Unsettling scientific stories: expertise, narrative and future histories

斯诺错了，作为小说家，他应该更清楚。1959年，他在雷德大学发表了一篇著名的演讲，他认为西方文化以牺牲科学为代价，给予人文学科特权，以至于知识精英可以把对科学的无知当作一种荣誉徽章。这种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而批判地参与到新科学知识及其带来的社会可能性和问题中，而这种参与在现代性所产生的各种想象未来中最为明显。这个项目将研究这些未来在漫长的、技术进步的20世纪是如何演变的，从1887年德·费兰蒂设计的德普特福德发电站（英国大规模发电的开始）的出版开始，一直到2007年国际气候变化专门委员会第四次评估报告的出版（该报告将人为气候变化的存在置于合理怀疑之外）。它的核心是三个详细的案例研究，探索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建设的文化理解。我们开始乐观和兴奋的创新在物理和实验在维多利亚时代晚期/爱德华时代早期文化,继续查看方式,发现在生物科学的高现代性国米和战后时期改变了人类和自然的观念,和结束,作为现代性在世纪之交面临环境和资源危机、生态科学和复杂性的新理解。这些案例研究是在背景下进行的，并通过另外三项研究得到加强，这些研究将对公众如何参与科幻小说和推测科学的未来有更广泛的了解。他们将探索在漫长的20世纪，科学是如何在流行期刊上呈现的；想想过去对未来的设想如何帮助我们理解当代的社会选择；并审视当代科幻小说作家和读者现在如何预测未来，面对人为气候变化的新兴科学共识，关于能源未来的挑战问题，以及基因操纵产生的新可能性。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之间的对话，包括外行和专家，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评论和批评这项研究的过程和结果。这样，该项目不仅将使科学和技术思想和信息更广泛地提供给民主公民，而且由于公众参与，它将产生更好的学术结论。总之，利用历史传统、科学社会学以及大众文化研究，我们将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，我们探索小说和文化如何通过使科学成为娱乐、惊奇和快乐的源泉，并使读者和公众能够通过提出有关科学创新所带来的未来的伦理、社会和政治含义的难题来挑战专家知识，从而更广泛地动摇科学的确定性。

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.