From Stories to Scientific Models and Back: Narrative framing in modern macroscopic physics

Abstract

Narrative in science learning has become an important field of inquiry. Most applications of narrative are extrinsic to science—such as when they are used for creating affect and context. Where they are intrinsic, they are often limited to special cases and uses. To extend the reach of narrative in science, a hypothesis of narrative framing of natural and technical scenes is formulated. The term narrative framing is used in a double sense, to represent (1) the enlisting of narrative intelligence in the perception of phenomena and (2) the telling of stories that contain conceptual elements used in the creation of scientific models of these phenomena. The concrete case for narrative framing is made by conceptual analyses of simple stories of natural phenomena and of products related to modern continuum thermodynamics that reveal particular figurative structures. Importantly, there is evidence for a medium-scale perceptual gestalt called force of nature that is structured metaphorically and narratively. The resulting figurative conceptual structure gives rise to the notion of natural agents acting and suffering in storyworlds. In order to show that formal scientific models are deeply related to these storyworlds, a link between using (i.e. simulating) models and storytelling is employed. This link has recently been postulated in studies of narrative in computational science and economics.