Keith Devlin

A postscript to the Dawkins piece (and Philip Anderson's comment): Bertrand Russell was awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950. Philosophy of mathematics, not science, but hopefully not fiction.

Marc D. Hauser

I love Richard's idea! If I had any power with the Nobel committee, I would nominate Richard. I wonder, however, whether the early laureate committees worried about a takeover by the sciences? After all, there are three science prizes [physics, medicine and economics], but only one in literature. If scientists were in the running for this too, wouldn't the fears by some in the arts and humanities deepen?

Richard's essay raises a further issue: writing in the sciences. At Harvard, freshman enter and take a mandatory course in expository writing. For over 13 years now, I have lamented the lack of good writing skills among our students. What I mean by writing, however, is scientific writing. Our students can write in the style of Lacan or Proust, but not Darwin or Dawkins. The expository writing class gives them options, focusing on poetry, lit-crit, the arts, and history, but not a single course on science. Science writing is different, even though some of Richard's handy tips undoubtedly apply to all good writing. We ought to worry, therefore, that our brightest young scientists are only receiving a partial training, one that lacks an education in the art of writing. Young scientists should not only learn about theory, experimental design, and data analysis, but how to write like Dawkins, Pinker, Diamond, and some of our other great science writers. Students of science should study science writing.