Goutam Karmakar
Dr Goutam Karmakar is
an Assistant Professor of English at Barabazar Bikram Tudu Memorial College,
Sidho-Kanho-Birsha University, West Bengal. He has completed his Ph.D. from the
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Technology
Durgapur (NITD), West Bengal.
Abstract
Rather than an alternative to ‘high
culture’ and a simple example of ‘popular culture’, science fiction can be
taken as a discourse of multiple questions, new challenges, assumptions,
invention and intervention, criticism, scepticism and new insights. While
maintaining a certain peculiar and particular sense of wonder and excitement,
this ‘speculative fiction’ remains true to scientific discoveries and
principles and can be used as an amazingly powerful tool by the students to
understand how the study of science can not only alter the voices of the world
but also can enhance the collective capacity to change the visions of it. By
taking H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine and
Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park as
the point of departure, this paper attempts to show the ways by which science fiction
courses can be evaluated, furnished and integrated prolifically to teach
scientific facts.
Keywords:
Science fiction, Pedagogy, Knowledge, Experience, Students
Introduction
Science fiction is often politically charged and
its frequent extrapolation of current scientific trends can ignite debate among
students about scientific ethics, application and advocacy. The traffic between
science fiction and science fact is growing and, with the proliferation of this
genre in mainstream film, television and even computer gaming, it seems that,
for a number of students, an interest in science may have been inspired by
science fiction. To me, it makes sense to use science fiction as a tool in the
teaching of science and […] to foster student engagement and reflection. (Bowater et al 15)
Being one of the most popular literary and cultural genres, Science
fiction (hereafter as SF) fascinates readers and viewers around the world. For
diffusing the fear of the future and stimulating imagination and creative
faculty, SF carries special importance as this medium not only generates
students’ alternative thinking capacity but also works as evaluating tools
through which students’ thinking patterns of alternative conception are
addressed. While in the textbook-heavy classrooms, students should be
encouraged to read science fictions to acquire confidence in science and the
capability to explore scientific facts from those, in the lecture-centric
classrooms teachers can engage reluctant learners also by using Sci-Fi
narratives to raise students’ science-related critical thinking, critical and
cognitive awareness, positive stances towards science, civic and environmental
sensitivity, understanding the interconnections between technology,
environment, society, culture and science and teachers can also make them think
about the possible alternatives of society and future. By taking Hugo
Gernsback’s definition of SF as “a charming romance intermingled with
scientific fact and prophetic vision” (qtd. in Westfahl 38-39) three elements
can be derived namely, a thrilling or charming adventure which attracts the
students to read SF, a scientific fact which allows students to acquire recent
developments in science and lastly, the prophetic vision which helps the
students to imagine a future by using the scientific knowledge that they get
from SF. At the same time, Ken McLeod shows how despite some of the glaring
implausibility and errors, questionable explanations and speculative passages,
SF makes students feel at home in scientific facts. He says:
The very minimum that written sf does is to popularize the rhetoric of
science, and make the language of science familiar to the reader. It valorises
and validates interest in science, and stimulates thought about the
consequences of new discoveries and of new applications of science. But I would
go further than that, and claim that science fiction is the only form of
literature that takes seriously, and communicates in a popular form, the greatest
scientific discovery of all: that the universe we inhabit is vast, ancient, and
indifferent. (174-175)
By taking references to “anchored
instruction” and “situated learning”, SF can be presented in such a way where
various scientific problem-solving situations are handled authentically and
realistically and by using SF as a pedagogical tool in a logical way, thought
experiments and imagination of students’ can certainly formulate practically
safe and reasonably engaging and authentic virtual learning environment. SF can
make a fruitful bonding between popular science and scientific research where
non-experts can also debate. At the same time, “the construction of new
knowledge in scientific laboratories leads to popular science and meditation,
an in-between space in which experts and the general public can debate about
science and society” (Thévenon 3). While Terence Cavanaugh and Catherine Cavanaugh
(1996 15) in Learning Science with
Science Fiction Films show how SF allows students to visualize and connect
abstract concepts of science in various disciplines and Dubeck (1993 47) depicts
the discovery process and pseudoscientific themes of science when SF is used as
a pedagogical tool, Brake and Thornton (2003 32-33) talk about the process of
creating scientifically literate citizens through incorporating SF in an
undergraduate program as an applied science degree and Allday (2003 27-28) asks
for a useful website where SF can be vividly explored as a pedagogical tool to
explicate the wonders of science along with its physical impossibilities and
glaring errors. At the same time, Hunter (1980 10) and Cacha (1977 21) show how
SF as a pedagogical tool develop students’ creative work and imagination
through which content knowledge and scientific concepts are communicated.
Furthermore, SF also deals with certain engineering concepts which allow
students to think about the numerous possibilities of technology and design.
Regarding the use of SF as a pedagogical tool in the Engineering classroom,
Albert E. Segall aptly says:
Sci-fi can and should be used to convey a wide
range of concepts from basic mechanics all the way up to advanced design and
analysis. For a number of reasons, the importance of this potential enhancement
cannot be overstated. First, “sci fi’s” creation of lasting images to the
underlying theory can only help students through the seemingly abstract core
classes of physics and mechanics. It is also hoped that a potent combination of
theory and visual imagery may ultimately provide a critical nudge to help many
students to “get it”. Another advantage is that a visual and fun connection
between concept and application may also help avoid the “disconnect” that often
occurs as the curriculum initially plunges into math, physics and chemistry
without a clear linkage to the vision that guided students towards engineering
in the first place. (419)
The interdisciplinary approach should be
taken in the classroom to show how the works of Mary Shelley, H. G. Wells,
Douglas Adam, Michael Crichton and many others contain certain scientific
information that can lead to latest scientific discoveries and even students
from humanities background can be benefitted as Negrete and Lartigue observe:
“in particular, [the results of the study] suggest that narrative information
is retained for lengthier periods than factual information and that narratives
constitute an important means for science communication to transmit information
in an accurate, memorable and enjoyable way” (104). Furthermore, non-fiction
books can also help students to acquire certain scientific facts. Here a
suggested list of fiction and non-fiction books is given along with the
possible research topics:
|
Title |
Author |
Potential
research topics |
|
A
Swiftly Tilting Planet |
L’Engle, M. |
Nuclear development, telepathy,
time travel |
|
Digital
Fortress |
Brown, D. |
Cryptography, software
development, computer operating systems, cellular communications |
|
Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde |
Stevenson, R. L. |
Pharmaceutical development,
mental disorder, bipolar disorder |
|
Ender’s
Game |
Card, O. S. |
Space travel, virtual reality,
video gaming |
|
I
am Legend |
Matheson, R. |
Viruses, vaccine development,
immunity and immunological disorders, parasitism |
|
Journey
to the Center of the Earth |
Verne, J. |
Geology, volcanoes,
palaeontology, biomes |
|
Maximum
Ride |
Patterson, J. |
Genetic coding, mutation, global
warming |
|
Pretties |
Westerfield, S. |
Ecosystems, migraines, plastic
surgery |
|
The
Andromeda Stain |
Crichton, M. |
Pandemics, bacteria and disease
development |
|
The
Host |
Meyer, S. |
Parasitism, viruses, surgery |
|
The
Invisible Man |
Wells, H. G. |
Refractive index, invisibility,
cloaking devices |
|
Hiroshima* |
Hersey, J. |
Nuclear development, nuclear
power, radiation disease |
|
Rocket
Boys* |
Hickam, H. S. |
Space travel, Newton’s laws,
rocks and minerals |
|
Silent
Spring* |
Carson, R. |
Ecology, adaptation, global
warming, greenhouse gases, pollution |
This assignment can be
reworked to allow students to also read nonfiction books [marked by an *] and
develop scientific research projects (Goodwin 61).
SF helps
students to question science and examine communities and individuals in terms
of identity, technological system and consciousness and as a pedagogical tool,
it enables students to know beyond the limits of known facts through inventive
and imaginative experimentation and observation. Joanna Russ aptly says in this
context when she says that science fiction “attempts to assimilate
imaginatively scientific knowledge about reality and the scientific method, as
distinct from the merely practical changes sciences has made in our lives” (7).
SF with its capability to dramatize and project generates thoughts and concern
for moral, philosophical, social and cultural implications of scientific
progress. It helps students to understand the pluralistic and dynamic nature
and evaluation of science and it also enables students to challenge the ‘two
culture myth’ by making a close connection between humanities and science. At
the same time, Patrick Parrinder suggests that “up to the present, SF has
continued to be moulded and shaped by scientific thought, even in its moments
of rebellion against it” (67). Taking Gernsback’s definition of the term
“scientification”, it can be noted that SF provides romantic stories where
prophetic vision and scientific fact intermingle and these stories instruct and
educate students and here Gary Raham’s observation is worth mentioning:
Today’s student can and
must learn both the laws of nature already revealed by scientists and the
scientific mode of thinking that will reveal new ones to survive and prosper in
a future of our collective making whose borders will be staked at the limits of
our imaginations. Science fiction can allow students to test those borders and,
as several fictional starship captains have said, “boldly go where no one has
gone before”. (xiv-xv)
Before going to show
the pedagogical significance of H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine, and Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park, it is needed to depict how the teaching of SF in the
classroom creates an internal sphere where science and learning intermingle and
here SF and domain of knowledge create a space as shown by Fries.
Fig.1-
Fries’s Different spheres of scientific discourse (qtd. in Thévenon 3)
Teaching H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine
Science fiction
should be regarded as a literary medium akin to science itself. Scientific
methodology involves the proposition that a well-considered theory will not
only explain away known phenomena but will also predict new and still
undiscovered phenomena. Science fiction tries to do much the same-and write up
in story form, what the result looks like when applied not only to machines but
human society as well. (qtd. in Gunn 3)
Taking John W. Campbell’s views on the
impact on SF on society and J. O. Bailey’s definition of science fiction as “a
narrative of an imaginary invention or discovery in the natural sciences and
consequent adventures and experiences” (10) as the point of departure, H.G.
Wells’s The Time Machine (1895) comes
up with scientific and human developments through his hero’s travelling of 800,000
years into the future to discover Eloi and Morlocks, two distinguishable
populations of human descendants. While the people are in Eloi group are
fun-loving, pretty, small, stupid in disposition and child-like in appearance,
people in Morlocks are more intelligent, look like scary white apes, eat
peoples from Eloi, technologically sharp and live underground. A close reading
of this SF can throw light on a few issues like time, the concept of biological
species, living mechanism of those two groups, ecological and horticultural
dimensions. Here students can learn the ideas of Aristotelian time, prediction
and extrapolation, scientific and personal perspectives of time, and current
models of stellar evolution. The story enables students to raise questions on
Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection as the story does not
depict the future as either “grey with evolutionary perspectives” or “gay with
ingenuous fore-glimpses of a renewed golden age of socialism and
sentimentality” (Zangwill 40). Offering a scientific and several forms of
prophecy, Wells’s sophisticated vision of the future of humanity urges students
to criticise the modalities of science popularisation in the late Victorian
period and they can find the distance between the text and the readers created
by Wells through his incorporation of the narrative of a time traveller and
ultimately, the students can create a space where they critically discuss the
issues related to cultural authority where the knowledge of science ascribed to
proficient scientists can be communicated. Furthermore, the narrator’s
description in the very beginning of the book reminds the students that it is
very much needed that scientific topics should be handled in a zestful way.
Regarding the narrator, Wells opines: “He did not confine himself to abstract
science. Several ingenious, and one or two profitable, patents were his: very
profitable they were, these last, as his handsome house in Richmond testified”
(1).
Regarding the concepts of morphological and
biological species, students can ponder upon the questions about the
productivity and crossbreeding of Morlocks and Eloi, the biological divergence
between these two groups and they can do a conjectural breeding programme to
get ethical yet scientific explanations and answers. Students can be asked
about the isolating mechanisms that may stop hybridization between Eloi and
Morlocks and here students after applying behavioural, habitat, temporal and
other isolating mechanisms like their difference in size, their nocturnal and
diurnal time zone, their differences in activities and intelligence, can guess
the reason behind the isolation. While doing all these, students’ performance
can be measured in multifarious ways and assessment can be done “on whether they
provide the requested three different reproductive isolating mechanisms and how
well they relate the “data” from the book plot to the scientific concepts of
habitat, circadian rhythms, courtship behaviour, and morphology” (Bixler 338). Furthermore,
The Time Machine offers opportunities
to the students for interdisciplinary studies like the speculations on the class
system of Victorian England during the Industrial Revolution and social
Darwinism. Wells’s description of the “withered flowers” can ask the students
to envision the flora of the future and thus, predictions can be done on
hybridization and horticultural ameliorative practices of a stilted selection
in the nineteenth-century. Students can work on how by fully transforming human
desires and need, plants in the future will create a perfect harmony with other
species in this ecosystem. Thus, students can work on how plants can be
ameliorated and propagated and here students may pay their attention to John
Lindley’s ethics on horticulture. The following passage from The Time Machine can potentially trigger
students’ interest in botanical studies:
Our agriculture
and horticulture destroy a weed just here and there and cultivate perhaps a
score or so of wholesome plants, leaving the greater number to fight out a
balance as they can. We improve our favourite plants and animals-and how few
they are-gradually by selective breeding; now a new and better peach, now a
seedless grape, now a sweeter and larger flower, now a more convenient breed of
cattle. We improve them gradually, because our ideals are vague and tentative,
and our knowledge is very limited; because Nature, too, is shy and slow in our
clumsy hands. Someday all this will be better organized, and still better. That
is the drift of the current in spite of the eddies. The whole world will be
intelligent, educated, and cooperating; things will move faster and faster
towards the subjugation of Nature. In the end, wisely and carefully we shall
readjust the balance of animal and vegetable life to suit our human needs.
(90-91)
So, a close reading of the text will
initiate understanding among students about the resilience of plants and the
ecological agency of natural environment which in turn outcompete the text’s
human plot. Students can exercise on the symbiotic relationship between human
and non-human agencies and they can also explicate horticultural implications
of a human-engineered nature, future of plants and humans relationship and
explores how “the novel’s plants and people compete for narrative and readerly
attention, in a narrative model that suggests competition within the narrative
environment reflects competition in the natural world” and “in what ways the
relative agency of humans and nonhumans can be parsed through a competitive
narrative system” (Bowden 606-622).
Teaching Michael
Crichton’s Jurassic Park
Michael
Crichton’s Jurassic Park introduces
the concept of genetic engineering, biotechnology and chaos theory which
symbolise the materialistic enthusiasm for creating dinosaurs and commercialisation
of science. While the bioethics of Jurassic
Park depicts how the scientists want to create a theme park of cloned
dinosaurs by collecting DNA of dinosaur found in the blood of fossilized
mosquitoes, gnats and ticks, the story throws lights on the cutting-edge
theories in palaeontology and thus, discusses the advance research in molecular
biology. So, cloning is one of the major scientific issues that students can get
exposed to through the narrative because Crichton talks on this vividly throughout
the story as opined by Becker: “Long before there was a real clone, however,
there were dozens of fictional clones cranked out in dozens of novels […]
perhaps the most famous are the dinosaurs in Michael Crichton’s 1990 novel Jurassic Park” (69). At the same time,
the scientists’ filling in the dinosaur DNA gaps with that of frog’s to
intentionally create all female dinosaurs to curb the reproductive process signify
the basic lack of knowledge on the part of the scientists. They failed to
realise the consequences of using frog DNA that rendered engineered dinosaurs
the ability of amphibians to change their sex and reproduce. Furthermore,
scientists also altered and modified the dinosaur DNA to prevent them from
making lysine, an essential amino acid needed as a daily supplement for them.
But all these alteration and modification failed to prevent the catastrophe as
the dinosaurs took over the park, typically reacting to their basic animalistic
instinct as shown in the story:
The park is
becoming a real Jurassic world. The animals are behaving as they did millions
of years ago. The meat-eaters are killing the plant-eaters. I think the last
raptors from the enclosure are in the park with the raptors who were born
there. One video screen showed a group of raptors chasing some
hypsilophodontids. On another screen, six raptors had jumped on a huge
hadrosaur. They were biting it and cutting it with their sharp claws. The young
tyrannosaur was hunting a stegosaur. The triceratops were fighting each other.
Everyone in the Control Room watched silently. (Crichton 100-101)
So,
the experiment which fails and eventually causes havoc questions the bioethics
of the ecosystem and the students can realise the adverse effects of scientific
experiments which try to disrupt the basic order of life. They understand Chaos
theory as described by Ian Malcolm in the story as some changes that are
unpredictable, overtly chaotic and that bring drastic changes in complex
systems. Here the novelist shows how the experiments on dinosaurs crumble their
perceived order of the whole programme and here students can locate the
commercialization of the chaos theory, adverse effects of creating a pure
simulation or hyperreal world of lost species and flaws in Malcolm’s methods as
“Malcolm’s insight is vindicated by subsequent events and the commercial greed
that has helped to build the Jurassic Park is condemned, not simply morally,
but also scientifically” (Stern 358). For saving money and increasing
efficiency, Hammond depends solely on a huge computer system that automates
functions and systems of that park but the significant bugs in that system
symbolise the potential dangers of technology. Malcolm’s mathematical
calculation to depict fancy-sounding scientific lingo and his chaotic theory again
indicates human’s dependence on technology and students will learn that it is extremely
difficult to comprehend and decipher a complex and long strand of DNA by
computers. At the same time, after reading the story students have to
understand the bioethical issues found in Jurassic
Park like - should scientists manipulate, alter and create DNA to
bioengineer altered organism? Should people attempt to reform extinct species?
How will people survive from the evil consequences of genetic engineering and what
are the possible measures scientists have to prepare to control disasters and
finally, what are the guidelines of an ethical scientific action? The students
must be aware of the possibility of being perished before the annihilation of
the universe. The conversation between Malcolm and Hammond in Jurassic Park highlights the necessity
to realise the consequences of any extraordinary scientific venture and also
focuses on mercenary scientists who wish to utilize their scientific skills for
their materialistic gains:
‘I told you that
things would go wrong,’ Malcolm said, ‘This is a disaster’. ‘There was a time
when a problem like this couldn’t have happened,’ he continued. ‘Scientists
worked slowly and carefully. They learnt to be careful and make sensible decisions.
Now anyone can buy powerful scientific knowledge and use it quickly and easily.
And look at the disaster you have caused.’ ‘I only wanted to make an animal
park,’ said Hammond. ‘You wanted to make money,’ said Malcolm. ‘And disasters
happen if people want to get rich by using science… Don’t you understand? It’s
possible that none of you will leave this island alive.’ […] We don’t have the
power to destroy the Earth or to save it. But can we save ourselves?’ Malcolm
smiled. (Crichton 91)
Conclusion
Apart
from being scientifically literate, students can develop an alternative
conception of science through the reading and watching of science fictions
because “the foremost reality that science fiction deals with is change, which
could be the reason for the growing interest in the genre in the twentieth
century” (Pohl 61). The students can learn scientific facts laid in the
narrative structure of SF and they may get inspired for further research works
and explorations on those facts. They gain knowledge about simple scientific
facts even without elaborate scientific experiences and students can relate to
the matter of SF and thus, stories in SF can also provide a gateway to know the
present and future issues of ethical and social relevance. At the same time, SF
enables students to read and think critically and as a pedagogical tool, “it is
a given that the science postulated in science fiction can be a source of
lessons and discussions in Science classes” (MLS 64) and a close reading of H.G.
Wells’s The Time Machine and Michael
Crichton’s Jurassic Park prove the
fact that in a classroom, SF allows students to question, criticize, extend,
formulate, invent and revise static scientific paradigms and changes in society
and science. Thus, its goal is to bring out new ideas that will be true to
nature and bringing SF into the curriculum, awards and degrees should be given
to make students more interested in this genre and in scientific initiatives,
as Mark Brake and Neil Hook aptly opine:
The intention
was to inculcate in students a critical understanding of the social development
of science and science fiction, as well as examining the nature of science and
its relationship with science fiction. The use of science fiction on the award
should also lead to a greater understanding of issues related to the public
understanding of science, particularly the social implications of science and
technology, and the way in which they are represented within various forms of
media and culture. (206)
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