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)