Piel, H orcid.org/0000-0002-0218-1170 (2019) Complicating the Story of Popular Science: John Maynard Smith’s “Little Penguin” on The Theory of Evolution. Journal of the History of Biology, 52 (3). pp. 371-390. ISSN 0022-5010
Abstract
Popular science writing has received increasing interest, especially in its relation to professional science. I extend the current scholarly focus from the nineteenth to the twentieth century by providing a microhistory of the early popular writings of evolutionary biologist John Maynard Smith (1920–2004). Linking them to the state of evolutionary biology as a professional science as well as Maynard Smith’s own professional standing, I examine the interplay between author, text and audiences. In particular, I focus on Maynard Smith’s book The Theory of Evolution (Penguin 1958) and show how he used it to both promote neo-Darwinism and advocate the utility of mathematics in biology. Following in the footsteps of Charles Darwin and David Lack, Maynard Smith was a science communicator blurring the lines between genres (popular, professional, textbook) and audiences (expert and non-expert) while contributing to ongoing discussions within and on the profession of evolutionary biology around the Darwin-Wallace centenary.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: | |
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. |
Keywords: | John Maynard Smith; Popular science; Evolutionary theory; Science communication; Neo-Darwinism |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science (Leeds) > School of Philosophy (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 26 Jun 2019 12:18 |
Last Modified: | 25 Jun 2023 21:53 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer Netherlands |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/s10739-019-9566-y |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:147794 |
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