The Art and Motivation of Science Communication

1.1 Introduction

The most important sentence in an entire document, any document, is the very first sentence. If a reader makes it past the title, the only thing that he or she is guaranteed to read is the first sentence of the first section. "This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate," to quote Dickens. The first sentence is everything. Then, if luck should have it and the reader continues, the rest of the first paragraph will elaborate on this one idea to add a little context and further information. The rest of the document supports the first paragraph which, in turn, supports the first sentence. This present text follows that same format. It would be hypocritical for it not to do so. Hopefully, that has already been guessed.

While every reader subconsciously follows this tenet, as writers we often neglect this prime example of our Pleistocene brains. If something is not immediately beneficial or dangerous, we move on; we forget it. It is not useful. There is another berry to gather, another predator to detect, another rival tribesman to scare away. As advanced as we are, largely due to science, our brains still function in this tribal, hunter-gatherer fashion. While some view this as a limitation on humanity to be changed, in truth, it is what makes us human and can often empower our dazzling insights. Hence, as scientists and communicators, we must understand this limitation and know how to employ it to our advantage and not fight it.

1.2 The Written Word

If science is not written down, it may as well have never been done. The transfer of information from one person to the next is the key to furthering knowledge such that each individual does not (nearly literally) have to reinvent the wheel and build the same knowledge from nothing. The collapse of civilization only takes place when the lessons of the past are not learned. Science must be written down so that its lessons can be learned whether in success or failure, so that this information can be transferred from one human brain to another. Repeating things over and over again expecting a different result was Einstein's definition of insanity, but how can one know if something has already been done if it is not recorded for posterity through an accessible medium in some timeless fashion? The most timeless medium is the written word.

Chimpanzees (with their 98% genetic similarity to humans) provide their young with nurturing and life skills passed down from one generation to the next. Some have found novel ways of breaking sticks to dig out insects from burrows. Others know that some trees are better for climbing than others. Still more are experts in getting delicious snacks like honey through the use of specialized tree-burrowing techniques they have devised. However, if the family of chimpanzees is wiped out except for a single infant, that lone survivor will never have the knowledge of his ancestors. In theory, if all the chimps could tell the other chimps about their advances, they would be immensely more capable for having that knowledge. This is truly what separates humans from primates, and that pursuit of knowledge through experiment is science. Chimps, dolphins, and even bird-brains like turkeys can communicate distinctively with one another, but like all other species cannot access this exact information again once auditory communication ceases.

The written word is not natural for humans, either. Like chimpanzees, we are social creatures knit together by shared experiences rehashed in story form dozens of times. However, our ability to process symbols and meaning from otherwise useless objects such as religious trinkets, jewelry, and icons paved the way for the advancement of permanently stored information. Initially, civilization and its rise dictated that numerical records be kept, likely the earliest form of written text. Hence, instead of one manager or a handful of record keepers having to memorize the entire finances of a kingdom, written text offered the ability to keep track, make copies, and reduce mistakes. As a result, the human brain's amazing ability to store vast quantities of information could be employed in more advanced ways.

But how do these symbols we associated with numbers or words actually work? This is rarely considered by most of us who take it for granted that a "C" conjoined to an "H" makes the same sound that begins the word associated with common poultry. We learn that this is the sound for the symbol and simply move on. In truth, there is not much more to it than that. Symbols are chosen to represent things that are spoken whether through parts of syllables (Latin and Germanic scripts), whole syllables (Cherokee script), or whole words (Chinese and most other East Asian scripts). However, the rub comes in understanding that symbols are not just written words but spoken words.

Our brains perceive the world in ways as unique to each of us as our fingerprints, retinal patterns, and DNA. We then encode this information into words. Sometimes these are spoken. Sometimes, with modern humans, they are written. In either case, they must be decoded by a receiver such that his or her brain can interpret these symbols based on his or her own experiences. The basic idea for this process is called the Shannon–Weaver model of communication from a 1948 publication by these two individuals entitled A Mathematical Theory of Communication and is depicted in Figure 1.1. A sender encodes a message, and transmits it through a medium to be acquired and decoded by a receiver. This encoding is the creation of symbols. Standardization of such symbols is the essence of language. What these symbols actually are is purely a choice of common ground between sender and receiver.

This idea of common ground is essential for any form of communication. The two parties must have enough in common (usually language but even beyond that in shared experiences) in order for the concepts of one to be understood by the other. Forming common ground with any receiver is the key to effective communication. Note from Figure 1.1 how seemingly simple symbols can be easily misinterpreted. This is why standardization of symbols is necessary for communication and even what so often defines culture.

Most of our words have derived from a need to survive, whether through the procurement of food or to fend off invaders or predators, but all stem from a need to communicate with other people to accomplish tasks that we cannot (or choose not) to perform on our own. As a result, different cultures have different words for the same thing. Sometimes one word in one language can have several subtypes of the item being described and encoded to delineate. Snow is the classic example with its one English word and dozens in languages of the First Nations Peoples of Alaska and Canada. Different cultures...