"Scientific Plausibility": A postmodern look at science fiction
Although it is widely acknowledged that no definition of science fiction (or any other genre, for that matter) really holds up under scrutiny, there is a recurring theme in attempts to describe the essence of science fiction and the expectations of its readers: a science fiction world should be "plausible" as an extension of our own consensus reality. (see, for example, this piece by Ursula K. LeGuin).
Now this begs the question, what is "plausibility"? In general parlance, there is a lot of subjectivity implied in this term. My neighbor may find a visit by angels plausible, while I may not. I may find reincarnation to be a plausible scenario for the continuation of consciousness after death, you may not. A NASA engineer may regard human colonization of Mars as a plausible development, a farmer in western China may not.
In discussions about science fiction, however, "plausibility" takes on a narrower definition. It refers to extrapolation from present scientific theories and models. So faster-than-light travel, although intuitively plausible to nonphysicists, violates Einstein's theory of special relativity, making it a hard sell for some readers. Dreams that predict the future, although commonplace across many human cultures past and present, are deemed "anecdotal" by scientific standards, and are likewise a hard sell in science fiction.
Of course, readers of sf vary greatly in the mix of plausibility vs. speculation they enjoy. When I recently read Octavia E. Butler's Wild Seed (which incidentally has become one of my favorite books), I first wondered why it was marketed as science fiction. It's about the past, not the future, and the speculative elements are not remotely plausible from a scientific perspective. I decided it was because the speculative elements (the special abilities of the main characters) are characterized as being genetic. One is invited to see the world of the story not as a fantasy world, but as our own world, now revealed to include something our science has not noticed. Setting the story in an imaginary world, and speaking of "bloodlines" instead of genes, would presumably have toppled the work into the fantasy genre.
So we have the phenomenon of story elements and individual works being rated on their scientific plausibility, here and there on the internet. Although these exercises no doubt help some curious individuals tease out the science from the nonscience in science fiction, I find them a bit amusing. I think they end up saying more about the narrowness of our lens of scientific plausibility than they do about future realities, except perhaps in the case of near-future sf. How much of our present science and technology would have seemed "plausible" to Galileo, who lived only a few centuries ago? (An aside: When I first started reading sf in the 1970s, I would often see "hard sf" referring to sf based on the hard sciences of physics, astronomy, chemistry, etc., with "soft sf" referring to stories drawing on biology, anthropology, and so on. Now, it seems these terms only measure how far one's imagination navigates from the safe shore of present-day science.)
Joanna Russ makes a provocative comparison between science fiction and medieval didactic literature. Although her thesis is becoming a bit dated (character-driven sf being more common now than in 1975, and genre blending is everywhere), this is still a potent insight. Science fiction typically does serve to illustrate and promote the scientific worldview, a worldview in which scientific explanation has the exclusive prerogative to define what is real and possible. This worldview interprets human experience through the lens of advancing scientific knowledge and advancing technological prowess. It issues from the European Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and the accelerating technology of the 20th century, particularly in the US.
It is not surprising, then, that science fiction has been so Euro-centric and US-centric through much of its history; it is not that writers lack the imagination to create characters from Africa, Asia, or elsewhere. It is that the science-centered worldview, what Russ calls the "theology" of science fiction, is a belief system deeply rooted in a particular culture, and it takes more than putting Lt. Uhura on the bridge of the Enterprise to alter the cultural orientation of the genre. I'm inclined to think this is a huge, largely unarticulated factor in the difficulty of science fiction to gain a truly global following, as discussed cogently by Nnedi Okorafor.
Science fiction was born of the modernism of the early 20th century. In that era, at least among those who appreciated science, there was little cause to question science's epistemological supremacy. Science presented the unique key to knowledge, the unique modality of change. Fiction that used extrapolated science as its backbone could thus be seen as not merely entertaining, but predictive, educational, and uniquely relevant. One still finds science fiction spoken of in this way, usually with a mention of Arthur C. Clarke inventing the notion of geosynchronous satellites.
It seems to me, however, that the modernist view is on the ebb. This is not to say it will disappear any time soon; belief systems often persist for many centuries after their creative heyday. Nevertheless, it is becoming more and more common to see science as one mode of knowing and experiencing among many. Although few would doubt science's potency for extending knowledge into realms beyond the direct reach of our senses, and for driving technological innovation, it has lost much of its lustre as an all-inclusive arbiter of truth and relevance. Many of the most salient and transformative aspects of human experience are best articulated in nonscientific language. In the postmodern world, "plausibility" is not a one-dimensional scale defined by science; it is a network of context-dependent patterns.
One way to think about the genre of magical realism is that, like science fiction, it rests on extrapolating the consensus reality in a plausible fashion. The plausibility, however, is not that of Western science, but that of Latin American folk culture. This is not my area of expertise, so I'll not take that thought further. It's just a hint at what it means to see "plausible extrapolation" in more than one cultural context.
Of course, science fiction, to be true to its name, must look to science for at least some of its ideas and motifs. But I do think there is room for a more postmodern approach to science fiction. It is the grip of modernism that has led many sf writers to resort to "technobabble" to throw a thin cloak of plausibility over story elements that really aren't grounded in science at all. If there's going to be magic and science in the same story, I'd personally like to see a different, culturally sound context for each of them than to have the magic hand-waved to slide it into a science-only worldview. Eventually, science fiction may lose some of its autonomy, flowing into a broad category of "speculative fiction" (a term presently on the rise), which liberally draws speculative elements from many different worldviews and cultural contexts.
Now this begs the question, what is "plausibility"? In general parlance, there is a lot of subjectivity implied in this term. My neighbor may find a visit by angels plausible, while I may not. I may find reincarnation to be a plausible scenario for the continuation of consciousness after death, you may not. A NASA engineer may regard human colonization of Mars as a plausible development, a farmer in western China may not.
In discussions about science fiction, however, "plausibility" takes on a narrower definition. It refers to extrapolation from present scientific theories and models. So faster-than-light travel, although intuitively plausible to nonphysicists, violates Einstein's theory of special relativity, making it a hard sell for some readers. Dreams that predict the future, although commonplace across many human cultures past and present, are deemed "anecdotal" by scientific standards, and are likewise a hard sell in science fiction.
Of course, readers of sf vary greatly in the mix of plausibility vs. speculation they enjoy. When I recently read Octavia E. Butler's Wild Seed (which incidentally has become one of my favorite books), I first wondered why it was marketed as science fiction. It's about the past, not the future, and the speculative elements are not remotely plausible from a scientific perspective. I decided it was because the speculative elements (the special abilities of the main characters) are characterized as being genetic. One is invited to see the world of the story not as a fantasy world, but as our own world, now revealed to include something our science has not noticed. Setting the story in an imaginary world, and speaking of "bloodlines" instead of genes, would presumably have toppled the work into the fantasy genre.
So we have the phenomenon of story elements and individual works being rated on their scientific plausibility, here and there on the internet. Although these exercises no doubt help some curious individuals tease out the science from the nonscience in science fiction, I find them a bit amusing. I think they end up saying more about the narrowness of our lens of scientific plausibility than they do about future realities, except perhaps in the case of near-future sf. How much of our present science and technology would have seemed "plausible" to Galileo, who lived only a few centuries ago? (An aside: When I first started reading sf in the 1970s, I would often see "hard sf" referring to sf based on the hard sciences of physics, astronomy, chemistry, etc., with "soft sf" referring to stories drawing on biology, anthropology, and so on. Now, it seems these terms only measure how far one's imagination navigates from the safe shore of present-day science.)
Joanna Russ makes a provocative comparison between science fiction and medieval didactic literature. Although her thesis is becoming a bit dated (character-driven sf being more common now than in 1975, and genre blending is everywhere), this is still a potent insight. Science fiction typically does serve to illustrate and promote the scientific worldview, a worldview in which scientific explanation has the exclusive prerogative to define what is real and possible. This worldview interprets human experience through the lens of advancing scientific knowledge and advancing technological prowess. It issues from the European Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and the accelerating technology of the 20th century, particularly in the US.
It is not surprising, then, that science fiction has been so Euro-centric and US-centric through much of its history; it is not that writers lack the imagination to create characters from Africa, Asia, or elsewhere. It is that the science-centered worldview, what Russ calls the "theology" of science fiction, is a belief system deeply rooted in a particular culture, and it takes more than putting Lt. Uhura on the bridge of the Enterprise to alter the cultural orientation of the genre. I'm inclined to think this is a huge, largely unarticulated factor in the difficulty of science fiction to gain a truly global following, as discussed cogently by Nnedi Okorafor.
Science fiction was born of the modernism of the early 20th century. In that era, at least among those who appreciated science, there was little cause to question science's epistemological supremacy. Science presented the unique key to knowledge, the unique modality of change. Fiction that used extrapolated science as its backbone could thus be seen as not merely entertaining, but predictive, educational, and uniquely relevant. One still finds science fiction spoken of in this way, usually with a mention of Arthur C. Clarke inventing the notion of geosynchronous satellites.
It seems to me, however, that the modernist view is on the ebb. This is not to say it will disappear any time soon; belief systems often persist for many centuries after their creative heyday. Nevertheless, it is becoming more and more common to see science as one mode of knowing and experiencing among many. Although few would doubt science's potency for extending knowledge into realms beyond the direct reach of our senses, and for driving technological innovation, it has lost much of its lustre as an all-inclusive arbiter of truth and relevance. Many of the most salient and transformative aspects of human experience are best articulated in nonscientific language. In the postmodern world, "plausibility" is not a one-dimensional scale defined by science; it is a network of context-dependent patterns.
One way to think about the genre of magical realism is that, like science fiction, it rests on extrapolating the consensus reality in a plausible fashion. The plausibility, however, is not that of Western science, but that of Latin American folk culture. This is not my area of expertise, so I'll not take that thought further. It's just a hint at what it means to see "plausible extrapolation" in more than one cultural context.
Of course, science fiction, to be true to its name, must look to science for at least some of its ideas and motifs. But I do think there is room for a more postmodern approach to science fiction. It is the grip of modernism that has led many sf writers to resort to "technobabble" to throw a thin cloak of plausibility over story elements that really aren't grounded in science at all. If there's going to be magic and science in the same story, I'd personally like to see a different, culturally sound context for each of them than to have the magic hand-waved to slide it into a science-only worldview. Eventually, science fiction may lose some of its autonomy, flowing into a broad category of "speculative fiction" (a term presently on the rise), which liberally draws speculative elements from many different worldviews and cultural contexts.
Hello,
I agree with most of what ou say here, but there is one problem, I feel. The talk of 'consensus reality'. Consensus reality is a scientific construct, because real consensus requires proof that everyone must logically accept (which does mean there can never be consensus about everything).
Now, I'm not sure how much this consensus ever really existed. There have always been vast numbers of people who believe A, and a vast number of other people who believe B, where neither A nor B are provable (and may even be, for all practical purposes, disprovable). These people cannot arrive at consensus, and thus often arrive at war. I think we can expect more of this in the future.
> it has lost much of its lustre as an
> all-inclusive arbiter of truth and
> relevance.
True, but nothing has replaced it. Nor, I predict, will anything. People use 'truth' in some very funny ways these days. I have had various religious grounps come to my door and claim that they know their beliefs are true, because god has spoken to them personally and confirmed them. I tell them that he's spoken to me too, and told me that everyone else is hearing the devil, who has been posing as god, and that only I am hearing the true god.
My point isn't that they didn't experience what they say they experienced, for all I know they did. But they have no way of proving it, and even if I am fibbing about hearing voices, it would be quite easy for me to find other people who claim, earnestly and I assume honestly, that they hear voices contradicting those of my doorstep visitors. There is no consensus here, and when truth can be whatever someone says it is, what does the word 'truth' even mean?
Science and Science fiction are both in decline. They are hard work, and most people do not wish to really understand the world they live in. In a recent unscientific survey I discovered that about 50% of respondants had no idea what a star was. This is basic knowledge about our universe and our place in it, but it is not a 'truth' that most people care to know.
If people do not know what a star is, then of course they are prey to people who will tell them all manner of stories of what a star is, for their own self-serving purposes.
The problem is, that any 'truth' that cannot be independantly verified, can thus be used to justify anything. It is inherently undemocratic, as the final arbiters of truth must be 'respected authorities' (science often sinks to this level, but mostly because people want it too. They want to be told, they don't want to figure stuff out for themselves).
So, I am nothing like as sure as you that this is a generally positive change.
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> It is the grip of modernism that has > led many sf writers to resort to
> "technobabble" to throw a thin cloak
> of plausibility over story elements
> that really aren't grounded in
> science at all.
I think this is perhaps a little unfair. Out and out meaningless technobabble is bad SF, and I think most fans of the genre can spot it and deride it. However, some of the hand-wavey technology that one sees in SF is no different than other tricks in writing. For instance, characters in fiction behave nothing like characters in real life. The point isn't that they should behave like characters in real life, but rather that they should behave sufficiently plausibly that the reader can say "okay, if my friend told me this had happened to him, I'd call him a liar, but it's just belieable for me to let it pass in fiction."
Similarly the plot normally allows the protagonist to encounter, and escape from, dangerous situations with a frequency that would surely leave them dead, or at least psychologically scarred, in real life. The point isn't for the plot to be realistic (most stories would be short and sad if it were) but rather for it not to be so offensively unbelievable that the reader cannot accept it.
In SF, the point is more about not breaking any know rules. Hence, if someone jumps in a space-rocket and travels to another star in two hours, the reader is going to shout "Nonsense! Such speeds are not attainable! There's relativity, there's the danger of hitting even a mote of dust on the way etc, etc, etc". But if the SF writer instead claims to have a device that moves things along an unseen dimension, which is not generally percieved, and along which dimension the distane to the star is radically shorter, the SF reader may not believe, but s/he cannot object as surely. After all, there is always a chance that such a dimension exists, we currently have no solid evidence for or against it.
Hence, SF has a lot in common with stage trickery. If a stage magician claims to have done something impossible, when it's obviously a fake, the audience feels short-changed. If she does something apparently impossible, and the audience cannot see how it was done, they still know it's a fake (probably, almost certainally) but they are impressed with how well the deception was done, and may play along with it to a point.
However, this is a dying art, because fewer and fewer people, I suspect, have the science background to be knowingly conned. More and more people are like medieval peasants, who if shown something impossible, and told it was magic, would genuinely accept it as so (an unwise course of action for the magician, as it can get you burnt).
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Sorry, I keep making posts because I have a lot to say, and the box only lets me type 3000 characters.
> Fiction that used extrapolated
> science as its backbone could thus
> be seen as not merely entertaining,
> but predictive, educational, and
> uniquely relevant.
I am one of the people who would maintain this was true, for multiple reasons. First SF (along with other types of genre fiction, I think) is essentially outward and world oriented. 'Literary' fiction is, or frequently claims to be, inwards oriented, towards understanding the human condition. This leads to a world-view in which introspection and 'innerspace' is valued above engaging with the outside world. This is kindof like videogames without the expensive hardware. It's ultimately, I believe, a life-denying world view if it gets taken to extremes (everything is bad in the extreme).
Secondly SF does cause people to get interested in, and engage in, science and technology. I have a paying job in IT, that I've kept through this recession, to a large extent because I read SF as a child.
It's a chicken-and-egg thing, but I do suspect that SF and scientific literacy are linked. Societies with low scientific development do not tend to prosper when they come into contact with those at a hight scientific/technological level. I think we in our modern society feel safe from this threat, because we feel we have a good 'head start' and can't see who could surpass us. But we may be being complacent. If other societies are more science oriented, and out-develop us, then I hope they are nice people, because in the future we will dance to their tune, whether we like it or not.
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Promise this is my final post on why SF is uniquely important.
SF is a politically radical literature, in a way that few things are. This is because it presents alternative realities with the claim, that must be moderately strong, that they are possible. If an alternative reality is predicated on magic, then it's easily dismissed as unreal. SF utopias/dystopias are generally more believable, and thus more scary.
I encounter many people who cannot concieve of the world as being any different than exactly how it is right now. These are the people who say "That won't happen," about things that are often very clearly on the horizon (historically they have argued against the plausiblity of going to the moon, of travelling faster than 20 mph, and of manned flight) (they are also very often the people who say "I have nothing to hide", even when they very obviously have, and you can quickly demonstrate so to them). These people often cannot foresee or imagine the results of policies that they vote upon in elections. Why not?
I think part of it is that they've never been exposed to a literature that says to them "Look, this could happen, or this, or this." Consider stories like "The handmaid's tale" or "Farenheight 451". I think it would be very hard to argue that futures like this couldn't come to pass, as there are places like this in the world today, and these stories just write them large. These are *plausible alternatives*. Middle-earth, alas, is not a plausible alternative (I don't know why I'm saying 'alas', I wouldn't want to live there. They have huge spiders).
This ability to imagine a world and a social setup other than the one you find yourself in is vital for political activism. Once upon a time the idea of women being able to take an active political role (unless they were royal) existed only in feminist "looking forwards" fiction. What if that hadn't existed? What if no fiction that presented a plausible alternative society existed? How many people would be unable to concieve of a world different than the one they had? Perhaps I'm wrong, and everyone can do this, but on the basis of what I'd seen, I think this is a skillset that not everyone has, and that science fiction is a uniquely powerful tool for teaching it.
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Hi Colum -
Thank you for visiting my blog and taking the time to comment on this essay.
It seems you are quite immersed in scientism and the modernist worldview, and so maybe not fully connecting with the broader, multicultural context I was sketching out in my post. For example, you use terms like "proof", "independent verification", and "basic knowledge" nonchalantly and without qualification. But in the context of discussing different worldviews and approaches to knowledge, such terms represent huge philosophical issues.
There have been, and are, many different "consensus realities". A shared view of the world does not require science, it only requires a community of people who share assumptions about the way things are. The modern scientific worldview is one such consensus reality, one that is potent and relevant but not, I believe, uniquely privileged to pass judgment on others.
Where you say that something like 50% of people "don't know what a star is", I would instead assert that virtually every human being knows what a star is - it's a point of light in the night sky. That the number of people conversant with the modern astrophysical account of stars is smaller is hardly surprising, considering the limited relevance of this account to the concerns of most people's lives.
I love science (I have a PhD in astronomy and have worked in scientific areas most of my life), but I don't think other ways of viewing the world are going to disappear, nor would I want them to. I'd like to see different belief systems in dialog, and I think its unfortunate that a number of scientists (and science fiction enthusiasts) have effectively removed themselves from that conversation by assuming - on very shaky philosophical ground - that their beliefs are the ones by which all other beliefs are measured.
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it would be quite easy for me to find other people who claim, earnestly and I assume honestly, that they hear voices contradicting those of my doorstep visitors
Thanks
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Thank you for the wonderful blog and I hope you keep up the excellent do the job.
it would be quite easy for me to find other people who claim, earnestly and I assume honestly, that they hear voices contradicting those of my doorstep visitors
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