There has been a longstanding concern among those engaged in basic science that support for their research has been declining. The observations lie in stark contrast with the growth of support for technological innovation. For example, the National Science Foundation has recently created a new directorate — Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships — devoted to catalyzing new bridges between discoveries and application. Applications seem to be increasingly advantaged over basic science.
The discussion of the fate of the basic sciences has led to introspection that current scientific practice and education do not sufficiently value the ability to science to large audiences. Instead, scientists are viewed as remote from the general public, interested only in abstraction and theory, and selfish in their day-to-day pursuits.
Related to this are signs of hostility toward science and scientists, as another example of the power of elites disproportionate to their importance to the society. Some of these developments coincide with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the early course of the epidemic, those familiar to the key attributes of the scientific method expected that understanding of this virus would change over time, affecting evaluations of the merit of alternative interventions. Others viewed new findings about the pandemic as evidence that science cannot be trusted to supply facts useful for practical decisions. If a change in guidance is issued, it must mean that the original conclusions were wrong. If the first conclusion was wrong, why trust the new conclusion? Through such misunderstanding of the scientific method, “follow the science” was threatened as a guide.
Both this most recent attention on science and society and earlier concerns have led to more attention to helping scientists communicate their work in new media, using new narrative structures. For example, the National Academy of Sciences created the Science and Entertainment Exchange to foster more effective communication about the scientific method and the discoveries of scientists. The exchange is designed to form partnerships between scientific groups and artists in the entertainment business. The goal is to use entertainment media, especially film and television, to create engaging storylines accessible to large audiences about the practice and outcomes of scientific inquiry. Screenwriters and directors engage with scientists to create new works. Stories will be invented to convey the scientific enterprise.
An anthropologist friend once asserted that all our memories is a set of stories. Memorability is enhanced by new knowledge being linked to stories.
While the activities above are at a structural level, this moment seems to offer a new reason for cross-field collaboration. Universities motivated by devotion to liberal education contain both scientists and humanists. The latter’s scholarship and creative lives produce stories, plays, poems, and other narrative products. On some campuses, these scholars offices are mere feet away from the laboratories of the scientists.
What an opportunity!
Georgetown has a strong group of faculty who use words, images, and audio forms designed to be accessible to large audiences. Some are premier storytellers. Can we create collaborations between humanists and scientists to enhance the impact of our collective research?
This a really important post, and I am glad to see this as an active quest at Georgetown. One of the ways that we have long thought about science/humanities collaboration is that the humanities perform an instrumental function (making science legible, telling stories, consoling in times of crisis). But what we have seen throughout the Covid pandemic is that the relationship between natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities is (or should be) much more symbiotic, as we recognise the profoundly humanistic work of imagination in the creation of a more just future.
Two colleagues and I wrote a short opinion piece about “the vital place of the arts and humanities in discovering how humans fall ill and how they heal” in May 2020, based on a book that we co-edited on science, technology, and modernist literature: https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/science-and-the-humanities-in-the-time-of-pandemic-better-together-1.4261769
Very interesting. One great psychiatry professor said after an interview of a very difficult patient “ What a wonderful profession we have – getting to hear people’s interesting stories. Yes science is changing. Those stories should help us to research new ideas and then how to communicate our ever changing science results to help people and mankind. A good scientist is always evaluating and changing new hypothesis all for the good of mankind. Hoya scientists – men and women for others. Setting the world on fire.