This essay argues that scientific discourse is amenable to interpretation and assessment from the perspective of the narrative paradigm and its attendant logic, narrative rationality. It also contends that this logic entails a revised conception of knowledge, one that permits the possibility of wisdom. The text analyzed is James D. Watson and Francis H. Crick's proposal of the double helix model of DNA.

This is an exploration of modernism and postmodernism in regard to knowledge: methods of inquiry, operations of the mind, the role of values, conceptions of self, and the problematic of reason.