In my October column I railed against the artificial (and odious) ranking of technical science writing over popular science writing. I suggested that the latter should be elevated to a more exalted standing of “integrative science,” where good science writing integrates data, theory and narrative into a useful and compelling work. And here I would add that exploring the minutiae of life, especially on the quirky borderlands of science, makes the scientific process more accessible to everyone. Where a narrative of explanation might read something like “the data lead me to conclude...,” a narrative of practice reads more like “Huh, that’s weird...”

Weirdness trumps data in the biography of science.

This article was originally published with the title An Unauthorized Autobiography of Science.

1 Comments

1. 1. benrast 08:29 PM 1/7/08

   The difference between the way scientists say they work (the narrative of explanation) and the way they actually work (the narrative of practice) becomes critically important when other fields of learning attempt to imitate the spectacular sucess of science in explaining the natural world and its laws.
   
   Economics, in particular, has suffered for many years from its worship of a nonexistant scientific method, what some have deemed "physics envy."

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