SFB 1288

From 5 - 7 April the SFB's subproject C04 organized an international workshop at ZiF Bielefeld. The workshop's focus was on comparing and narrating – and their relation – in sciences. In several of the talks coming from the fields of history of science and philosophy, literary studies and history, natural sciences and actors like Ernst Mach, Imre Lakatos and James Clerk Maxwell played central parts. How do model systems, laws and the creation of myths correlate with narratives about scientific insights? The alleged objectiveness, which is also often awarded to comparison, can block sight of the fact that data is always highly selected and interpreted.

Narrative, narrativity, story telling – the different notions and ideas about narrating in the different disciplines were consistently discussed during the three-day workshop. The exchange ranged from a broader understanding of a narrative which produces coherence and binds items together, to the for some crucial temporality, to the structured narratological perspective. "If everything is a narrative, nothing is a narrative", Martin Carrier summarized in his closing remarks and hinted towards important follow-up questions, e.g., how to compare alternative narratives with one another.

Photos: Rebecca Moltmann