specific practices or discourse of science. . . . The notion of popular science as distinct from professional science is no longer acceptable. Any non-professional practice for science . . . is labeled pseudo-science. (pp. 105-106)
Therefore, the audience for contemporary science is experts, and the audience for popularizations is, in Bensaude-Vincents word, the ignorant masses. This perception of audiences does not allow for the possibility that popular science or popularizations could affect the development of scientific knowledge. Instead, the role of popularizations seems to be limited to translating the science to allow the general public to recognize the wonder of science and, thereby, increase the publics willingness to fund science. In other words, contemporary science seems to foster the canonical view of popularization. This analysis shows that the canonical view limits our understanding of the audience and therefore the potential purposes of scientific popularization. Thus, Bensaude-Vincent (2001) rightly argues that the assessment of the increasingly unbridgeable gap between scientists and the public holds only if one accepts a deceptive image of the public as the uniformly ignorant masses. It also limits our understanding of experts. Myers (2003) also claims that assumptions about experts and nonexperts can also be deceptive, stating that
despite being apparently so self-evident, the distinctions between expert and lay audiences breaks down almost as soon as we try to apply it more widely. . . . Experts become less expert as soon as they step outside of their limited area of expertise. (pp. 267-68)
The audience for popularizations, then, is more accurately seen as including not only the ignorant masses and the experts but also the knowledgeable amateur and the slightly less expert scientist; therefore, the increased specialization of science in the 20th century, which limits the ability of scientists to participate in science outside of their areas of specialization, may actually increase rather than decrease the number of scientists who are part of the nonexpert readership of popularization. The recognition of scientists as part of the nonexpert readership of popularization and this historical analysis reveal the possibility for popularization to have an effect on the development of science. First, historically, popular science and popularizations have played a role in the development of science. Second, scientists have consistently
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used popularizations to achieve scientific goals such as introducing new ideas, providing a forum for discussion, advancing lines of research, or working across disciplinary boundaries. Third, examples from the Royal Society and the debate over evolution show that popularizations and popular science are particularly important in nascent and revolutionary science.6 This claim is further supported by Thomas Kuhns (1970) work on scientific revolutions. According to Kuhn, one sign of a revolution in science is the appearance of texts that are accessible to the general public. In cases of scientific revolution, whether as a result of incommensurability (Kuhn, 1970) or of the Max Planck effect, in which scientists divide along generational lines in their support of a new idea (Harris, 1994, p. 47), or of just the ordinary difficulties of introducing new ideas into science (Paul & Charney, 1995), popularizations seem a plausible way to spread a new paradigm. Although other scholars have recognized the value of popular science or of popularizations in historical studies, none have explored the possibility that popularizations could have an effect on contemporary science. In the next section, I examine how popularizations are used to diffuse revolutionary ideas in contemporary science by looking specifically at the development of chaos theory.
A HISTORY OF POPULARIZATIONS IN CHAOS THEORY
Chaos theory, or nonlinear dynamics, makes a particularly interesting case study for the effects of popularizations on the dissemination of research. First, scientists working in the field claim that chaos theory is a revolution in science, affecting many disciplines and making it plausible that popularizations would be used to spread the word.7 Second, although many of the mathematical concepts on which chaos theory is founded were well established by the mid-20th century (some had been around since the end of the 19th century), the theorys value was not well recognized. Before computers, nonlinear equations were hard to calculate, especially beyond a few iterations. Once the advent of computers allowed for multiple iterations, chaos theory challenged the foundation of science: predictability. As its value became clear, pioneers in the field, including Robert May, James Yorke, Benoit Mandelbrot, Ilya Prigogine, and Mitchell Feigenbaum, rushed to get the message out. According to Yorke, the recent winner of the Japan Award,8 chaos as a concept was established by 1973. . . .
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Mathematicians knew about it, but nothing was written down. And, our goal was to figure out a way to tell the people who should know about these things (personal communication, June 22, 1995). A review of their early important articles demonstrates that, in their quest to get the message out, some scientists and some mathematicians published in unconventional forums to reach a broader audience. Starting in 1977, a steady stream of popularizations in English was published on chaos or on chaos-related phenomena. Although other scholars have recognized the value of popularizations in terms of public relations, this analysis shows that popularizations played a role in the development of chaos theory. In my analysis, these publications seem to come in four stages:
1. a revolutionary stage, which includes the publication of unusual texts in traditional forums; 2. a semipopular stage, which includes popularizations of research by early pioneers in chaos; 3. a popularization stage, which includes popularizations about the field that seemed to reflect the canonical view; and 4. a transitional stage, in which text designed to introduce or to train new scientists, such as introductions and textbooks, began to replace popularizations, indicating the normalization of the revolution (for a list of the popularizations discussed here, see Table 1).
These stages reflect the development of a scientific revolution. In the earliest days of a revolution, scientists working in normal science begin to notice some anomalies, which they publish in normal outlets and in normal formats; an example of this type of article would be Edward Lorenzs articles on the butterfly effect on weather patterns, considered by many the first articles addressing the as yet unnamed phenomenon in the 1960s. Revolutionary Stage The revolutionary stage began in chaos in the 1970s as some scientists started to recognize that these anomalies were more than just a few exceptions. However, trying to make a revolutionary claim is tricky. As Keith and Zagacki (1992) have argued in their assessment of this period, trying to introduce revolutionary ideas puts scientists in a paradoxical situation in which they must reject and at the same time seek the approval of established science. In addition to the paradox problem, scientists trying to publish revolutionary ideas also face
Table 1 A Selected List of Well-Known Popularizations of Chaos Theory by Scientists and by Mathematicians
Year 1977 1980 1980 1983 1984 1986 1987 1989 1993 1994 Crutchfield, Farmer, Packard, and Shaw Gleick Stewart Lorenz Cohen and Stewart Prigogine (English translation of the 1979 French version) Mandelbrot Prigogine and Stengers Mandelbrot (English translation of the 1975 French version) Feigenbaum Author Title
Semipopular science stage
Fractals: Form, Chance and Dimension (Les objets fractal: forme, hasard, et dimension) Universal Behavior in Nonlinear Systems in Los Alamos Research From Being to Becoming (La nouvelle alliance) The Fractal Nature of Geometry Order Out of Chaos
Chaos in Scientific American Chaos: Making a New Science Does God Play Dice? The New Mathematics of Chaos The Essence of Chaos The Collapse of Chaos
Popularizations stage
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other challenges, including incommensurability, or the inability to draw on a shared vocabulary and understanding that leads to the inability to communicate (Kuhn, 1970, pp. 200-201), and the Max Planck effect, the phenomenon whereby two opposing camps divide over paradigmatic issues along generational lines (Harris, 1994, p. 47). As Harris (1994) puts it, The young Turks propose conceptual reorganization, and the elders in the field repress that reorganization (p. 47). In other words, to publish, revolutionaries must overcome paradox, incommensurability, and repression. Consequently, scientists advocating revolutionary science often turn to new strategies in their publishing and in their writing to reach a broader audience (Paul & Charney, 1995). Most scientists believe that science is a communal enterprise. Therefore, publishing successfully and reaching a broad audience are important to increase the chances of finding like-minded scientists who are interested in working on similar projects. Most scientists believe that science requires a critical mass of scientists working together to make real progress in the field. For these reasons, scientists are willing to risk trying new strategies to find a broader and a more receptive audience. Often, these new strategies result in unusual texts in traditional forums or in traditional texts in unusual forums. Some texts that seem to reflect new strategies include the now famous article that named the phenomenon chaos by Tien-Yien Li and James A.Yorke (1975), the first review article on chaos in Nature by Robert May (1976), the article that introduced a universal constant for chaos by Mitchell Feigenbaum (1978), and a newsletter sent by Joseph Ford, beginning in the late 1970s, which would eventually become the first journal of chaos theory, Physica D. In their 1975 publication, Li and Yorke placed a slightly unconventional article in a somewhat unusual forum. They published Period Three Implies Chaos in a university journal rather than in a research journal. According to Yorke,
the reason we published Period Three Implies Chaos in The Mathematics Monthly is that we felt that, while a lot of people would be interested in it and that this journal was not going to cover all of those people, this was the best we could do in terms of hitting a broad audience. (personal communication, June 22, 1995)
This strategy worked for Li and Yorke better than they anticipated, as Yorke explains, saying,
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I think Li and I felt that this would be a topic that would be of considerable interest to people. We did not think that people would suddenly become interested in this topic as if a tidal wave had hit. (personal communication, June 22, 1995)
Robert May and Joseph Ford also tried unusual formats. May (1976) published a review article in Nature before there was anything to review. Aquick look at the 51 references in the review is very revealing. Twenty references (39%) are preprints, in press, or published in 1975 or in 1976in other words, a year or less old. An additional 12 references (24%) are published in the 1970s, making them 6 years old or less, together accounting for 32 references, or almost two thirds of the references (63%). In his review, May addresses a general audience, stating that he is discussing a phenomenon that occurs in many disciplines including biological, economic and social sciences (p. 459). He opens his review with a brief discussion and a definition of the phenomenon but spends most of the review discussing his aims in writing the review article: to set up a new research area. He ends his introduction with an evangelical plea for educators to teach these equations to students so they can see the wild things a non-linear equation can do (p. 459). Ford, also trying to get the word out but finding no formal outlets, began to send a newsletter to anyone he thought would be or should be interested in chaos. It consisted mostly of preprints and of citations to what he considered important articles, including those of Lorenz, Yorke, May, and later, Feigenbaum. Feigenbaum (1978), after many rejections, was able to publish his article introducing a universal constant for chaos in a traditional outlet, The Journal of Statistical Physics, but he published it with an unusual introduction and this disclaimer: At present our treatment is heuristic. In a sequel, an exact theory is formulated and specific problems of rigor isolated (p. 25). It is interesting to note that even after the sequel came out a year later, the heuristic remained the most widely cited article in the field. (For more extensive discussions of Yorkes and of Feigenbaums early articles, see Paul & Charney, 1995.) These strategies were successful not only in getting work published but also in establishing a critical mass of scientists working on chaos. By 1980, scientists interested in chaos had their first conference. Although these new strategies eventually allowed scientists interested in chaos theory to publish in traditional forums, the audience for those publications was primarily limited to scientists in their own fields. According to Keith and Zagacki (1992), the quest for glory in
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modern science is, in a significant sense, the quest for revolution. To be one of the giants of science, it is sufficient to have been on the leading edge of a successful revolution (p. 165). To lead a revolution, scientists work must move beyond their own specific research area. Publishing semipopular articles may be an attempt to do thatto diffuse their ideas and to extend their reach. According to Kaufer and Carley (1993), diffusion is the process of spreading an idea into new areas. Reach (measured in subsequent citations) is the outcome of diffusion, reflecting the influence of those ideas. Diffusion is related to the idea or to the text, whereas reach is related to the author and to the authors influence (p. 125). Although Fords newsletter and the conference helped diffuse ideas across disciplinary boundaries, researchers needed a new strategy to extend their reach. Semipopular Stage In the semipopular stage in the early 1980s, researchers started to publish their specific findings in popular and in semipopular forums. Despite the accessible language, these popularizations seem to be addressed to scientists rather than to a general audience. In addition, they seem to be an attempt to diffuse the scientists ideas across disciplinary boundaries. As chaos theory develops, researchers use this kind of publication to secure the status of claims from their past work as the research moves into new areas. The publications to be considered in the semipopular stage are by Feigenbaum, Mandelbrot, and Prigogine. Feigenbaum (1980) published Universal Behavior in Nonlinear Systems, an article that he described as semipopular, in Los Alamos Research shortly after publishing his heuristic and its sequel. His motivation for writing this semipopular article is unclear. It may simply be that the institute that supported his research asked him to feature it in their journal, or he may have wanted to discuss his work in a less formal setting. In either case, the audience for the Los Alamos article was more interdisciplinary than for Statistical Physics. Universal was reprinted in the collection Universality in Chaos, edited by Predrag Cvitanovic in 1984.9 These two general outlets helped to diffuse Feigenbaums ideas and to extend his reach without diminishing the quality of his work. The motives of Mandelbrot and of Prigogine for publishing semipopular texts is much clearer. As Robert T. Kelley (1993) argues in his
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article on semipopular texts in chaos theory, both Mandelbrot and Prigogine [sought] to make the important general implications of their work accessible to a broader audience (p. 133). And they wrote several versions. They both started with a French version; in 1975, Mandelbrot wrote Les objets fractal: forme, hasard, et dimension; in 1979, Prigogine and Stengers wrote La nouvelle alliance. Shortly thereafter, both came out with English versions: Mandelbrots Fractals: Form, Chance and Dimension in 1977, and Prigogines From Being to Becoming in 1980. Then, several years later, both came out with another English version: Mandelbrots The Fractal Nature of Geometry in 1983, and Prigogine and Stengers Order out of Chaos in 1984. With their first books, Mandelbrot and Prigogine were merely attempting to diffuse their ideas across disciplinary boundaries. In the early text, Fractals: Form, Chance and Dimension, Mandelbrot (1977) is very concerned about using the semipopular genre (see Kelley, 1993). In a section title, he announces that This Essay Mixes Styles: Is Semi-Popular and Scholarly. He asks for tolerance regarding the numerous compromises that are unavoidable whenever one mixes styles but insists that it is a work of erudition (Mandelbrot, 1977, p. 22) . In his early text, From Being to Becoming: Time and Complexity in the Physical Sciences, Prigogine, a Nobel Prize winner, seems comfortable with his popular book with a title that alludes to Heideggers Time and Being and its clearly philosophical stance. But both, in these early books, are trying to find othersparticularly scientistswho will recognize the value of their ideas. The timing of the second set of texts is particularly interesting. In the earlier articles, the authors are clearly trying to find a broader audience across disciplinary lines; that is, to diffuse their ideas. Although chaos was interdisciplinary with established mathematical constructs, those mathematical constructs needed to be connected to physical systems if they were to cross disciplinary boundaries and to have a lasting impact on other fields. When Feigenbaums 1978 article provided a mathematical constant, it also provided a physical connection to mathematical models and a method of demonstrating the existence of the chaos phenomenon in various physical systems. That article created an explosion of interest that reached its height in 1984. It was at approximately this time that both Mandelbrot and Prigogine published their second popularizations. (It was also the time of the reprinting of Feigenbaums popularization.) The second set of books, coming at the height of interest in chaos, seems to be intended to stake claims, extending their authors reaches
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by reminding scientists of their prior work and of its relationship to the new excitement about chaos theory. According to Kaufer and Carley (1993), one way authors extend their ultimate reach is by secondary communications about their reach, which includes other related communications. In this case, the ultimate reach is extended by the additional popularizations. For example, Mandelbrot (1983) compares the two versions of his popular works, stating, my previous Essays [sic] stresses relentlessly that the fractal approach was both effective and natural. . . . In the present Essay [sic], to the contrary, I am precise in claiming credit (p. 3). Then he quotes another scientist, F. J. Dyson, stating, fractal is a word invented by Mandelbrot (p. 3). James Gleick (1987), Robert Kelley (1993), and Susan Prince (1984), who interviewed Mandelbrot shortly after the second book came out, all noted that Mandelbrot seemed very concerned about his place in history. In an interview with Prince, Mandelbrot states that I had to convince my publisher that if the book was beautifully illustrated and not too technically written, it would attract a much wider audiences than if I just directed it to scientists (p. 52). Furthermore, he notes, no one disputes me full credit for this discovery. After all, I was in the wilderness a long, long time while people laughed at my ideas. That the theory is mine is never argued (p. 52). If these scientists were trying to make a claim, Mandelbrot was more successful than was Prigogine. For although no one does dispute Mandelbrots claim, some do not see Prigogines work as related to the chaos of Feigenbaum and of Yorke. Yet Prigogine is also clearly trying to extend his reach in chaos theory. First, he renames his book, From Being to Becoming, to Order out of Chaos, then he adds a new foreword by Alvin Toffler. In the foreword, Toffler (1984) touts Prigogines work by prominently mentioning Prigogines Nobel Prize, by chastising Americans for not reading the book,10 and by comparing, in analogy, Newtonianism to Prigoginianism (p. xxvi). However, in Gleicks well-known popular history of chaos theory, as Porush (1993) notes, Prigogine is only mentioned in a footnote. Gleick says that Prigogine was not part of the story he was telling; none of the people he interviewed were talking about him (Porush, 1993, p.160). Prigogine, in an interview with Porush, claims that this slight reflects Gleicks American interestshe is telling the American story to an American audience (p. 159). However, Gleick is not the only one who dissociates Prigogines award-winning work from chaos theory. In his popularization, in
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1992, Edward Lorenz, the author of the butterfly effect, compliments Prigogines work while noting that it is not part of what he means by chaos. After interviewing Prigogine and other scientists involved in the development of chaos, John Horgan (1996), a science writer, notes that other scientists are generally dismissive of Prigogines work. Horgan also implies that it may be the fact that he waxes philosophical in his popularizations that causes some scientists to dismiss his work. Although meeting their goal with varying degrees of success, Mandelbrot and Prigogine are clearly addressing scientists with their popularizations. The goals of the popularizations in this semipopular stagefinding an audience, creating interest in an area of research, and staking a claimseem more closely aligned with the goals of research articles than with the goals articulated for popularizations in the canonical view. Popularization Stage In the popularization stage that began in the late 1980s, the popularizations present a broader11 view of the development of chaos in the larger context of science. By the time these popularizations appear, chaos theory is well established. Research areas have been established, National Science Foundation grants have been awarded for research centers, Fords newsletter has become the journal Physica D, and other journals have also been established that focus on the chaos phenomenon. There seems to be less of a need for popularizations within the scientific community. The popularizations that appear in this stage, in many ways, seem to be more traditional popularizations in the canonical senseaddressed to a general audience, in a popular forum, primarily for entertainment or enlightenment. Many appeared in traditional popularization outlets, such as the series of articles on chaos theory published in New Scientist. Although some of the authors are scientists who were working in the field, such as Crutchfield, Farmer, Packard, and Shaw (a group of graduate students from the University of California at Santa Cruz who published an article in Scientific American), the two most successful authors were not leading chaos scientists. The most successful is James Gleick, a science journalist, and the other is Ian Stewart, a mathematician who has written several other popularizations. Their books clearly seem to be addressing a popular audience rather than addressing scientists in a roundabout way. Whereas Mandelbrot and Prigogine, in their popularizations, seem to be trying to advance their own
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research and to shape the field, Stewart and Gleick seem most interested in telling a good story. Given the canonical perspective of books in this period, they would seem to be the least likely to affect scientific research. Both Gleicks and Stewarts books have had popular and critical success, were widely reviewed in research journals, and were recommended rather than condemned by most scientists. However, Gleicks Chaos has been far and away the most successful, spending approximately 8 months on The New York Times Bestsellers List. Indeed, Chaos has been one of the most successful popularizations in recent memory. According to Buchman (1991), Only 5 Science books have made the best sellers list from [1975-1988], and two were about the history of Science (p. 6). Gleicks very successful book was followed by a number of other popularizations, including Stewarts book Does God Play Dice?, an edited collection of the popular articles by leading scientists in chaos theory originally published in New Scientist, two more books by James Gleick,12 and the publication of a lecture series by Edward Lorenz. This period ends with another book by Stewart, which announces The Collapse of Chaos.13 Transitional Stage In the 1990s, the transitional stage began in which popularizations were replaced with introductions and textbooks. The first in this group is Baker and Gollubs (1990) Chaotic Dynamics. On their back cover, they claim that this is the first text to provide a short, quantitative introduction to chaos. In their preface, they note that since the introduction of chaos theory, there have been works directed at specialists and a few popular books and articles that give the flavor of chaos but do not allow the reader a significant measure of participation (p. vii). In this stage, leading experts, such as Edward Ott and James Yorke, begin to write textbooks to train the next generation of scientists. This final stage indicates a transition back to normal science.
GLEICKS INTENTIONAL FALLACY
From the preceding analysis, it is clear that in at least three of the four stagesrevolutionary, semipopular, and transitionalthe authors are primarily concerned with the scientific community. They are getting the word out, crossing disciplinary boundaries, staking
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their claim, and educating the next generation of scientists. Only in the popularization stage, the stage that most clearly reflects the canonical or the dominant view of popularizations, is the text primarily directed to a popular audience. Yet, as I will demonstrate with a citation analysis, these popularizations not only attracted scientists attention but also had a substantial impact on the development and on the research in chaos theory. The first step I took to investigate the role of popularizations in science was to interview a number of scientists, including James Yorke, and a science journalist, James Gleick, the author of the most successful popularization on chaos theory. Gleicks declared motivation for writing Chaos reflects the canonical view of popularizations. By that, I do not mean that Gleick has a naive or a simplistic view of popularizations. In fact, when I used the word popularization during the interview in May 1997, Gleick critiqued such a view, saying, I never liked the word popularizations. I think it connotes heres this body of knowledge, now were going to explain it in simple terms to a lay audience (J. Gleick, personal communication, May 1, 1997). He was aware of having a more complex audience than just ordinary people. He assumed that a lot of scientists have read it as a matter of interest, and he knew that the book is used a lot in courses. But as he said, the primary purpose of my book . . . is the point of view of a journalistthat is, whats news? This book, I think, it was, to some extent, history, so as Ive said, I was telling a story (J. Gleick, personal communication, May 1, 1997). Gleicks perspective is canonical; that is to say, he is writing primarily to a general audience about the topic primarily because it is interesting. He is interested, but not invested, in chaos theory. He described his writing about chaos theory as sort of accidental, growing out of biographies he wrote on Mandelbrot and on Feigenbaum, saying,
Im fascinated by a lot of things in physics, but a lot of them from the point of view of ordinary people have gotten fairly esoteric, and specialized, and scholastic, and chaos seemed to be looking at things in a fresh way and looking at things I could describe to people like me. (J. Gleick, personal communication, May 1, 1997)
Finally, he sees his book as completely separate from science: Im not aware of having any particular influence among scientists in spreading the news.
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It is interesting to note that most of the scientists I interviewed in the 1990s do not share this perspective. In the early 1990s, David Charney and I interviewed 12 scientists as part of a study of scientific reading. We asked them a series of questions that included, among others, How did you become involved in chaos theory? Who are the leading expects in the field? Have you read James Gleicks Chaos? What did you think about it? Not surprisingly, all the scientists we interviewed had read the book, and their opinions generally reflected the comments of reviews of Chaos in professional journals. That is, their responses were positive overall, with a few complaints consistent with those found in reviews; Gleick had excluded too much math or had focused too much on one group or had not focused enough on another. What was surprising was the frequency with which they mentioned Gleick in responses to some of the other questions. For example, one scientist who had worked in chaos theory for 30 years said that the leading expert in the field was a fellow named James Gleick. Another scientist, when asked how he became involved in chaos studies, responded that he had been having a conversation with another scientist in a bar, and the other scientist told him he ought to read a book called Chaos. Two other scientists, when asked about training graduate students, said they had started training graduate students by having them read Chaos. Later, for another project, I interviewed James Yorke and several of his colleagues and students. Again, all of the scientists, postdocorates, and students had read Gleicks book and had positive things to say about it. Yorke advocated the value of popularizations in general. First, he stated that Ian Stewart, I think, does a really outstanding job. . . . When people like Ian Stewart write articles, I think, this has a tremendous impact (J. Yorke, personal communication, July 18, 1995). He then discussed the value of popularizations in introducing people to the field, saying,
Theres a lot of emphasis given to role models. . . . Jim Gleick is able to write about people. . . . So hes talking about a reasonably narrow group of people and these then form role models. . . . It sparks peoples imagination. Ive always felt that popular articles are useful for getting into a field. The more technical articles are less useful. . . . It looks like Gleicks will be of considerable interest to high school students and perhaps get them to move into mathematics. (J. Yorke, personal communication, July 18, 1995)
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As these interviews show, all the scientists had read and valued Gleicks account of the field. In addition, all felt that it had had an impact on the field and that that impact ranged from good publicity for the field to their students or their own introductions to the field. When I mentioned some of these experiences to Gleick, he was a little surprised and a little suspicious. When I asked him what impact he thought he might have on the field, he said, as noted above, that he did not know of any impact on the field. Then, considering the question, he said,
I suspect that if my book was useful to scientists, it was probably to scientists on the fringes of this field or who were working in fairly distant areas and wanted a quick introduction or something like that. I certainly dont believe that my book has enough technical content to be in any way authoritative for somebody who wants technical understanding of these issues. (J. Gleick, personal communication, July 18, 1995)
I reported on the scientists comment that stated that he was a leading expert in the field. He responded,
I think that comment reflects ignorance. Nobody in the field would consider me an expert on chaos theory. I might have been an expert in a history of science point of view, so I would be pleased and flattered if a historian of science said I was an expert in the field, but for a scientist to say Im an authority in sciencethats not correct. (J. Gleick, personal communication, July 18, 1995)
I clarified that the scientist had meant that Gleick has a broad view of the field, then I told him that he had been granted some authority because his book had been cited in research articles. He responded,
Would it be cited? I would be careful about that. Ive seen my book cited occasionally, and I think it tends to be cited in an appropriate context; that is, in the context of a lot of people or somebody said . . . [Chaos theory has] gotten popular. . . . My book doesnt get cited in the way a scientific article gets cited as the place that is authoritative on a particular scientific point. (J. Gleick, personal communication, July 18, 1995)
Clearly, James Gleick, a science writer, did not anticipate that his popularization, Chaos: Making a New Science, would be used by scientists in any significant way. It is equally clear that it was. All the scientists
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that I interviewed had read the popularization; the majority recommended it to their students as an introduction to the development of chaos theory, some recommended the book to colleagues, and one was introduced to chaos theory through reading it. Furthermore, although Gleicks interview reveals his canonical perspective of popularizations, for the scientists, popularizations seem a potential strategy in the rhetoric of revolutiona method of getting the word out.
THE CITATION STUDY
Although the previous section provides strategies and opinions of individual scientists on the potential use of popularizations, specifically of Gleicks popularization, Chaos, it does not show whether popularizations have been widely used by scientists in chaos theory. Nor does it show the consensus of opinion about the value of such popularizations. Although it seems unlikely that scientists would reach a consensus on the value of a particular popularization, the standard methods of reporting and of evaluating research do provide such a mechanism. As Dorothy Winsor (1993) has argued, consensus in science is particularly important in that a field that devalues personal insights . . . necessarily looks for consensus as a sign of validity (p. 128). However, scientists do not actually reach consensus by repeating other scientists experiments. Instead, scientists form judgments of knowledge claims based on how consistent published results are with their own work. . . . What counts as knowledge grows out of an achieved consensus (p. 128). According to Winsor, any scientific article is like a freeze frame from a film. It is a moment in a disciplinary discussion (p. 128). In addition, Caroline Miller and Michael Halloran (1993) have demonstrated that the relationship between a particular scientific work and its intellectual forbears [sic] [or citations] is central to the ethos of the work, in that it is an articulation of the relevant intellectual community (p. 108). Thus, what any published scientific article represents is a moment in the scientific discourse, and what any citation in such an article reveals is the value the citing author places on the cited work. Therefore, an examination of the citation pattern of a particular work over time reveals a consensus about its place in and its value to scientific discourse. If a popularization is cited in a research journal, then a consensus on its value to the scientific discourse can be examined.
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Figure 1. The pattern of all citations for James Gleicks Chaos: Making a New Science from 1988 to 2000. NOTE: N = 409.
To explore if and how popularizations affected scientific discourse more broadly, I examined the citations to James Gleicks Chaos: Making a New Science, as listed in Science Citation Index (SCI), from the publication of Chaos in 1987 to 2000. The first citation appeared in 1988. During this 12-year period, 409 citations were made to Chaos, on average, 34 times a year (the most citations occurred in 1990 [54]; the fewest citations occurred in 2000 [9]). The number of the citations alone indicates that Chaos has had a significant impact on the field of chaos theory. This number of citations is unusually high for any article or book cited in research articles. Only 0.5% of scientific articles are cited more that 100 times; only 0.2% of scientific articles are cited more than 500 times. The average number of citations for a scientific article is 5. By comparison, Tien-Yien Li and James Yorkes (1975) classic article Period Three Implies Chaos was cited 450 times in the first 20 years of publication (Paul, 2000). As can be seen in Figure 1, the citations also follow the normal pattern of citation, with a peak in the 3rd year followed by a decline over time (McCain & Turner, 1989). This pattern is similar to the citation pattern of the classic article by Mitchell Feigenbaum (1978), Quantitative Universality (Paul, 2000). Therefore, the citations to Gleicks Chaos do not seem to differ from the citations of successful scientific research articles in chaos theory, either in quantity or in frequency pattern. These findings show that, at the very least, Chaos has been and continues to be part of the scientific discourse. However, merely knowing how many times a source is cited does not reveal how and why it was. To answer these questions, I drew a convenience sample from the articles identified in SCI as those that
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used Chaos as a source, selecting all the citations in journals found in my university library. The sample included 231 citations accounting for 56% of all citations to Chaos from 1988 to 2000. To examine the use of citations, I analyzed seven factors for each citation: Genre: The genre of the text in which the citation occurredresearch Audience: The audience addressed by the textlay, member, or expert; Location: The location of the citation in the textintroduction, body, Function: The rhetorical function the citation performed in the text
conclusion, other, or only in the references; interest, definition, support, reference, popular interest, or popular resource; Popularizations: The use of other popularizations as a source; Discipline: The disciplinary focus of the journals; and Nationality: The nation in which the home institutions of the authors is located. article, review article, technical note, or commentary;
(For definitions of factors and of coding, see the appendix). The coding was verified by another reader (30 citations, accounting for 13% of my sample). The comparison of our coded samples showed a high correlation: genre, K = 0.78; audience, K = 0.96; location, K = 0.93; function, K = 0.84. The correlation of popularization is not as high, K = 0.70; however, it was still in an acceptable range. This correlation may be lower because accurately distinguishing popularizations from academic sources requires a greater acquaintance with the field than my raters had. Independent raters were not used to check the coding of the disciplines of the journals and the authors nationalities. The results of this analysis can be most clearly presented under four headings: alignment with orthodoxy, rhetorical centrality, diffusion, and context of other popularizations. Alignment with Orthodoxy Are the articles that cite Gleicks book part of the traditional genres and journals central to science? Although all the articles in this study are in research journals, the citations could be in editorials, book reviews, or letters to the editor rather than in actual research articles. Stephen Hilgartner (1990) has argued that, on a continuum, popularization is a matter of degree (p. 528). At the center of the continuum are research articles. On the upstream of the continuum are the traditional methods used for making and for reporting scientific claims; on
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the downside are more popular forums, such as textbooks and reports in the media. In reviewing Hilgartners continuum, Myers (2003) asks, Are news articles at the beginning of Nature . . . specialist or popularizing texts? (pp. 270-271). For our purposes, we can recast this question as, Are the articles that cite Gleicks book specialist or popularizing texts? In an attempt to tease out answers to this question, I classified the genres of the texts in which the citations occur. I classified texts as research articles if they make a new claim or further develop a new approach or area that expands a new claim; as review articles if they attempt to place a body of established research in a context; as technical notes if they clarify or expand a small detail of established research; or as the commentary if they are not subject to the peerreview process or are identified as editorials or as opinions. As can be seen in Figure 2, the majority of the citations (63%) to Gleicks Chaos are in research articles. Of the remaining citations, approximately half are in other genres of peer-reviewed texts, 16% are in review articles, and 3% are in technical notes. Therefore, 82% of the citations are in peer-reviewed texts. Only 18% of the citations are in commentary. Figure 2 also tracks the percentage of citations in various genres over time. I hypothesized that citations to textbooks or to more academic introductions to the field might replace those to Chaos as they became more readily available over time. So I looked at the genres of the citations in three 4-year periods: early (1988-1991), middle (1992-1995), and late (1996-2000). In fact, the percentage of the
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Lay 1%
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Figure 3. The percentage of sample citations addresses to each audience. NOTE: N = 231.
citations in research articles increased significantly from .58 in the early period to .72 in the late period, although the overall number of citations in this period went down. Figure 3 shows those audiences that are addressed in the articles in which Chaos is cited. Because genre often determines audience, audience and genre are closely tied. It is not surprising, therefore, that a similarly high percentage, 89%, of the articles are addressed to an expert audience. Because the citations are in journals, very few are addressed to a lay audience (1%); the remaining citations (10%) are in articles that assume that audience members share membership in an organization or a discipline but do not assume or require expert knowledge from that audience. These include prefaces to special topics issues, presidential addresses, and encomiums, such as a piece celebrating mathematics on the 300th birthday of Sir Isaac Newton. Clearly, the vast majority of the citations are in research articles addressed to expert audiences. As John Swales (1990) notes, In many scholarly and research driven discourses, research articles are the key genre both qualitatively and quantitatively. . . . The [research articles] still remain at the center of the spider web (p. 177). What is striking about the citations for this popularization is their alignment with
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science orthodoxy and with hierarchy, not only in the audience and in genre but also in the authors and the journals. Several of the authors are presidents of their organizations (several commentary texts are presidential addresses), some are leaders in nonlinear dynamic systems. Less surprisingly, a few authors are the stars of Gleicks book, such as Robert May and James Crutchfield. With some exceptions, most of the journals are well-known, prestigious journals, such as Nature, Lancet, the Journal of Fluid Mechanics, IEEE, and Physics Letters. Taken together, these figures show that the citations to Chaos are in research articles that are addressed to experts and that are in prestigious journals. In other words, the majority of the citations are aligned with the traditional genres and with journals central to science. Centrality Although the articles in which the citations are found are aligned with the research orthodoxies of the field, the citations themselves may be, as Gleick assumed, primarily references to the popular interest in chaos theory or to some historical or biographical notes about the field and the scientists in the field and therefore may not be important to the authors main arguments or central to the scientific discourse of the areas discussed. As I have previously argued (Paul, 2000), the location of the citations and their rhetorical functions indicate how important they are to the argument. For this study, the possible location of the citations in the texts included the introduction, the body of the text, the conclusion, or simply in the references section. As Swales (1990), Paul and Charney (1995), and I (Paul, 2000) have argued, placing citations in the introduction most strongly signals that the work is central (i.e., very valuable) to a larger scientific discourse. On the other hand, if a text is cited only in the reference section, then it has minimal centrality. The centrality of citations placed in the body and in the conclusion sections of an article can only be judged in context. To determine how the citations were used in context, I consider six functions: (a) to show interest in the field or research area, (b) to define chaos, (c) to support a specific claim, (d) to provide a reference for additional reading, (e) to signal popular interest, or (f) to provide a resource for additional reading that specifically identifies the reference as a popular text. Figure 4 compares the location of all the sample citations regardless of article genre (N = 231) to the citations in only the research articles (N = 147).
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Figure 4. A comparison of the location of all citations in the sample (N = 231) with the location of the citations in the research articles (N = 147).
As can be seen in Figure 4, nearly half, 49%, of the citations are in the body, which may or may not indicate centrality. However, more than a third of the citations, 37%, are in the introduction. To put this result in context, in my 2000 study on citations of research articles, an average of 62% of citations to Feigenbaums articles were found in the introduction; the percentage of his articles cited in the introduction never dropped below 50%. On average, 52% of the citations to articles by Yorke were found in the introduction; yet, for one article, just 37% of the citations were in the introduction and for another, only 12%. Although the percentage of citations to Gleicks Chaos is lower, it still seems an impressively high rate for a popularization written by a nonscientist, indicating that the work is valued by the community or at least that the citing author believes that the work is valued by his or her community. Figure 5 compares the function of all citations in the sample (N = 231) to the function of the citations in the research articles (N =147). The primary functions of the citations in both cases are almost equally split between showing interest (30%), based on Swales (1990) Move 1, and providing support for a particular claim (34%). The majority of the citations are used with no reference to the popular origins of the text (82%). Only 18% of the citations indicate that the reference is to a popularization. The citations that function as either popular or resource include general comments of popular interest, such as article 12-1989, Chaos is the aspect of self-organizing that has received the most popular attention (Soltzberg, 1989, p. 187) or article 16-1990, The public
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has been made more aware . . . of chaos theory by the best-selling book (Desouza-Machado, Rollins, Jacobs, & Hartman, 1990, p. 321). There are also some rather jubilant encomiums, including the American Institute of Physics Annual report, which opens with, A New York Times article . . . was headlined Top Books of 1988: Spies and Physics. Did he say physics? Yes. Best-seller list in 1988 included Stephen Hawkings A Brief History of Time and James Gleicks Chaos: Making a New Science (American Institute of Physics, 1988, p. 47). As Gleick predicted, some of the citations to Chaos do make reference to personalities and to significant events. For example, article 10-1988, which is in the introduction to a Physica D special issue titled Progress in Chaotic Dynamics: Essays in Honor of Joseph Fords 60th Birthday, cites Gleick for an anecdote about Fords assessment of the first conference, in which he introduced chaos theory in a paper with a Duffing equation: My daddy played with Duffing equations, my granddaddy played with Duffing equations, and nobodys seen anything like what you were talking about (Hellman, 1988, p. 121). However, these citations account for only a very small portion of the citations. The vast majority of the citations reflect standard citing practices in science, such as the standard method of showing interest in the introduction, as seen in article 1-1988, Applications range from airfoils design to plasma physics, from oil recovery to studies of combustion (Steen, 1988, p. 418). Others provide support for specific claims. It is interesting to note that Chaos is often used when the original scientific source is both obvious and available, such as references to Shaws
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dripping faucet or to Lorenz equations or to what are called Lyapunov exponents. At times, these citations include both the reference to the original source and to Gleicks Chaos. When referring readers to Chaos for additional reading, whether they mention its popular origins or not, many authors praise it openly. As article 27-1990 states, There has been an excellent popular booklength account (Middleton, 1990, p. 3). None of the 231 citations are negative. Three are questionable, such as article 6-1988, Chaos is now the most notorious and well-studied source of complex behavior arising in nonlinear deterministic processes, (Crutchfield, 1988, p. 770) but then continue without negative comment; so notorious may be used here to simply mean well known. This is not surprising, for as Dorothy Winsor (1993) reports, scientists are more likely to ignore articles that they do not like than they are to cite them with a negative comment and thus increase the citations of those articles. Most interesting is article 2-1991. The citation is in the acknowledgment and reads, J. Gleick for the inspiration to bring this chaos to light (Altenberg, 1991, p. 67). Clearly, the author wants to acknowledge the role that Chaos played in shaping his ideas, but it is equally clear that he thinks a citation to a popularization is not appropriate in the body of the text. All in all, citations to Chaos seems to function like standard citations, in contrast to Gleicks assertion that my book doesnt get cited in the way a scientific paper gets cited as the place that is authoritative on a particular scientific point (J. Gleick, personal communication, July 18, 1995). Diffusion One of the claims that I have made is that scientists used popularizations to reach a broader audience. One method of exploring this claim is to examine diffusion both geographically and disciplinarily. It was for this reason that I tracked the location of the authors home institutions and the disciplines represented by the journals in which the citations are found. Figure 6 shows that the majority of authors are affiliated with institutions in the United States (55%); however, over time, there is an increase in diversity, with a significant decrease in the number of Americans, from 65% in the early period to 46% in the late period. The disciplines of the journals in which Chaos are cited are relatively diverse. The greatest concentration of citations were in biology journals (48%), and only 10% were in physics journals (see Figure 7).
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By comparison, citations to articles by leading chaos scientists are more likely to appear in physics journals, the discipline of Feigenbaum and Yorkes coauthors (65%), with only 3% appearing in biology journals (Paul, 2000). These findings indicate that the citations to the popularization have more interdisciplinary depth. In terms of diffusion, the citations to the popularization reach a more diverse group of authors over time and have greater disciplinary diversity than do the citations to the research articles of Feigenbaum and Yorke. In the Context of Other Popularizations In this final area, I tried to determine how often other popularizations were cited in research journals. I measured this in two ways: a citation count using the SCI for three other popularizations for the same time period and the percentage of times that articles that cited Gleicks Chaos cited other popularizations by scientists. During the same time period, 1988 to 2000, Prigogines Order Out of Chaos was cited 405 times; Mandelbrots The Fractal Nature of Geometry was cited 202 times; and the Santa Cruz graduate students Chaos, published in Scientific American (Crutchfield et al., 1986), was cited 84 times. In the citation analysis, I looked at the reference section to determine if Chaos was the only popularization cited or if other popularizations were cited as well. Chaos was cited 55% of the time with other popularizations. The findings from these two measures indicate that the citing of popularizations is not limited to Gleicks Chaos.
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Figure 7. A comparison of the journal disciplines for citations of research articles of Feigenbaum and Yorke (N = 612) as reported in Paul (2000) with the journal disciplines of citations of popularizations reported in this study (N = 409). NOTE: Geo = geology, Bio = biology, E&T = engineering and technology.
This study of the citations to Gleicks Chaos clearly demonstrates that this popularization has had and likely continues to have an effect on the research in the field. Its use is closely aligned with orthodox science. The function results indicate that Chaos was most often used as a good review would be usedto show interest, to provide definitions, and to support specific claims, and this functional usage remained consistent across genres and over time. In addition, Chaos seems to have been instrumental in diffusing ideas across disciplines and across nations. Also, this study gives some indication that other popularizations are used in the same way in this field. It seems to indicate that in chaos, scientists who wrote semipopular books to diffuse their ideas chose a winning strategy.
CONCLUSION
Scientists within the field of chaos theory wrote the popularizations to evaluate, to rethink, and to locate their own work in a larger context, particularly in the early development of the field. Scientists in other fields used Gleicks Chaos, often along with other popularizations, to explore concepts not yet available in their traditional
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sources, thereby diffusing the early concepts of chaos theory from mathematics and from physics into the life and social sciences. Thus, even popularizations written to a popular audience primarily to entertain and to delight can have a substantial impact on the field. Although this study can only report on how specific popularizations functioned in chaos theory, the results are compelling enough to argue for expanding our conception of the role of popularization from describing a science to helping to define it. The equation for why some write and others read scientific popularization is not such a simple equation as scientists produce, writers translate, publishers sell, and an ignorant but awed public buys. Scientists produce science, but they also produce, read, and participate in scientific popularizations for a variety of reasons. In turn, their participation in scientific popularization, whether as contributors, producers, or readers, has consequences for science.
APPENDIX Factor Definitions and Coding All specific analyses of the citation are to the first citation in the text.
Audience
Audience indicates to whom the text is addressed. 1. Lay: addressed to a nonexpert, general audience with no expectation of specialized knowledge of a particular area. 2. Member: addressed to members of a professional group of experts, but does not call on the members expertise. 3. Expert: addressed to experts in a field that required the audience to use their expertise.
Genre
Genre indicates the type of text, such as research articles, notes, letters, and so forth. 1. Research articles: journal articles that have primary data, present new mathematical models, or present a new theoretical model. 2. Review articles: journal articles that review previous research. Generally, this genre is signaled in the abstract or in the introduction and refers to surveying or review or to exploring past research as the primary basis for the conclusions.
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3. Note: A technical note is an explanation of a small aspect of previous research. It is often labeled as a note. 4. Commentary: Commentaries are opinion pieces or letters to the editor. They are often in news and notes sections or are labeled as opinion or as commentary. They express the authors perspective and do not attempt to account for all other previous research. This may include encomium.
Location
Location indicates the part of the text in which the citation is placed. 1. 2. 3. 4. Introduction Body Conclusion Other: graphic and table notes, notes, acknowledgments, and abstracts 0. Only in the references or work cited
Function
Function indicates the role that the citation plays in the argument; specifically, this analysis is aimed at determining whether the reference to Gleicks Chaos is similar to traditional citations in research journals or if it signals the reference as popular or nonspecialist. 1. Interest: used to show interest by academics or other ways of establishing the territory of study (Swales, 1990), including claiming centrality, making topic generalizations, and giving accounts of the field. Signaled by lists of fields or by areas of study and/or the use of the word interest. For example, Recent interest in the concept of chaos and the progress in understanding its role in deterministic systems has led to a considerable revival of interest by physicists in nonlinear dynamics (Saperstein & Mayer-Kress, 1989, p. 217). However, areas that name several areas to prove a specific aspect of chaos theory should be considered support. 2. Definition: used to provide a definition of chaos or of related phenomena. It may also be a definition itself. Often signaled by words like defined, called, or term. For example, The term chaos is now commonly used when referring to the revolutionary science which works to analyze and unify the behavior of complex systems (Farkas, Yamashita, & Perkins, 1990, p. 1889). 3. Support: used to support an assertion about some aspect of chaos theory. Generally, differs from Interest because it focuses on one
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particular aspect rather than discussing chaos theory as a whole. For example, In fact, the motion along this manifold is quite similar to Shaws dripping faucet dynamics (Samardzija & Greller, 1989, p. 479). 4. Reference: used to indicate further reading without reference to level of expertise. For example, Gleicks book by the same title gives a most readable overview of the development and nature of the field (Bassingthwaighte & van Beek, 1989, p. 699). Even if the author uses unusual adjectives for scientific articles such as notorious or fascinating, the segment is considered a reference if no direct mention of expertise level is made. If a reference to nonspecialists is made in a second cite of Chaos within a paragraph or two of the original, then the citations should be considered either Popular or Reference. 5. Popular: used to make reference to Chaos as a popular source. For example, Chaos is the aspect of self-organizing that has received the most popular attention (Soltzberg, 1989, p. 187). 6. Resource: used to indicate further reading for nonspecialists. For example, The reader may refer to . . . the book of Gleick for a very popular non-mathematical treatment of the notions of chance, random occurrence, erratic behavior, catastrophe, and chaos (Arle & Simon, 1990, p. 297).
Popularizations
Popularization indicates whether the citation to James Gleicks Chaos is the only popularization cited in the article. Items in established journalseven those that might be news or letters to the editorare not considered popularizations. Popularizations include all articles written in journals for a lay audience, such as American Scientist or Scientific American, and they include the popularizations discussed in this article, listed in the chart below. It does not include text books or books specifically designed for scientists. It includes the popularizations discussed in this study:
B. Mandelbrot: Fractals: Form, Chance and Dimension M. Feigenbaum: Universal behavior in nonlinear systems in Los
Alamos Research I. Prigogine: From Being to Becoming Mandelbrot: The Fractal Nature of Geometry I. Prigogine and I. Stengers: Order out of Chaos Crutchfield, Farmer, Packard, & Shaw: Chaos in Scientific American I. Stewart: Does God Play Dice? 0 = Only citation to popularization is Chaos 1 = More citations to popularization
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Nationality
Nationality indicates the location of the authors home institutions, relying on the permanent address as the final determiner of the authors institution. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. American British European Eastern European, including Russia and all former Soviet Bloc countries Asian South Pacific, including Australia, New Zealand, Philippines, and Pacific Island Canadian African
This coding of nationality does not indicate the authors nationalities but rather where their institutional homes are. For example, it is possible that Y. H. Ku, Xiaoguang Sun, or Nikola Samardzi are not U.S. citizens, but they may be. On the other hand, Robert May is not a U.S. citizen; he is British. In any case, home institutions indicate the authors opportunities for interaction.
NOTES
1. The term chaos theory is somewhat problematic. James Yorke named the phenomenon chaos, and the term had been widely used both in scientific circles, mostly as deterministic chaos, and in popular texts. However, some scientists never use the term for a variety of reasons. Some, like Mitchell Feigenbaum, prefer the more academic nonlinear dynamics; some are trying to avoid the association with the popular term; others do not use this name, preferring a term of their own; and some use it but only for a limited set of phenomena. In addition, the names have changed over time; the phenomena are currently called nonlinear dynamical systems. My use of chaos is influenced by my interviews with James Yorke and by the wide recognition of that name because of the influence of James Gleicks best-selling Chaos. 2. The focus on these three issues resulted from suggestions by an anonymous reviewer for Written Communication. 3. In France, for example, so-called enlightened amateurs promoted science as the only legitimate basis for enlightened societies (Bensaude-Vincent, 2001, p. 102). During this time, public conversations of science were more than just an area of interest; rather, they were public participation in the scientific endeavor (Bensaude-Vincent, 2001, p. 102). In England, all members of the Royal Society considered themselves part of the scientific enterprise. This sense that all members of the Royal Society were equal
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partners of the scientific enterprise changed over time as the sense that professional scientists, rather than royals, clergy, and aristocrats, should run the Society. The attempts to have members recognize this distinction began seriously with Newtons presidency (see Atkinson, 1999). 4. Although the movement in the Royal Society to distinguish between working scientists and amateurs began as early as Newtons presidency in 1703 (see Atkinson, 1999), actually limiting in or excluding gentlemen amateurs from the society did not begin until the 1820s (Gregory & Miller, 1998). 5. A host of other examples for the impact of popularizations exists. Auguste Comte criticized both the scientists who used esoteric language to exclude the public and those who attempted to make money from popular sciencethe vulgarisatuers who transform an educational project into a commercial enterprise (BensaudeVincent, 2001, p. 104). Yet Comte also gave popular lectures in astronomy, carefully distinguishing between vulgarizations (the French equivalent of popularizations) and popular science. Jane Marcet, who inherited wealth and married well, clearly did not write for money but to educate women (Myers, 1997). Margaret Huggins, the wife of astronomer William Huggins, believed that the progress of science and the growth of its literature required a new kind of popularizer that prepared materials for experts (Lightman, 1997, p. 61). Her friend, Agnes Clerke, did just that, writing a history of astronomy. Others popularizers, such as Mary Somerville, were valued by both scientists and the public. Although Somerville nominally addressed her text to women, she saw herself as making a contribution to science (Myers, 1997, p. 46; see also Lightman, 1997, p. 63). 6. Bensaude-Vincent (2001) also discusses the use of popularizations to promote Einsteins theory of relativity. 7. Whether chaos theory is a scientific revolution in the Kuhnian sense is up for grabs. Although nonlinear dynamical systems have certainly changed the face of several disciplines, some scientists maintain that it was a natural part of normal science, citing its 19th-century antecedents. However, the actual status is unimportant because, as Keith and Zagacki (1992), Kelley (1993), Paul and Charney (1995), and Porush (1993) have demonstrated, those working in the field clearly considered chaos a revolution. 8. The Japan Award is generally considered the third most prestigious prize in math. The first is the Nobel Prize, followed by the Fields Medal. Yorke was honored for his work in chaos. 9. Cvitanovics collection, Universality, is one of the earliest texts that fits the transitional stage of popularization, predating almost all of the texts in the popularization stage. It is variously described as a collection, an introduction, and a technical popularization. I classified it as an introduction because it explicitly states that it is for scientists and for students of science. In addition, most of the articles in the collection were previously printed in scientific journals. Therefore, it is not included in my citation analysis of Chaos as an additional popularization. The timing of Universality shows that the popularization and the transitional stage may overlap. However, a chronological timeline does account for the majority of the works during each stage. The overlap also shows that different scientists used different approaches to extend their reach. 10. Toffler (1984) states that it is a measure of Americas insularity and cultural arrogance that this book, which is published in or about to be published in twelve languages, has taken so long to cross the Atlantic (p. xii). 11. In some ways, one could argue that no one could take a broader view of the field than Prigogine, whose second book is coauthored with a historian of science and who claims his argument unites science and the humanities. However, despite the broad
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approach, the book draws heavily on his own work and was written as he was trying to connect his already well-received work in chemistry to broader implications across science. 12. All of Gleicks other books on chaos are currently out of print. 13. In this book, Stewart introduces complexity as a new science that has more to say than chaos theory. Prigogine also has a new book on complexity. Most recently, two new books announced the next version of these related sciences: Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order by Steven Strogatz, 2003. Altogether, there are currently 461 books that include both popularizations and textbooks listed on Amazon.com under the category of mathematics and the subcategory of chaos and systems.
REFERENCES
Altenberg, L. (1991). Chaos from linear frequency-dependent selection. American Naturalist, 138, 51-68. American Institute of Physics. (1988). AIP in 1988: An annual report. Physics Today, 42(6), 47-58. Arle, J. E., & Simon, R. H. (1990). An application of fractal dimension to the detection of transients in the electroencephalogram. Electroencephalogram and Clinical Neurophysiology, 75, 296-305. Atkinson, D. (1999). Scientific discourse in sociohistorical context: The philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London, 1675-1975. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Baker, G.L., & Gollub, J. P. (1990). Chaotic dynamics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Bassingthwaighte, J. B., & van Beek, J. H. G. (1989). Lighting and the heart: Fractal behavior in cardiac function. Proceedings of the IEEE, 76, 693-699. Bazerman, C. (1989). Shaping written knowledge: The genre and activity of the experimental article in science. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Bensaude-Vincent, B. (2001). Agenealogy of the increasing gap between science and the public. Public Understanding of Science, 10, 99-113. Buchman, R. (1991). Book and the popularization of science. Publishing Research Quarterly, 7, 5-10. Campbell, J. A. (1987). Charles Darwin: Rhetorician of science. In J. Nelson, A. Megill, & D. McCloskey (Eds.), The rhetoric of the human sciences (pp. 69-86). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Charney, D. (2003). Lone geniuses in popular science. Written Communication, 20, 215241. Cohen, J., & Stewart, I. (1994). The collapse of chaos. New York: Viking. Crutchfield, J. P. (1988). Spatio-temporal complexity in nonlinear image processing. IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems, 35, 770-775. Crutchfield, J. P., Farmer, J. D., Packard, N. H., & Shaw, R. S. (1986). Chaos. Scientific American, 255, 646-657. Darwin, C. (1958). Origins of the species (Mentor ed.). New York: Penguin. Desouza-Machado, S., Rollins, R. W., Jacobs, D. T., & Hartman, J. L. (1990). Studying chaotic systems using microcomputer stimulation and exponents. American Journal of Physics, 58, 321-329.
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Fahnestock, J. (1993). Accommodating science: The rhetorical life of a scientific fact. In M. W. McRae (Ed.), The literature of science writing (pp. 17-36). Athens: University of Georgia Press. Farkas, D. M., Yamashita, T., & Perkins, J. (1990). On the energetics of flickering contrast observed in TEM images of an aged 53Cu-45Mn-2Al damping alloy. ACTA Metallurgica Et Materialia, 38, 1883-1893. Feigenbaum, M. J. (1978). Quantitative universality for a class of nonlinear transformations. Journal of Statistical Physics, 19, 25-52. Feigenbaum, M. J. (1980). Universal behavior in nonlinear systems. Los Alamos Science, 1, 4-27. Gibbons, M., Limoges, C., Nowotny, H., Schwartzman, S., Scott, P., & Trow, M. (1994). The new production of knowledge. The dynamics of science and research in contemporary societies. London: Sage. Gleick, J. (1987). Chaos: Making a new science. New York: Penguin. Gregory, J., & Miller, S. (1998). Science in the public: Communication, culture and credibility. New York: Plenum. Grundmann, R., & Cavaill, J.-P. (2000). Simplicity in science and its publics. Science as Culture, 9, 353-389. Gulich, E. (2003). Conversational techniques used in transferring knowledge between medical experts and non-experts. Discourse Studies, 5(2), 235-264. Harris, R. A. (1994). Assent, dissent, and rhetoric in science. In P.M. Dombrowski (Ed.), Humanistic aspects of technical communication (pp. 33-62). Amityville, NY: Baywood. Hellman, M. P. (1988). Quantum levels of area-preserving maps. Physica D, 33, 121-131. Hilgartner, S. (1990). The dominant view of popularizations: Conceptual problems, political uses. Social Studies of Science, 20, 519-539. Horgan, J. (1996). The end of science. New York: Broadway Books. Kaufer, D. & Carley, K. (1993). Communication at a distance: The influence of print on sociocultural organization and change. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Keith, W., & Zagacki, K. (1992). Rhetoric and paradox in scientific revolutions. Southern Communication Journal, 57, 165-177. Kelley, R. T. (1993). Chaos out of order: The writerly discourse of semi-popular scientific texts. In M. W. McRae (Ed.), The literature of science writing (pp. 132-151). Athens: University of Georgia Press. Kuhn, T. S. (1970). The structure of scientific revolutions (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Li, T.-Y., & Yorke, J. A. (1975). Period three implies chaos. American Mathematics Monthly, 82, 985-992. Lightman, B. (1997). Constructing Victorian heavens: Agnes Clerke. In B. T. Gates & A. B. Shteir (Eds.), Nature eloquence: Women reinscribe science (pp. 43-60). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Lorenz, E. N. (1963). Deterministic nonperiodic flow. Journal of Atmospheric Sciences, 20, 130-141. Lorenz, E. N. (1993). The essence of chaos. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Mandelbrot, B. B. (1975). Les objets fractals: Forme, hasard, et dimension. Paris: Flammarion. Mandelbrot, B. B. (1977). Fractals: Form, chance and dimension. New York: Freeman. Mandelbrot, B. B. (1983). The fractal nature of geometry. New York: Freeman. May, R. M. (1976). Simple mathematical models with very complicated dynamics. Nature, 261, 459-467.
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McCain, K., & Turner K. (1989). Citation context analysis and aging patterns in journal articles in molecular genetics. Scientometrics, 17, 127-163. Middleton, G. V. (1990). Nonlinear dynamics and chaosPotential applications in the Earth sciences. Geoscience Canada, 17, 3-11. Miller, C. R., & Halloran, S. M. (1993). Reading Darwin, reading nature; or on the ethos of historical science. In J. Selzer (Ed.), Understanding scientific prose (pp. 106-126). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Myers, G. (1997). Fictionality, demonstration, and a forum for popular science: Jane Marcets Conversation on chemistry. In B. T. Gates & A. B. Shteir, Nature eloquence: Women reinscribe science (pp. 43-60). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Myers, G. (2003). Discourse studies of scientific popularizations: Questioning the boundaries. Discourse Studies, 5(2), 265-279. Paul, D. (2000). In citing chaos: A study of the rhetorical use of citations. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 14, 185-222. Paul, D., & Charney, D. (1995). Introducing chaos into science and engineering: Effects of rhetorical strategies on scientific readers. Written Communication, 12, 396-438. Porush, D. S. (1993). Making chaos. Two views of a new science. In M. W. McRae (Ed.), The literature of science writing (pp. 152-168). Athens: University of Georgia Press. Prigogine, I. (1980). From being to becoming: Time and complexity in the physical sciences. New York: Freeman. Prigogine, I., & Stengers, I. (1979). La nouvelle alliance [The new alliance]. Paris: Gallimard. Prigogine, I., & Stengers, I. (1984). Order out of chaos: Mans new dialogue with nature. Toronto, Canada: Bantam Books. Prince, S. D. (1984). In the mind of Dr. Benoit Mandelbrot. Computer Pictures, 2(3), 46-52. Samardzija, N., & Greller, L. D. (1989). Explosive route to chaos through a fractal torus in a generalized Lotka-Volterra model. Bulletin of Mathematical Biology, 50, 465-491. Saperstein, A. M., & Mayer-Kress, G. (1989). Chaos versus predictability in formulating national strategic security policy. American Journal of Physics, 57, 217-223. Stewart, I. (1989). Does God play dice? The mathematics of chaos. London: Blackwell. Soltzberg, L. S. (1989). Self-organization in chemistryThe larger context. Journal of Chemical Education, 66, 187. Steen, L. A. (1988). Celebrating mathematics. American Mathematics Monthly, 95, 414427. Swales, J. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Toffler, A. (1984). Foreword: Science and change. In I. Prigogine & I. Stengers (Eds.), Order out of chaos: Mans new dialogue with nature (pp. xi-xxvi). Toronto, Canada: Bantam Books. Winsor, D. (1993). Constructing scientific knowledge in Gould and Lewontins The Spandrels of San Marco. In J. Selzer (Ed.), Understanding scientific prose (pp. 127143). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Danette Paul is an assistant professor of English at Brigham Young University. She teaches courses in rhetoric and in professional writing. Her recent research includes two articles on chaos theory, a study of rhetorical strategies in article introduction in Written Communication, and a study of the rhetorical uses of citations in the Journal of Business and Technical Communication.

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Written Communication

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WRITTEN COMMUNICA TION / JANUARY 2004

The Role of Popularizations in the Diffusion of Scientific Ideas

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Semipopular science stage

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