Academics
After over forty years of science writing and over ten years as a professor of English writing, I’m taking a full-time PhD at York University, Toronto, in science and technology studies. I do have to stray into academese from time to time, but one of my aims is to bring a little textual elegance to the Academy. Hence these essays are, I hope, more than usually readable.
Born in the WR
The development of Thomas Huxley’s views on science and religion in the Westminster Review, 1854-1860
November 22, 2017
The Compleat Agnostic
Observations on Huxley’s view on science and religion 1860-1874
November 22, 2017
Sparking Interest
Popular Texts as Catalysts for Technoscientific Innovation
October 16-17, 2015
The River As Person
Rights Right Now: Classic, Contemporary, and Alternative Approaches
February 23-24, 2017
My Love Whom I Loathe
Technology and the evolution of attitudes toward ‘Ethical Pharmaceuticals’
February 23-24, 2017
Help Thou My Belief
A Critical Analysis of the New Atheism
February 6, 2015
Talking Down
Audience construction in recent scientific popularization
More Than Molecules
Barbara McClintock and the 21st Century
March 26, 2011
Danger And Opportunity
The Bloor-Latour Controversy 1979-2009
December 8, 2015
Continvvm of Liveliness
Viruses and the Boundary of Life
April 16, 2014
Soulful Alliance
Sociology and Neuroscience as Inadvertent Colleagues
December 12, 2013
Oeconomia Super Omnia
Science in the Third Edinburgh Review
November 30, 2015
Innovation: Sampling Current Construals
What innovation is; what it does; what it might do
May 10, 2015