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| Scientific | 23% | 92 votes | Total: 404 votes | |
| Fiction | 77% | 312 votes |
Scientific
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Add to FavoritesIt is so tempting to side with the fiction writers on this issue, but there are a few issues I have with fiction. Brilliant writers such as Victor Hugo can use words to describe what they see and think with amazing clarity. They can play our emotions like a harp, making us cry or laugh at their whim. But, in the end it is only their opinion and observations of a limited select few.
Scientist's must adhere to standards and empirical evidence when addressing new discoveries into the human condition. While this may seem cold and clinical, and it this is often the case. Through research and long years of study they can tell us why we act the way we do. This brings a more complete insight into humanity. They can offer solutions to problems plaguing mankind where as fiction writers can only offer personal opinion, and wow us with their writing skills.
Anthropologis ts and archaeologists spend their whole lives studying the past to bring more insight into human history. What made certain civilizations great and what brought their down fall. Fiction writers just write about current events hoping to reveal, but never getting the whole picture. They rage against the inhumanities, then they are put in the classic literature studies where they are dusted off each year for a brief period of time.
Scientific studies are an ongoing process where new discoveries and information are added to a broad knowledge base. This way valuable information is passed on from generation to generation for future scientists. This empirical evidence is proof, solid facts, not hearsay or babble of an author long dead. When new information is brought to light the scientific community adjusts and corrects past errors. While we may not find this entertaining we know the evidence is sound and reliable.
State of the art equipment allows scientists to delve much deeper into the bodies reactions to external stimulus. They can now show chemical reactions to emotional, and physical situations. They have narrowed the basic human reactions called "fight or flight" to any given situation.
Through studies done in the inner cities the scientific community can give statistical data on how many teens have become pregnant or how many of our youths have ended up in prison during any giving year or time period, and most importantly why it happened. They can offer solutions where fiction writers can only rant. Scientific writers offer insight perhaps less entertaining, but it will be well rounded and factual.
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Fiction
"I am become death, the destroyer of worlds." - a quote from the Hindu literary "Vedas" made by Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, Director of the Manhattan Project. Dr. Oppenheimer quoted the Vedas after witnessing the first detonation of the atomic bomb.
Fictional literature affects scientific literature and vice versa. The two have a symbiotic relationship.
Scientific literature - especially peer review literature based upon the "hard sciences" - employs the scientific method, a system of trial and error and strict disciplines crafted to focus in on nuggets of knowledge. Therefore it often offers a one-dimensional view of the human experience simply because it employs, of necessity, a distillation of data. The literature hinges upon the testing of a hypothesis through experimentation and the arguments that a particular insight represents the validation of - or discovery of - a truth.
On the other hand, fictional literature incorporates the full spectrum of human experience: aspirations, doubt, passions, heroism, risk, faith, and so much more. Fictional literature extrapolates through dramatic tensions the full spectrum of the human experience within various environments, cultures and time frames.
Although fictional literature and scientific literature share a strong symbiotic relationship, by its very nature and purpose fictional literature must explore humanity in its struggles, triumphs and defeats. It presents a vision of a world to strive for or to shun at all costs.
While scientific literature creates and discovers by utilizing the rational side of the human psyche, fictional literature wrestles with the larger picture and strives to discover the potential pitfalls and how a sometimes frail, evolving race can maintain its mastery over the knowledge its science reveals. In many cases then fictional literature often explores how Mankind can remain the masters of scientific discoveries rather than becoming its slave.
Fictional literature has explored the science of undersea exploration and warfare and the sociological impact of it such as depicted within the pages of Jules Verne's masterpiece, "Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea."
Fictional literature has explored the courage, cowardice, innovation and stupidity of individual characters and whole cultures against the backdrop of period pieces, crime dramas, tragedies, romance novels, thrillers, fantasy and science fiction.
Nowhere does the symbiotic relationship between scientific and fictional literature reveal itself more clearly than in science fiction. Many of the original NASA scientists and engineers attributed their desire to reach the Moon from stories they read while teenagers during the 1930s and 1940s. Magazines featuring stories of the future and how the characters dealt with problems, crisis and enigmas filled the drugstore stands: Astounding Stories, Amazing Tales, Galaxy, If: Worlds of Wonder, the list of pulp classics goes on and on.
Some of the astronauts also revealed they became interested in space exploration because of stories they read as adolescents written by the likes of H. G. Wells, Isaac Asimov or Ray Bradbury.
Many new inventions began as a "crazy idea" in a work of fiction. And many working engineers and scientists have discovered new ways to approach a scientific problem thanks to inspiration from a concept within the body of a fictional work. Some fictional literature has crossed the boundary into "forbidden areas" and activated law enforcement or intelligence agencies investigations. A case in point was a novel written by Lester del Rey.
Lester del Rey's "Nerves" hit a nerve with the U.S. government. After it was published in the early 1940s, the FBI and other unnamed agencies paid him a visit to find out how much he actually knew about America's secret nuclear research.
Rey knew nothing about the federal government's Manhattan Project; he just extrapolated current knowledge about nuclear physics that was in the common domain and built a story around that. If you ever have a chance to read the book, about a runaway reactor at a nuclear plant, you can see the human emotional response from many of the characters mirrored fairly closely the response decades later by people directly involved in the Three Mile Island incident and the Russian Chernobyl disaster.
The late Sir Arthur C. Clarke, world-famous science fiction author and futurist, wrote an article in 1947 proposing the use of man-made satellites to establish a world-wide broadcast communications system. In subsequent years his proposal was picked up and inspired reams of scientific literature exploring just how to accomplish that breakthrough.
A plethora of military white papers of the scientific literature/intellige nce community followed up on Clarke's idea - proposed in 1955 - of establishing a world-wide computer network (he envisioned the modern day Internet). This set into motion coffee break discussions and research and development within the university and military scientific circles to explore the means and methods to accomplish such a network.
Inspired by Clarke's fictional story of a global "computer network intended to allow general communication between users of various computers, J.C.R. Licklider of Bolt, Beranek and Newman [during] August 1962, in a series of memos discussing his "Intergalactic Computer Network" concept [created the core] ideas containing almost everything that the Internet is today." [1]
The efforts culminated in the ARPANET system, the forefather of the current World Wide Web. [2]
Fictional literature is both a counterpoint and ally of science and scientific literature and is not limited to fantasy or science fiction. Many mainstream novels exploring the vagaries and depths of the human experience find their way into the halls of scientific academia.
In novelist Ayn Rand's seminal work, "Atlas Shrugged," the underlying themes of science and technology and the resulting human response to them - the morality, ethics, values, and overall pathos - create the entire foundation of the story. The characters' use, misuse or abuse of science is one of the main themes of the book. Science fiction ideas and science extrapolation abound: Galt's revolutionary static motor, the futuristic automobiles of 20th Century Motors, Dr. Robert Stadler's ominous Project X - the ultimate weapon of anti-science - and of course Hank Reardon's groundbreaking metal alloy, Reardon Steel.
Scientific literature seeks to understand the nature of reality and our place in the universe by looking outward beyond ourselves, whereas fictional literature - when it attains its highest purpose - helps each of us to understand ourselves.
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[1] http://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/ARPANET
[2] http://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Intergalact ic_Computer_Network
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