Triangulating the Two Cultures Entanglement: The Sciences and the Humanities in the Public Sphere

Better Stories about Science?

“…It posited, sometimes implicitly, sometimes explicitly, that literary fiction might have the power to produce such 'better stories about science' -that the stories told in fictional narratives might hold insights and enable perspectives which would, along the way, result in allowing readers to develop more differentiated, more complex as well as sometimes more informed 'understandings' and 'engagements' with science, presenting not merely the rewards and incentives but also, and prominently, the practical and financial pressures and obstacles, the mixtures of teamwork and competition found in laboratories and research institutes, the multiple demands and expectations on the part of different parts of the public, of funders, politicians, and media, and the complexities of keeping all this concealed or getting it communicated as the situations might require. The idea was that the special properties of the novel, instead of being reduced to the purposes of science communication, might have the effect of enabling communication about science with a difference (see Gaines et al 2013; see also Kirchhofer and Auguscik 2017;and Kirchhofer and Roxburgh 2016).…”

“…We noted further that scientist reviewers by no means "invariably look for idealised, affirmative representations of their situations and activities," but that instead they tend to "emphatically welcome realistic descriptions of the difficult and conflicted social and economic frameworks within which scientists often operate" (Kirchhofer and Auguscik 2017, 28). As a final takeaway, it became clear that literary reviewers have been far slower in picking up such critical perspectives on science in these science novels than scientific reviewers have, and equally, that the wider literary and critical public does not tend to be aware of the critical perspectives formulated by scientist reviewers when they discuss the critical angles on problems, situations, and constellations in scientific practice which they recognise in the fictional representations of science (see again Kirchhofer and Auguscik 2017). And yet, these points when scientist readers and reviewers of science novels are prompted in their discussion of fictional science narratives to address issues, conflicts, and pressures which are raised in the stories but have a far wider virulence, might be uniquely fruitful.…”

“…On this entire paragraph, seeKirchhofer and Auguscik (2017), where we argue that this spectrum of instances of recognition presents opportunities for interdisciplinary dialogue about pressing aspects and issues in science that have not been sufficiently taken up on the side of literary studies and the humanities. To be alert to these aspects more consistently might contribute to promoting a productive interdisciplinarity that involves both the sciences and the humanities, and specifically literary studies.Anglistik, Jahrgang 32 (2021), Ausgabe 3 © 2021 Universitätsverlag WINTER GmbH Heidelberg Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)…”