The Ancient Mythology of Modern Science: A Mythologist Looks (Seriously) at Popular Science Writing
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The Ancient Mythology of Modern Science: A Mythologist Looks (Seriously) at Popular Science Writing. By Gregory Schrempp. (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press. 2012. Pp. xiv + 291, preface, introduction, notes, works cited. $29.95 cloth.)This work is carefully and painstakingly constructed around a straightforward but powerful argument: diat popular science writers engage in mydi-making, while often claiming that diey are striving, instead, against myth. Schrempp makes his argument via intensive examination of several specific examples, some of which comprise chapters unto themselves. Schrempp argues diat popular science writers end up mythologizing primarily in their attempts to imbue subjective meaning into die objective world. Or, to put it another way, in trying to get general readers to care about scientific viewpoint instead of die mydiic, popular science writers end up employing mydi-making strategies. There is dius a strong sense of irony running through work - in case by case, Schrempp carefully demonstrates how popular science writers emulate exacdy diey denigrate. In part, this is because of die power of narrative language in describing objective reality for homo sapiens, but in part it is also a testament to scientists' glib dismissal of die power of mytiiology coupled with equally glib assurance in righteousness of science. When scientists assume die role of high priests in explaining cosmic trudis to ignorant masses, mydiologizing is perhaps destined to occur.Perhaps most convincing, or at least easiest to witness, is his first example, comprising die bulk of chapter 2, which is essentially a deconstructionist critique of The Artful Universe (2005), a book by John Barlow, professor of mathematics at University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Royal Society. In this work, Barlow attempts to explain man's place in universe, especially centering on acquisition of fire. Schrempp titled this chapter, It had to be you! Fire without Prometheus. His critique of Barlow's work is convincing and masterful. Early on, Schrempp points out that what Barrow gives us in his fiery crescendo is none other than a new version of ancient story that Western readers associate with Prometheus... (36). He strips away scientific-sounding claims to reveal just-so stories and shows that, following Barrow's anthropocentric and ethnocentric ideas of culture, arrive at astounding conclusion that we are right size to wield particular technologies that our species invented (53). Towards end, Schrempp offers that Scientific pronouncements go down more easily when they are already familiar as myth; a major source of persuasiveness in Barrow's analysis lies in fact that it teaches us something we already believe (63). Schrempp states that Barrow's fire-maker is an ancient concept revivified through fresh iconography (71), a recurring theme throughout his book.One chapter critiques George Lakoff along with other scholars for following Copernican revolution, which Schrempp sees as origin myth of cosmos as kinship, while another chapter questions current-day followers of Rene Descartes 's homunculus in question of the mind. Chapter 6, dealing with moon, earth, and shifting of viewpoints of universe, perhaps particularly as enunciated by Carl Sagan, investigates how popular science writers try to re-imbue a sense of public wonderment in universe hand in hand with government initiatives (in case of NASA particularly) by employing compensatory mythic visions of cosmos.His last chapter is a short conclusion, tying in his many examples into supporting view of his overall thesis. As author himself states, I have argued that many of strategies employed in pursuit of such synthesizing ambitions - including storytelling, heroizing, speculative origin scenarios, microcosm/ macrocosm analogies, bold celestial imagery, and readings of moral lessons in structure of cosmos - are reminiscent of strategies characteristic of traditional mythologies (227). …
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.010 | 0.032 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.010 | 0.013 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.008 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".