Abstract
Four instances of how science fiction contributes to the elucidation of novelty in the context of discovery are considered by extending existing discussions on temporal and use-novelty. In the first instance, science fiction takes an already well-known theory and produces its own re-interpretation; in the second instance, the scientific account is usually straightforward and whatever novelty that may occur would be more along the lines of how the science is deployed to extra-scientific matters; in the third instance, science fiction takes an idea that appears impossible within the delimitations of reality and produces a universe where such a possibility becomes feasible; and in the fourth instance, science fiction extends from an idea already known at the time of the work’s production to simulate a possibility that could emerge should the extension be experimentally viable. However, the article will not end with a mere evaluation of these instances, but also proposes instances on how science fiction could contribute to new ways of experiencing, discerning, and working with scientific knowledge.
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Notes
I use pseudoscience here to mean two depictions of scientific facts: the alternate facts depiction and the crackpot depiction. Despite the pejorative tone of the term ‘crackpot’, my purpose of using it is to denote a scientific argument that falls outside the mainstream of acceptability by the scientific community, mainly because the views are considered extreme, the result of erroneous arguments (including mathematical arguments), and even a disputed idea (one viewed as having a questionable agenda). The first kind of pseudoscientific depiction represents attempts at providing alternate facts that do not live up to the expectation of scientific rigour, whether through methods of experimentation, observation, triangulation, and/or replicability (within constraints of situations enabling experimental replication). Philosopher Sandra Mitchell (2017) provides a good critical description of the alternate facts and life of pseudoscience in her post “The Ill-Logic of Alternative Facts” for the Union of Concerned Scientists blog. However, there is another kind of pseudoscience, which is sometimes propagated by professionals in the scientific community who may take the extreme views of a scientific event, with or without probable cause.
However, should we choose to subscribe to the Latourian conceptualization of fact, then its resonance with fiction becomes magnified, because the fact shares a history with the fabricated.
It was believed by some scientists that, whatever Weber must have seen, could have been the result of the artefacts from his procedures and setup of the detectors he built, which were not sufficiently sensitive to detect the radiation from the gravitational energy of collapsing neutron stars in the final moments of their orbits. Levine (2004) provides a thorough analysis of Weber’s experiments and publications on the matter. Weber in any case provided the impetus and motivation for continuing the search that finally culminated in the successful detection of gravitational waves by the LIGO-Virgo collaboration.
Toon refers to an earlier work of Walton rather than the one cited in this essay (Walton 2015).
Richard Carrigan, one of the co-authors of the short story, had authored an article in February 1976 of Analog titled “The Discovery of the Gypsy” on the discovery of the Psi (Ψ). on the discovery of the Ψ meson by the group of Burton Richter at the Standard Positron–Electron Asymmetric Ring (SPEAR), SLAC. Ψ was simultaneously discovered by Samuel Ting’s group at Brookhaven, and was referred to as the ‘J particle.’ The J/Ψ meson is an example of charmomium, since it consists of a particle-antiparticle pair of charmed quarks. The discovery of this meson heralded the November 1974 ‘revolution’, birthing new physics. The muon catalytic process was part of the chain of events leading to the eventual discovery of the J/psi.
While Richard Carrigan used to be a physicist at Fermilab, his co-author and wife, Nancy Jean Carrigan, is an artist and poet who found inspiration from her indirect association with the scientific world. See https://home.fnal.gov/~carrigan/Nancy_carrigan_cosmology.htm.
There was an article on magnetic monopole in the November 1976 issue of Analog by Margaret Silbar. The discovery of a monopole in nature was claimed by the group of Blas Cabrera at Stanford in 1982, but was never confirmed.
The novella also included an allusion to the Cretan Minotaur (the figure of the mythical bull takes on multiple figurations here), the labyrinth (that points to a physical underground structure and convoluted experimental paths that led to the petrons), industrial intrigue (financial gain to be had from control over cutting-edge renewable energy resource), and an allusion of the “God” particle metaphorically by asserting how that particle may be the channel to a more primordial aspect of the universe. There are fascinating references to the analogue and digital technologies that were available at the time, such as a tape recorder that can encrypt messages, and an early version of a search engine with analogue features reminiscent of ARPANET. Since the story was published prior to revolution in personal computing and desktop supercomputers, the reader is offered a glimpse into the writing and debugging of codes that required hand-coding onto punched cards prior to being fed to the computer; computer time was costly since it had to be shared among multiple users.
A model of such theoretical fiction, although the aim was more about conveying of a scientific idea known but novel, is embodied by George Gamow’s Mr Tompkins series. The series utilise fiction as a platform for illustrating the non-intuitive aspects of the ‘new’ physics of the twentieth century to the public.
It is worth mentioning that Bohm developed this form of thinking as a response to developments he observed with regard to quantum physics, local realism, and hidden variables—about how the structure of the physical universe is enfolded onto itself. One of the things posited in implicate order is that we should think of ‘world tubes’ instead of particles, and that the reason why relativity and quantum theory have difficulties reconciling is due to the approaches to quantum theory taken in the orthodox interpretations (the previously discussed Copenhagen interpretation). In Wholeness and the Implicate Order, written in the 1970s, Bohm argues that the prevailing trend of modern physics is against thinking in terms of a divided wholeness, where any aspects of relativity and quantum theory that suggest otherwise are deemphasised and shoved into dense lines of mathematical calculus. He suggests that the trend is towards a “traditional atomistic notion that the universe is constituted of elementary particles which are ‘basic building blocks’ out of which everything else is made” (See Bohm and Hiley 1995: 14–15). This is not an inaccurate assessment of the tension between particle and field-centric discourses in quantum physics.
The short-story was first published in 1994.
Lavenda, Bernard. (2015). “The Unobservable Universe.” In Where Physics Went Wrong, 15–72. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd. This chapter contains some disputes Lavenda had with what he viewed as logically and substantively weak attempts at justifying the conditions producing the Big Bang, and its aftermath, including the theories advanced for cosmological inflation, as he attempts to go up against what he considers as myths pertaining to Einsteinian relativity, gravitation, and cosmology.
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Lee, C.A.L. What Science Fiction Can Demonstrate About Novelty in the Context of Discovery and Scientific Creativity. Found Sci 24, 705–725 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-019-09615-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-019-09615-6