Comparative Study On The Functions Of Scientific And Technological Communication In Chinese And Foreign Biographies Of Scientists

With the rapid development of science and technology, people have been realizing the importance of scientific and technological communication. Biographies of scientists as an important media have played an irreplaceable role in the spread of science and technology. However, the overall level and contribution of biographies of scientists still have a long way to go with comparison to outstanding foreign works, such as unimaginative description of the main role, lack of scientific information, singleness of research activities mode and so on. The differences of Chinese and western biographies of scientists were discussed in this paper, which aimed at improving the creative level of domestic biographies of scientists, bringing scientific and technological communication functions into full play and further enriching technological research tradition and the Scientific Technology and Society (STS) theory in terms of scientific and technological communication.The communicational functions of biographies of scientists were studied by literature analysis, comparative analysis and hermeneutics and other research methods from different points of view including the phenomenon and essence, theory and practice, etc. This paper was started with analyzing the similarities and differences of Chinese and foreign biographies of scientists from the three angles of building scientist’s image, revealing social values of science and demonstrating research activities, followed with a summary of general similarities and differences on which three questions are raised:What is the reason of the differences? What result and influence does it bring? What is the evaluation criterion of scientist biography? And the author’s insights to these questions were addressed respectively in the paper.At the end of this paper, the following conclusions were gained in order to improve the effectiveness of the domestic biographies of scientists in scientific and technical communication:firstly, the environment of free reading in the domestic biographies of scientists should be built favorably rather than the consciousness of orientation. Secondly, the proportion of the scientific and technical knowledge must be enhanced exclusively in those biographies. Thirdly, it is necessary to take the advantage of ourselves and study the vivid expression ways of foreign countries, including using various means of lively description to make readers absorb the essence of scientific and technical information efficiently and filling with artistic content in the biographies to encourage readers paying close attention continuously, etc.