engleski

Narrative in Science: Informative and Formative Aspects

Although traditionally working scientists do not place great value on narratives in modern natural sciences, in fact, they seem to be even hostile to storytelling in and about working science (see, e.g., Katz 2013), the origin of which seem to be their common belief in science as an ‘impersonal search for truth’, as well as their hermetic attitude to the sophistication of modern natural sciences - in recent times a considerable attention has nevertheless been given to the need of a ‘narrative turn’ in science (see, e.g., Dahlstrom 2014 ; Downs 2014 ; Olson 2015), especially concerning the communication of science processes and the results to the general public in order to make them more accessible, comprehensible and transparent. Somehow a more relaxed approach to narratives in science can be found in the domain of science education and science popularization (e.g., Strube 1994 ; Metz et al 2007 ; Avraamidou & Osborne 2009 ; Clough 2010 ; Hoffman 2014 ; Norris et al. 2015), in particular in using historical and biographical explanation in science textbooks and in popular science books and publications in order to enhance scientific literacy. However, in realization of this ‘narrative turn’ in science one can find a striking discrepancy between what science communicators, educators and popularizers, on the one hand, and professional historians and philosophers of science, on the other, seem to know about the history and methodology of science, where the former tend to perpetuate certain stories from the history of science that the latter have long ago identified as myths (see, e.g., Brown 2006 ; also Kožnjak 2012, Kožnjak 2013). The main purpose of the proposed presentation is to analyze the informative and formative, regulative aspects of such storytelling, ‘heroic’ accounts of science, characterized by inaccurate dramatizations and romanticizations of science and scientists in monumental proportions (Allchin 2003 ; Milne 1998), in light of the formal structure and pragmatic function of the myth (Eliade 1963 ; Rowland 1990), as well as in light of the general constructivist framework of the function of narrative (Bruner 1991), and finally, to put them into the perspective of the philosophical and psychological accounts of science in the works of Thomas Kuhn (Kuhn 1962) and Abraham Maslow (Maslow 1966 ; see Kožnjak 2016).

narrative explanation, science, science myths, philosophy of science, psychology of science

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