Theses on Fictitious Science
- The production of scientific literature is rigid because of a culture focused on precision that has its hands bound by monopolistic journals (e.g. Elsevier) and conservative institutional norms.
2. However, criticism of notions of methodological homogeneity and objectivity in the natural sciences, have opened an avenue of change for scientific literature. The tampering of scientific literature through the incorporation of literary devices is now acceptable in some circles.
3. Works such as that of philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend’s Against Method gave reason to doubt the existence and desirability of a singular scientific method, importantly removing boundaries. Speaking on education, Feyerabend wrote:
“For is it not necessary to prepare the young for life as it actually is? Does this not mean that they must learn one particular set of views to the exclusion of everything else?” (Feyerabend 38)
4. The tension between the humanities and the “hard” sciences is stifling to both. Presently, aspiring scientists know little about the philosophy and philosophers of science. Up until the Cold War, physicists regularly cited philosophy as informing their work: Einstein, Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Oppenheimer all expressed gratitude toward their philosophical education. Of course, humanities also contributes to the gap, especially attitudes prevalent within the continental sphere: the literature student who pays no attention to mathematics; dismissive attitudes towards the logical positivists.
5. The concept of fictitious science (fi-sci) — an interdisciplinary appropriation of fictional elements in order to bring forth, and improve upon, scientific literature — offers a framework for reuniting the disciplines that have fallen out of sync via entanglement. The cosmic horror of H.P. Lovecraft and the postmodern science fiction of Kurt Vonnegut are two instances of writing that scientific literature would do well to borrow from.
6. Precision manifests itself in scientific culture less as cautiousness and more so as the notion that empirical observation is not always theory-laden. The particular precision residing within expectations of scientific literature is the reliance upon empirical data and literal language. The usefulness of a literal/literary distinction is dubious.
7. W. V. O. Quine’s confirmation holism provides insight into the literal/literary distinction. Confirmation holism presents the problem of underdetermination, which is nicely summed up in this quote:
“Any statement can be held true come what may, if we make drastic enough adjustments elsewhere in the system.” (Quine 43)
Underdetermination creates an issue for the precision of scientific literature, as literal language, even if assumed factual, is subject to the threat or gift, of revision. How to state the science in a literal manner is treated as a simple procedure informed by guidelines but science is riddled with procedural variation, taking the forms of disciplines, methodology, departments, and individuals. The similarities of a biologist and a physicist nearly end at the suffix.
8. The privileging of literature in this work (perhaps dangerously conservative), over other valuable mediums, is only partially the result of my own preferences and experience. Belief that the literary possess didactic efficacy is ancient. Even in the natural sciences, Bill Nye, Carl Sagan, and others have taken to the television, mesmerizing views of space, and comedy to communicate. Isaac Asimov’s numerous science fiction novels and Carl Sagan’s novel Contact are examples of “hard science fiction.” Indeed, the development of “hard science fiction” can be attributed to scientists. Hard sci-fi is an important case to examine because it is not simply expositing an outside or prior science. It is speculative in an imaginative manner that draws inspiration from existing science, a foundation upon which to pose original lines of questioning and then supply answers (e.g. Asimov’s psycho-history). The outgrowth of these epistemic activities are unique, not merely explaining what certain groups of scientists have said. Literariness should not be mistaken for a purely expository tool but instead an algorithm capable of generating science.
9. Slaughterhouse-five’s Billy Pilgrim is “unstuck in time” (Vonnegut 29). Two meanings can be seen in the narrator’s description. “Unstuck” means Pilgrim becomes a time-traveler but also that Pilgrim’s PTSD acquired from his horrific experiences have altered his experience of time.1 The temporality of victims and witnesses of violence fall within the scope of science. Vonnegutian “unstuckness” renders the inexplicable pathology, explicable. PTSD, as a disorder, is phenomenologically and temporally disruptive.
10. Consider the Vonnegutian vignettes and timelines of evolutionary biology. The unraveling of narratives with abrupt stops and rearrangement in Slaughterhouse-five bears resemblance to the complexities of evolutionary timelines. For example, how do we account for the history of humanity without an intersecting timeline of our cooperation with canines? Although, evolutionary science has matured, and is thus no longer committed to arborescent lines, telling Life’s story better.
11. Imagine a situation in which we find a younger evolutionary biology and Slaughterhouse-five has been published. It is not hard to see how conceptually useful the work could be. How Vonnegutian fiction could have led evolutionary biology to success. Now, imagine a different immature discipline and a different work of fiction.
12. Lovecraft’s metaphors, born out of his purple prose and diction, may be used by astrobiologists comprehending the indifference and age of the universe or an astronomy discussing our Sun. Rays that create life but if you stare too long, you go blind. Outside too long, the Sun, the indifferent, eldritch ball of fire, will burn your skin and cause your cells to mutate uncontrollably. How Lovecraftian fiction generates, rather than simply presents prior science, is less obvious. The extensive world-building of the Cthulhu mythos, the offspring of the metaphors, provides an alternative cosmology. Through the scientific comparison of our own cosmologies to others, underlying assumptions can be identified and uprooted, if necessary. Much like the well-known anthropology paper “Nacimera,” who purpose was to describe American life from the perspective of an outsider through clever depiction. Lovecraft’s work has inspired the books and video essays of artist and dilettante C. M. Kosemen, who has termed his work “speculative evolution” (Kosemen Books; The Biology and Science of H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos).
13. Even within the tradition of fiction, many regard the extensive usage of literary devices at best as conducive to fluff, at worst camouflage. A critic may say science should be concise and the fact of the matter. Is fi-sci clarity or fluff? To this, the only response is that science has never, nor ever will be, pure.
“For all its fluency, science must understand itself; it must see itself as a construction based on a brute, existent world and not claim for its blind operations the constitutive value that “concepts of nature” were granted in a certain idealist philosophy. To say that the world is, by nominal definition, the object x of our operations is to treat the scientist’s knowledge as if it were absolute, as if everything that is and has been was meant only to enter the laboratory” (Merleau-Ponty 160).
14. “If you can’t explain it to a five year old, then you don’t know what you are talking about.” An inability to explain an idea is indeed indicative of a lack of grasp over the idea. Complexity is not flat, it is stratified. Now, it is within our interest to democratize knowledge but to ignore the requirement of expertise is not scientific. As tiresome as science is to define, certainly expertise is a part of any worthwhile definition. No famous scientist has ever been without expertise. Exclusivity of discourse, when the subject matter is no longer lay should be the expected outcome of specialization. Educational institutions exist to facilitate the distribution of expertise.
15. The fictitious science established here is not in opposition to scientific realism at-large. This is pragmatism that is critical of naive realists, subscribers to self-announcing truth, and finds itself in the company of realism(s) skeptical of vulgar narratives of social construction and authenticity. Underdetermination, often wielded or perceived as a critique of scientific realism, is used in arguing for fi-sci but underdetermination can be instead articulated as a testament to the flexible character of science.
16. Science-as-is prevents a major shift in academic literature. Separatists, bridging disparate institutions, neoliberal slashes to funding, a new pedagogy, and re-training make bringing fictitious science to reality challenging. The ambition is indeed radical but at present, science seems ill-equipped of combating climate change, navigating a murky bio-medicine, overcoming its crisis of reproducibility, and unforeseen issues are sure to arise. Issues of the scientificity of personal phenomenology, the “Weird”, neurotheology, plural/systems/DID have already appeared. Uncertainty calls for “all-hands-on-deck” and given the productive capacity of fiction, there is reason to engage in collective action and practice solidarity. Fi-sci’s benefit to scientific problem solving can assume many forms.
17. The failures of science-as-is can be categorized as epistemic and active failures. Epistemic in that science’s lack of the literary is a mistake that weakens scientific imagination and threatens the formation of an inter-disciplinary culture. The active category is the vice of not deploying scientific knowledge to develop institutions that may successfully combat the ecological crises unfolding. These categories overlap heavily but fi-sci pertains more to the first, as it confronts primarily epistemic failures.
18. Fi-sci is the recognition that developments in scientificity have opened doors and the belief that synoptic thinking can inform the need for science-as-is to re-imagine itself.
LINKS TO RELATED CONTENT
Novelist Amitav Ghosh’s The Great Derangement, which argues that our descendants will call the absence of the subject of climate change from our fiction “The Great Derangement.”
Yuk Hui’s article “Cosmotechnics as Cosmopolitics” is similar and partially inspired this work.
The magical realism of Borges, in particular the story “The Garden of Forking Paths,” which predates scientific theory about multiverses.
Sandra Harding, the face of standpoint epistemology and feminist criticism in the philosophy of science, is worth looking into.
Quill R Kukla is another philosopher, engaged in feminist criticism, who is making significant contributions to analytic epistemology.
Some of C. M. Kosemen’s work can be downloaded for free on his website.
Domenic Pennetta is an artist doing similar work to C. M. Kosemen.
Check out Fǎn’s article about Quine’s “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” and criticisms launched against it.
Works Cited
Feyerabend, Paul. Against Method. Verso, 2010.
Kosemen, C. M. Books. cmkosemen.com/books.html. Accessed July 2020.
Kosemen, C. M., director. The Biology and Science of H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. 12 Aug. 2017, www.invidio.us/watch?v=0stFvhqUwDM. Accessed July 2020.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, and James M. Edie. The Primacy of Perception: And Other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History and Politics. 2015.
Quine, Willard V. O. From a Logical Point of View. Harvard University Press, 1980.
Vonnegut, Kurt, and Kevin Powers. Slaughterhouse-Five, or, The Childrens Crusade: a Duty-Dance with Death: a Novel. Modern Library, an Imprint of Random House, 2019.
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