Introduction - the discursive technology of science. Part 1 Professional literacy: construing nature; on the language of physical science; some grammatical problems in scientific English; the construction of knowledge and value of the grammar of scientific discourse - with reference to Charles Darwin's The Origin of the Species; language and the order of nature; the analysis of scientific texts in English and Chinese. Part 2 School literacy: construing knowledge. Part 3 Uncommon sense: secondary geography and science; the discourse of geography - ordering and explaining the experimental world; literacy in science - learning to handle text as technology. Part 4 Technicality and abstraction: secondary science and humanities; technicality and abstraction - language for the creation of specialised texts; secret English - discourse technology in a junior secondary school; life as a noun - arresting the universe in science and technology.