Volume 35, Number 7 · April 28, 1988
Darwin Unbuttoned
By John R. Durant
Charles Darwin's Notebooks, 1836–1844: Geology, Transmutation of Species, Metaphysical Enquiries
transcribed and edited by Paul H. Barrett, by Peter J. Gautrey, by Sandra Herbert, by David Kohn, by Sydney Smith
British Museum (Natural History) and Cornell University Press, 747 pp., $75.00
The Correspondence of Charles Darwin Volume 3: 1844–1846
edited by Frederick Burkhardt, edited by Sydney Smith
Cambridge University Press, 523 pp., $37.50
Sir Peter Medawar once described the scientific paper as a fraud. His point was not that the scientific paper misrepresents nature (though of course it may), but rather that it misrepresents science. Typically, a scientific paper presents a formal and highly idealized account of research, written according to a set of standard conventions. Problems are set up, methods of investigation are described, results are given, and conclusions are drawn; but nowhere does the reader learn very much about how scientific research is done, or about where original scientific insights come from.
Review, 2439 words
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