Science fiction and science dis/trust: Thinking with Bruno Latour’s Gaia and Liu Cixin’s The Three-body Problem

Abstract

This article draws on the ideas of Bruno Latour to examine the nature of science dis/trust and denialism in times of crisis. We argue that Latour's image of science creates new demands on public trust, shifting the focus from 'trusting that a particular scientific claim is true' towards an engagement with Gaia (earth) where scientists encounter and form alliances with agencies alive with trickster motive. We use the science fiction novel Three body problem to explore the specific challenges to scientific authority within this relational ontology, under various climatic regimes. We show how the SF novel offers insights into Latour's proposal for science as a risky diplomacy in a metamorphic zone.

For a new weird geography

“…Even when dis/oriented, relations are still fundamental. Weird encounters force a generative empirical reengagement with the world (De Freitas and Truman, 2020); if things don't make sense, if we are dis/oriented, it is often our concepts, methods, and ontologies that are inadequate. Like we attempt here in relation to the weird, we hope that dis/ orientation can be a useful way for geographers to experiment with and generate concepts that account for the novelty of the contemporary socioecological condition.…”

“…Bahng (2017), for instance, reads Octavia Butler as a form of science studies, while others use prominent SF themes to develop new forms of social enquiry (e.g. De Freitas, 2017; De Freitas and Truman, 2020, 2021; Truman, 2019). Several natural scientists have turned to the ‘radical, prefigurative potential of science fiction’ for inspiration in their practice (Lorimer, 2017: 129).…”

Why trust science in a trickster world of absolute contingency? The speculative force of mathematical abstraction

“…Carl Freedman (2000) notes that science fiction as a genre, is 'the one most devoted to the historical concreteness and the historical self-reflectiveness of critical theory' (Freedman, 2000: xvi). In speculative fiction, scientific concepts and practices are often queered or extrapolated to extremes using thought experiments and narrative devices and tropes and can help readers imagine a radically different form of empiricism (de Freitas, 2017a; de Freitas and Truman, 2020b). SF stories can put flesh on a thought experiment and do philosophy through character and story.…”

“…I referenced two works of fiction, The Three-Body Problem, by Cixin Liu and Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer. Please see two recent publications, co-written with Sarah Truman, for detailed readings of these two novels, and a discussion of related ideas, (de Freitas and Truman, 2020a;de Freitas and Truman, 2020b). What follows here are excerpts from that keynote, focusing on science dis/trust and the role of speculative thought and abstraction in science.…”

“…The Chinese Cultural Revolution) as well as the planetary context (Earth versus Trisolaran world) and does not invest in a speculative thought and empirical inquiry that engages with absolute contingency. Despite reframing scientific practice as morethan-human and indifferent to human survival, it seems in the end that the scientific advancements -both the science performed by the Trisolarans and scientific advancements on Earth -are entirely fueled by imperialism (see deFreitas and Truman, 2020b). Much of the plot celebrates human exceptionalism and continues to invest in what both Latour and Barad have called 'causalist' interpretations of scientific intervention.…”