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Shaping Written Knowledge
The Genre and Activity of the Experimental Article in Science

by Charles Bazerman

Edited for digital presentation by Patricia Klei and Mike Palmquist

In Shaping Written Knowledge, Charles Bazerman traces the history and character of the experimental article in science, calling attention to the social and rhetorical forces that shaped its development. Truly a landmark in writing studies, this book provides a broadly interdisciplinary exploration of an important genre and offers insights that extend far beyond its immediate focus of study.

This book is available in whole and in part in Adobe Acrobat's Portable Document Format (PDF). The book has been formatted by scanning the original printed text into an image file and converted using optical character recognition. The page numbers correspond to pages in the print book published by University of Wisconsin Press in 1988. To cite this book, consult the publication information provided at the end of this page.

Open the entire book: 2,135K

Open parts of the book:

• Front Matter, Contents, and Acknowledgements (26K)
  
  
Part One: Writing Matters
• Chapter 1: The Problem of Writing Knowledge (85K)
• Chapter 2: What Written Knowledge Does: Three Examples of Academic Discourse (536K)
  
  
Part Two: The Emergence of Literary and Social Forms in Early Modern Science
• Chapter 3: Reporting the Experiment: The Changing Account of Scientific Doings in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 1665-1800 (97K)
• Chapter 4: Between Books and Articles: Newton Faces Controversy (238K)
• Chapter 5: Literate Acts and the Emergent Social Structure of Science (120K)
  
  
Part Three: Typified Activities in Twentieth-Century Physics
• Chapter 6: Theoretical Integration in Experimental Reports in Twentieth-Century Physics: Spectroscopic Articles inPhysical Review, 1893-1980 (192K)
• Chapter 7: Making References: Empirical Contexts, Choices, and Constraints in the Literary Creation of the Compton Effect (363K)
• Chapter 8: Physicists Reading Physics: Schema-Laden Purposes and Purpose-Laden Schema (97K)
  
  
Part Four: The Reinterpretation of Forms in the Social Sciences
• Chapter 9: Codifying the Social Scientific Style: The APA Publication Manual as a Behaviorist Rhetoric (103K)
• Chapter 10: Strains and Strategies in Writing a Science of Politics: The Unsettled Rhetoric of the American Political Science Review, 1979 (53K)
  
  
Part Five: Scientific Writing as a Social Practice
• Chapter 11: How Language Realizes the Work of Science: Science as a Naturally Situated, Social Semiotic System (127K)
• Chapter 12: Writing Well, Scientifically and Rhetorically: Practical Consequences for Writers of Science and Their Teachers (85K)
  
  
• References (92K)
• Index (61K)

Publication Information: Bazerman, Charles. 2000. Shaping Written Knowledge: The Genre and Activity of the Experimental Article in Science. WAC Clearinghouse Landmark Publications in Writing Studies: http://wac.colostate.edu/books/bazerman_shaping/ Originally Published in Print, 1988, by University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin.
Publication Date: November 1, 2000

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Contact Information:
Charles Bazerman's Home Page: http://www.education.ucsb.edu/~bazerman
Charles Bazerman's Email: bazerman@education.ucsb.edu

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