When I was young, I was as interested in hard science as I was literature. That was when I used to believe there was a difference between concrete information and interpretative narration. As I grow older, I wonder if Physics and Chemistry are just tales told without characters, a series of information without a protagonist to give context.
Freytag’s model details drama as breaking down into Exposition, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action, and the Denouement. Consider the science of Medicine and a visit to a doctor’s office. The Doc enters. “How are you feeling?” acts as the Exposition. The symptoms, the next worse than the one before, are the Rising Action. The Climax comes from the dire diagnosis: something terrible is killing you. The Falling Action might involve tears or a solemn phone call to your loved ones. The Denouement is whatever course of treatment is prescribed. The doctor told you a story and created a catastrophe.
Doctors give you list of information and come to a conclusion. But the story is sometimes wrong. The scientists and experts just guess based on whatever information is at hand. Or whatever agenda leads to the desired conclusion. They tell the story they want to tell. Data may be spun into a fantastic yarn or dumbed down into a ho-hum bedtime story.
The evidence of facts as just more fiction are evident everywhere. Explore cable news or online sites and check ten different talking heads on ten different channels. Same data, different conclusions. Same genre, different stories. Science as unsolid as a gaseous state, someone trying to turn it solid by virtue of the way the story is told.
The world is changing. There are experts everywhere, one for anyone. You can always find someone who might write a story with an ending that you like. But like a Doc’s diagnosis of dire destiny, I always recommend a second opinion. Maybe one that has an ending different from the one you expect.
