Making Science, Making Scientists, Making Science Fiction

On the Co-Creation of Science and Science Fiction in the Social Imaginary

Bibliographic Data

ID6169130
AuthorsBrad Tabas (0000-0003-0156-8389, École nationale supérieure de techniques avancées Bretagne, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume13
Issue13
Pages71-101
Publication date2019-12-12
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocio (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2266-3134 • E-ISSN: 2425-2158
PublisherOpenEdition (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.4000/socio.7735
OpenAlexW2999095254
LanguageEN
References cited36

Most work on the relationship between science and science fiction focuses on how science fiction can advance science by speculatively elaborating scientific theories. This text, to the contrary, argues that we should understand some science fiction texts as contributing to the making of science as a social practice rather differently: namely by seeing them as a form of didactic literature which offers moral exempla to scientists or potential scientist readers. In order to illustrate this point, this article considers the representation of scientist-heroes in Gregory Benford’s Cosm and Ursula K. Le Guin The Dispossessed. It illustrates the ways which these authors depict model scientists that can help readers to imagine what it might mean to be a scientist, and to engage in science as a profession. It brings out the ways in which their drive to create such didactic examples may have emerged out of a crisis within the ideology of science itself, namely the crisis of legitimacy and authority of science today known as the Science Wars

Art · Epistemology · Ideology · Legitimacy · Literary criticism · Literary fiction · Literature · Outline of social science · Pedagogy · Point (geometry · Political science · Politics · Representation (politics · Science communication · Science education · Science, technology, society and environment education · Social science education · society and environment education · Sociology · Techno-thriller · Technology · The Imaginary · Law · Mathematics · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science · Psychology · Space Science and Extraterrestrial Life · Utopian, Dystopian, and Speculative Fiction

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