The Pan Narrans Approach to Science

[innerbrat]

The reasons I haven't said much about the discussions of race in science fiction and fantasy that have been ricocheting around the relevant sections of the internet this year can be summed up by two points; I've been reading and listening more than having anything to say, and most of my friends have had better things to say than I have

Comments

[pmoodie]

A fascinating and thought-provoking post

[innerbrat]

I take your point about scientists being story-tellers like any others, but that sort of thing makes us poor laypersons a bit nervous! Some of us are fascinated by science, but we rely on scientists to explain their discoveries in terms we can understand. We read what we can, but we don't have time to read everything. So, we only get a part of the picture, and even that is inevitably going to be coloured by the individual bias of whichever scientist wrote it.
Unfortunately you're just going to have to deal with that. I mean, how do you know anything about the world outside your own limited experience without a) constructing your own stories and b) listening to other people's stories?

As to this Mammoth business, it seems to me that ascribing some kind of higher morality to prehistoric cultures is just racism of a different sort. I find it hard to accept that homo sapiens just suddenly started to exploit the environment irresponsibly in the last couple of centuries, it's only just that we've recently developed the technology to do it

[pmoodie]

It doesn't negate your point, but the impression I get is not that it's not ascirbing this morality to a prehistoric people that lost it, but to an extant (but endangered) people that have always had it.

Again though, I think it's a strangely prejudicial way of thinking. Apart from a bit of cultural variation, I think all people are basically the same.

[matgb]

Put it a different way, I'm a political scientist by training if not by paid work.

we rely on scientists[journalists] to explain their discoveries[the scandals] in terms we can understand

What's the difference? How accurately is the media reporting stories to you? For example, what proportion of MPs have a)done nothing wrong, b) made a bookkeeping error or c) actually tried to fleece the system over expenses?

Guarantee most people asked will horribly inflate the last two and underestimate the first one.

Same with science-I love reading science stories, but you have to take everything with a pinch of salt, as there's no such thing as an unbiased reporter.

Anyway, gotta go, SB finishes work.

[pmoodie]

Very true of course, but the important difference is that many journalists have an agenda other than reporting the truth - they want to sell papers, or push a certain political message. I'm sure there are plenty of unscrupulous scientists who twist their findings for their own ends too, but I would hope the scientific community would expose them sooner rather than later.

But yeah, you have to keep some objectivity and weigh up the reliability of what you read, and that's true for news and science. The trouble is that I'm not qualified to properly assess what I'm being told about scientific subjects, so I have to take it on trust, for better or worse.

[minnesattva]

I take your point about scientists being story-tellers like any others, but that sort of thing makes us poor laypersons a bit nervous!Some of us :) It makes me happy actually, partly because I have the same respect for "pan narrans" (used to have a quote about this on my LJ) that Debi does; I just love that science is a story, usually presented to us as a list of Great (old, dead, white) Men or their Great Discoveries -- heliocentrism, calculus, structure of the atom, relativity, etc.etc. -- as if it were all simple and obvious

[pmoodie]

Yes, good science communicators are vital. If we had more of them, then we wouldn't have hysterical reactions to things like the Large Hadron Collider!