Unsettling scientific stories: expertise, narrative and future histories

C·P·斯诺错了，作为一个小说家，他应该知道得更清楚。著名的是，他在1959年的雷德演讲中指出，西方文化以牺牲科学为代价，赋予人文学科以特权，以至于对科学的无知可以被知识精英当作荣誉的徽章。这一立场根本没有认识到现代西方知识文化--文学、艺术和物质文化--在理论和实践上都受到科学的支持和启发。大众文化的生产者和消费者都热情地、批判地参与了新的科学知识及其带来的社会可能性和问题，而这种参与在现代性所产生的各种想象的未来中最为明显。这个项目将研究这些未来是如何在漫长的技术世纪的过程中演变的，从1887年德费兰蒂的德特福德发电站设计的出版开始（英国大规模发电的开始），并继续于2007年发表国际气候变化专门委员会第四次评估报告（这使得人类活动引起的气候变化的存在超出了合理怀疑的范围）。其核心是三个详细的案例研究，探讨新的科学发展如何通过现代性的三个重要时期制约对现在和未来的文化理解。我们开始的乐观和兴奋的创新物理学和实验文化在维多利亚晚期/早期爱德华七世时期，移动到看的方式，在生物科学的发现在高度现代性的中间和战后时期改变了人类和自然的概念，并结束作为现代性动摇在世纪之交面对环境和资源危机，以及对生态科学和复杂性的新理解。案例研究的背景下，并加强了三个额外的研究，这将发展公众如何参与科幻小说和投机科学未来更广泛的理解。他们将探讨科学是如何在这个漫长的20世纪的流行期刊提出;考虑如何过去的愿景，未来帮助我们理解当代社会的选择;并研究当代科幻小说作家和读者如何预测未来，面对人类气候变化的新兴科学共识，能源未来的挑战性问题，以及基因操作带来的新的可能性。这些背景研究还将提供资源，激发项目研究人员与更广泛的感兴趣的公众（外行和专家）之间的对话，对话通过互动网站和科幻小说阅读小组进行，这将使这些公众能够对这项研究的过程和结果进行评论和批评。这样，该项目不仅将使民主公民更广泛地获得科学和技术思想和信息，而且由于公众的参与，它将产生更好的学术结论。 总之，我们将借鉴历史学和科学社会学以及流行文化研究的传统，展示科学如何成为令人不安的社会变革的源泉，因为新知识开辟了新的可能性，预期和希望-但也带来了新的恐惧，冲突和意想不到的后果。与此同时，我们探讨了小说和文化如何更广泛地使科学成为娱乐，奇迹和快乐的来源，并使读者和公众能够通过提出有关科学创新开辟的未来的伦理，社会和政治影响的难题来挑战专家知识。

C P Snow was wrong, and as a novelist, he should have known better. Famously, his 1959 Rede lecture argued that Western culture privileged the humanities at the expense of the sciences, to the extent that ignorance of the sciences could be worn as a badge of honour by the intellectual elite. This position fundamentally fails to appreciate the extent to which modern Western intellectual culture - literary, artistic and material - has been underpinned and inspired by the sciences both in theory and in practice. Both the producers and consumers of popular culture have engaged enthusiastically and critically with new scientific knowledges and the social possibilities and problems they raise, and nowhere is this engagement more visible than in the variety of imagined futures that modernity has produced. This project will examine how these futures evolved over the course of the long, technological 20th century, beginning in 1887 with the publication of de Ferranti's design of the Deptford Power Station (the beginning of large scale electricity generation in the UK), and continuing to the publication in 2007 of the International Panel on Climate Change's 4th Assessment Report (which put the existence of anthropogenic climate change beyond reasonable doubt). At its heart are three detailed case studies, which explore how new scientific developments conditioned cultural understandings of the present and constructions of the future through three important periods of modernity. We begin with the optimism and excitement of the innovations in physics and experimental cultures during the late Victorian/early Edwardian period, move on to look at the ways that discoveries in the biological sciences in the high modernity of the inter- and post-war period changed conceptions of humanity and nature, and end as modernity falters at the turn of the century in the face of environmental and resource crises, alongside the new understandings of ecological sciences and complexity. The case studies are contextualised and enhanced by three additional studies which will develop a broader understanding of how publics engage with science fictions and speculative science futures. They will explore how science was presented in popular periodicals through this long 20th century; consider how past visions of the future help us to understand contemporary social choices; and examine how contemporary science fiction writers and readers are anticipating the future now, in the face of the emergent scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change, challenging issues about energy futures, and new possibilities engendered by genetic manipulation. These context studies will also provide the resources that will inspire a dialogue between the project researchers and the wider interested publics, both lay and expert, conducted through an interactive website and science fiction reading groups, which will enable these publics to comment on and critique both the process and results of this research. In this way, the project will not just make scientific and technological ideas and information more widely available to the democratic citizenry, it will produce better academic conclusions as a result of public involvement. In sum, drawing on traditions in history and sociology of science as well as studies of popular culture, we will show how science has been a source of unsettling social change as new knowledge opens up new possibilities, anticipations and hopes - but also new fears, conflicts and unintended consequences. At the same time, we explore how fiction and culture more broadly has unsettled scientific certainties by making science a source of entertainment, wonder and pleasure, and enabling readers and publics to challenge expert knowledges by asking difficult questions about the ethical, social and political implications of the futures opened up by scientific innovations.