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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

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