홍대용 「의산문답(毉山問答)」의 글쓰기 방식: 과학 텍스트로서의 특징을 중심으로

Abstract

「Uisanmundap」is one of the prominent works in 18th century in Korea, dealing

with principles related to formation of this world and to some basic scientific rules.

Since this text has often been regarded as writer's philosophical synthesis or a

literary product, research on its scientific characteristics seldom conducted.

「Uisanmundap」is important, however, not just in that it shows its own method

as a scientific text, but also that it remains to be suggestive on the modem

scientific writing.

This study is concentrated on revealing several characteristics as a scientific text

of 「Uisanmundap」These factors will also offer prospects for the current

scientific writings which are proved to have several problems. To begin with, it

utilizes several stylistic devices so as to make this text more interesting and to

raise its discemibility and quality of contents. In this study, these devices are

divided into two; the one is a dual structure consisting of narrativity and

non-narrativity. The first part which serves as an introduction is formed as a

narrative text in order to facilitate readers' acceptance of these new ideas. The

latter half, on the other hand, assumes to be non-narrative which helps readers to

identify the scientific fact more clearly. The other stylistic device is related to the

catechetical method, that is, a series of exchange of questions and answers. This

device can offer its own scientific reasoning, which is made up of causal serial

expressions and associative serial expressions.

Apart from these stylistic devices, I'UisanrnundapJ utilizes the verbalization of

the scientific statements, facilitating readers' comprehension of difficult ideas. This factor might be regarded as the most important feature of 「Uisanmundap」, since

most of the modem scientific texts tend to excessively rely on the opposite

function, nominalization. As M. A. K. Halliday asserted in his research,

nominalization itself enables scientific texts not only to establish definite entity of the scientific phenomena, but also to include its meaning as a process by changing

verbs into nouns.

Nonetheless, some studies recently raised a question whether the current features

of writing in the modem scientific writings are substantially effective or not. In

this study, nominalization is considered as the crux of the matter in scientific

writing due to its abuse and limitations on reasoning.

Moreover, this verbalization should be differentiated from the stylistic level as

mentioned above, because it represents not just the level of expressions but also

the way of explanation, organization and even thinking. By composing the scientific

texts in the manner of putting the nominalized and verbalized expressions in its

proper place, those texts can reduce difficulties in comprehension and make it

easier to express the process of scientific phenomena.

Nonetheless, some studies recently raised a question whether the current features

of writing in the modem scientific writings are substantially effective or not. In

this study, nominalization is considered as the crux of the matter in scientific

writing due to its abuse and limitations on reasoning.

Moreover, this verbalization should be differentiated from the stylistic level as

mentioned above, because it represents not just the level of expressions but also

the way of explanation, organization and even thinking. By composing the scientific

texts in the manner of putting the nominalized and verbalized expressions in its

proper place, those texts can reduce difficulties in comprehension and make it

easier to express the process of scientific phenomena.