Roland Barthes: ‘Science Versus Literature’

Abstract

As far as science is concerned language is simply an instrument, which it profits it to make as transparent and neutral as possible; it is subordinate to the matter of science (workings, hypotheses, results) which, so it is said, exists outside language and precedes it. On the one hand and first there is the content of the scientific message, which is everything, on the other hand and next, the verbal form responsible for expressing that content, which is nothing. …