We’ll be doing another book club tomorrow with Corey Robin, right here at 8 pm on Sunday. Try to read chapters 2 and 3 of “’The Reactionary Mind” if you get a chance, but you can also ask questions about other parts of the book of course.
The Uses of the Past: Science/Science Writing Talk
Blogger’s note: The annual Science Online conference/unconference is going live this Thursday in scenic Research Triangle, NC. I’ve been going since the second meeting, way back in 2008 (I think…), and this year I will be moderating a couple of sessions. One of them is called “The Uses of the Past,” jointly led (or unled) by Eric Michael Johnson, who studies at the University of British Columbia while writing the excellent Primate Diaries blog at ScientificAmerican.com. What follows is the email exchange within which we discussed first thoughts about history, writing and research in anticipation of this session. Which is another way of saying: this is kind of off the main track of this blog — so keep on going if you want another one of those back-of-the-book bits I sometimes post, and pass by in silence if you prefer your snark undiluted.
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I’ve always found that the best way to tackle a complicated story – in science or anything else, for that matter – is to think historically. But even if I’m right in seeing a historical approach as an essential tool for writers, that’s not obviously true, however well (or not) it may work for me. Science news is or ought to be new; science itself, some argue, is devoted to the task of relentlessly replacing older, less complete, sometimes simply wrong results with present-tense, more comprehensive, and right (or right-er) findings.
Thinking about this, I put together a panel on the Uses of the Past that was held at last year’s World Conference of Science Journalists in Doha, Qatar. The panelists – Deborah Blum, Jo Marchant, Reto Schneider and Holly Tucker led a discussion that was lively and very supportive of the history-is-useful position (not to mention valuable in itself). But the conversation was far from complete.
So we’re going to do it again, this time at Science Online 2012. (You can follow all the fun by tracking what will be in a few days a tsunami on Twitter, tagged as #scio12). This is an “unconference,” which means that I and my co-moderator, Eric Michael Johnson will each present what amounts to a prompt – really a goad – for the audience/participants to run away with. As Eric and I have discussed this session, one thing has stood out: where I’ve thought of the term “uses of the past” as a challenge to writers about science for the public, an opening into approaches that will make their work better, Eric has been thinking about the importance of historical thinking to the practice of science itself – what working scientists could gain from deeper engagement not just with the anecdotes of history, but with a historian’s habits of mind. So just to get everyone’s juices flowing, Eric and I thought we’d try to exchange some views. Think of this as a bloggy approach to that old form, the epistolary novel, in which we try to think about the ways in which engagement with the past may matter across fields right on the leading edge of the here and now.
So: if, dear reader, you’re intrigued thus far, read on.
The Uses of the Past: Science/Science Writing TalkPost + Comments (40)
Book club discussion
In a little bit, Corey Robin will be dropping by (in the comments) to discuss his book “The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin”. Hopefully, many of you will have already read the introduction and the first chapter by now.
I found the first chapter, on conservatives and counterrevolutionaries, especially intriguing.
Update. If you don’t have the book yet check out this article for a good start on it. A good excerpt:
In defending hierarchical orders, the conservative invariably launches a counterrevolution, often requiring an overhaul of the very regime he is defending. “If we want things to stay as they are,” in Lampedusa’s classic formulation, “things will have to change.” This program entails far more than clichés about preservation through renovation would suggest: Often it requires the most radical measures on the regime’s behalf.
Reminder
Tomorrow at 8 pm eastern time, we’ll be discussing the first chapter of “The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin” by Corey Robin.
Here’s an interview with Corey Robin about the book at Naked Capitalism.
Update. Here’s an interesting excerpt from the interview:
I had always known about the presence of romanticism on the right, going back to Coleridge, the early German Romantics, and so on. What surprised me was: a) seeing that same romanticism alive and well in the late 20th/early 21st century; b) seeing it not in a defense of Gothic cathedrals or landed estates but in a defense of the “free market” and war.
Friday Night Book Thread
It’s that time again, kiddies.
I’m about to head off on my annual jaunt around the world, and I thought I would point you in the direction of some of my reading over the last month, and a couple of things I have saved up to entertain myself on the plane, in between glasses of Veuve and benzodiazepine-induced naps in my first class suite.
Of course, I’m starting off with the usual Doctor Who related writings.
First, Campaign by Jim Mortimore, which is set early in the Hartnell years. The lovely Philip Sandifer says of it that:
Character names shift rapidly – Susan goes from being Susan Foreman to Susan English, Ian and Barbara drop out to be replaced with Cliff and Lola, and the TARDIS is likely to become the T.A.R.D.I.S. at any moment. … [It is] violent, sexualized, and metafictional. … the story treats Doctor Who’s first season as a historical phenomenon. … In fact, just about every rejected, abandoned, or false path of Doctor Who in its first year is referenced here. … The characters die. A lot. Barbara is the first to die, and her death largely sets the tone – first of all, she is established as being alive prior to her death. Which I don’t mean in the normal sense by which most people are alive prior to death. No, I mean that we learn about Barbara’s death when Ian is gobsmacked to see that she is alive.
Ming Mongs will either love it or loathe it, largely depending on where they fall on the issue of “canon” in Doctor Who.* While it took me a while to get into, I fall on the side of “adore unconditionally”. It is, simply, the best Who novel I have read, and I have read a great many. It was rejected by the Whothorities and self published by Mortimore. You can find pdf versions of it on the usual corners of the internet. If you do, you may wish (as I did) to make a donation in Mortimore’s name to his nominated charity, the Bristol Area Down Syndrome Association.
Second (and I will move on to the non-Who in a moment), I thoroughly recommend Rich’s Comic Blog, and in particular the quite wonderful The 10 Doctors, which manages to juggle the first ten incarnations and a huge cast of their companions and enemies in a real ripsnorter of an adventure.
Book club
I have settled on Corey Robin’s “The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin” for our next book club. I am about halfway through and I’ve learned a lot already.
I spoke with Corey and he will be happy to join us for discussions.
Mnookin and Me Reminder
Hey, all:
This is just a reminder of tonight’s internet radio and/or Second Life* farrago, me and Panic Virus author Seth Mnookin in conversation. Here’s Seth’s take on what we’ll be doing.
For my part, the first goal is to get some distance into why it’s so hard to get scientific thinking — and not just results — into the civic conversation. Seth’s work on autism/vaccine tribulations is a path into that question that starts us off outside of politics, which I think is important. That is: it’s not just overt malign interest that makes people reject settled conclusions and resist arguments that would seem (to folks already inside the tent) to be persuasive to anyone who just doesn’t know the details of this or that yet.
As commenter Linnaeus on the last thread I posted on tonight’s conversation pointed out, the Science Studies gang has in fact developed a name for the problem: agnotology. We live in a culture that has taken the genuine scientific value of skepticism, and has turned it into a rhetorical tool to frame public attitudes towards and constrain access to knowledge about science.
It’s my view that as the weapons used are those of rhetoric, the counter will have to come from some understanding of what it takes to persuade (and move) people, given our current media landscape.
A big job and question, and one to which I doubt either Seth or I will have any conclusive answers — but worth thinking about. Come along, shoot some questions at us, and have a good time. Plus, we’ll probably say some stuff about Jenny McCarthy. I mean, how not?
*Second Live venue: http://slurl.com/secondlife/StellaNova/67/212/31
Image: Jan Steen, The Crowned Orator, before 1675.