대중 과학에서 은유와 유비의 역할: 가모프의 우주론 3부작을 중심으로 = The Roles of Metaphors and Analogies in Popular Scientific Books: A Case of George Gamow's Cosmological Trilogy

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This article examines popular scientific books from the perspective of the rhetoric of science, to look into the strategy and techniques of persuasion in science. It focuses on the rhetorical characteristics of the “Cosmological Trilogy,” authored in the 1940-50s by a Russian-American nuclear physicist George Gamow (1904-1968). Gamow’s Cosmological Trilogy, which dealt with the origin and history of the earth, the sun, and the universe, consisted mainly of expositions of physical laws and scientific hypotheses with easy-to-follow explanations of his own physical cosmology. It also used many biological, archaeological, and historical metaphors that had rarely been used in previous publications on physics-based cosmology. Analogies in the Cosmological Trilogy were also important in understanding Gamow’s strategy of persuading his cosmological theory. “Evolution,” “age,” and the “big bang” of the physical universe were described as analogical counterparts to biological evolution, biological age, and the big bang of atomic bombs, respectively. These analogies played an important role in persuading his readers that the large-scale big-bang creation and the evolutionary process of the universe can be speculated and understood by reasoning based on credible experiential sciences, although the beginning and evolution of the universe as a whole can never be directly experienced. Such analysis shows that to Gamow scientific research and popular writing were not clearly separable.