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.

Science|Environment|Health – the emergence of a new pedagogy of complex living systems

“…A Spanish group led by Olga Mayoral has been attempting to give voice to this important issue in the S|E|H community (Gavidia, Garzón, Talavera, Sendra, & Mayoral, 2019). Another promising issue are narrative approaches to complexity talk in S|E|H (Fuchs, 2015).…”

Primary Physical Science for Student Teachers at Kindergarten and Primary School Levels: Part I—Foundations of an Imaginative Approach to Physical Science

“…By Forces of Nature we mean a medium-scale 3 perceptual unit or perceptual gestalt that is most easily associated with and recognized as any form of powerful agency (Fuchs 2006(Fuchs , 2015. Examples of Forces of Nature are water, wind, fire, ice, electricity, light, food, soil, gravity, and motion, just to mention some of the more obvious cases.…”

“…Examples of image schemas are path, container, in-out, up-down (verticality), substance, agency or causation, scale, cycle, process, and many more. We call such schemas small-scale perceptual gestalts (Fuchs 2015)-upon analysis, they exhibit limited structure (aspects) with internal logic that is used in reasoning. To give a couple of examples, the container and in-out schemas let us reason that a stone in one's hand that is in the jacket pocket is also inside the pocket, and the cycle and path schemas make us think about the blood circulatory system.…”

“…Webs of interconnected metaphors used for understanding larger-scale phenomena such as melting iron for casting machine parts or riding a bicycle up a hill, form medium-scale imaginative structures. But there are still larger-scale forms that populate our mind-namely, narratives or stories (Fuchs 2015;Fuchs et al 2018). They help us deal with the perception of largescale events such as a forest fire, a winter storm, growing and harvesting crops, designing and constructing a bridge, or the birth of a child.…”

“…In other words, does something emerge that is not a simple sum of metaphoric expressions and relations? Can natural and technical scenes be framed narratively (see Fuchs 2015;Fuchs et al 2018)?…”