Popular Culture Review Vol. 14, No. 1, February 2003 | Page 49

The Defining Dinosaur:
The Role of Scientific Value Concepts
in Paleontological Popularizations
In The Ethics o f Science, philosopher David B. Resnik states, “Science is a
society that operates within society” (35). Although Resnik acknowledges the het
erogeneous nature of the category “science,” he also asserts that there are enough
similarities among professional scientific disciplines, in terms of “professional
standards and goals,” that the use of the term “science” to refer to scientific profes
sions in general is warranted (37). In other words, what science “does,” what it
“says,” although of a multi vocal character, has enough commonality that such
enunciations or practices might be positioned as the definitional “contents” of the
category “science.”
Although analysis and prescriptive delimitation of professional ethical stan
dards may be elucidative ways in which to help describe “science,” they do not
address how that particular cultural placeholder—whether it be for a social institu
tion, set of practices, or perceived domain of coherent knowledge— signifies within
what Resnik calls “society,” that is, that part of the field of Western culture that is
not commonly perceived or described as “science” or “scientific.”'
Setting aside the notions of an ethic proper to science, the attempt to define a
dynamic .socio-cultural entity like “science” might best start from a consideration
of what that entity says. These discursive constructions are legion and conflicting,
and they are the product of intent and agentless determination. In this sense, an
analysis of enunciative science should not be taken as underwriting a view of the
sciences as either completely autonomous cultural formations or over-determined
systems of ideological intent. Although this paper will argue the ideological/«/iction of one such discursive construction, this proposition does not necessitate the
view of an ideologue.
One such construct or discursively produced concept is “scientific value.”
Constructions of scientific value in popular and semi-popular scientific texts help
to shape how science is perceived in that broader cultural realm Resnik calls sim
ply “society.” Concepts of scientific value that imply its presence “in” scientific
objects and artifacts enable “science” to define itself by exclusion, by what it is
not. This is especially evocative when the scientific objects in question are per
haps best understood as “artifactual” reconstructions or materializations of theory
and speculation, models in the representational sense of the term. In the specific