Writing for science

Now that I have finished writing up my first (sub)chapter, I have two insights to share:

A PhD is about structure and organization.

Writing is about flow.

And, apparently, it can be a hazardous business trying to reconcile the two positions. As a matter of fact, if you write for science, you write for an academic public which wants clear and concise information. Writing for science is not about elegance and artistic proficiency in stringing together euphonious words.

In this respect, a long anticipated fear materializes once again: The usage of language for science may restrict the creative potential of a writer to the extent that no truly beautiful  linguistic result can ensue. Does writing a PhD thesis transform the writer into a conglomerator of facts lost in the confinements of structure and logic? Just think about highly specified guidelines for authors required by peer-reviewed journals. If you write for a journal, you are supposed to write in that particular journal’s style, addressing a peculiar audience with your words. Does that mean that one’s innate love of language may suffer as a gloomy consequence of this?

On the other hand, writing for a specified audience may very much support a writer’s flexibility in choosing his words in accordance with what is needed to the end that writing has to become reflexive and carefully thought through. In line with this, writing is not what happens at the spot, but it becomes a process which extends to the future, incorporating life-long learning, to phrase it in idealized fashion.

Still, considering the above mentioned confinements, how is it possible to achieve flow when writing for science? Is there something like flow possible in scientific writing? Maybe when you’ve internalized all the academic literature and insights you want to present, the words will come to you naturally. Maybe the challenge in writing for science lies in the fact that reflexivity, clearly addressed and formulated, is required as a standard for comprehension. A scientific writer must be capable of putting together a piece of work ensuring that its content is comprehensive even for persons unfamiliar with the respective topic. Delving in the apparent beauty of language and possibly producing highly complex sentence structures may thwart this goal.

The end goal, then, remains a reconciliation of the reproduction of scientific content with the splendor of words. Maybe it’s just a matter of finding the adequate journal whose editors do not shy away from publishing science presented in a well crafted manner. And a written piece of work is crafted well when the reader witnesses flow in the writer’s product. Flow is what may even bring a dry literature review to life.