Science Is Lit: A Statement of Intent

 In titling this blog "Science Is Lit," I hoped to foreground a statement of intent, riding the coattails of the 2010s slang term "lit," meaning "fun," "cool," or "exciting": a term which officially became uncool roughly two weeks after I had the idea for this title, when Donald Trump Jr. publicly used it to describe the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy. This is a blog dedicated to discussing science--particularly Victorian science--as something interesting and exciting.

At the same time, the title was a provocation, meant to summon the specter of straw-man postmodernism, in which everything, including science, is a text to be read or misread. One of the things I explore in this blog are the many overlaps between what C. P. Snow famously identified as the "Two Cultures." As my fellow scholars in the fields of "Literature and Science" and "Science, Technology, and Society" are well aware, the thing we call science has long been either vexingly or felicitously textual, depending on who you ask. When I say "textual" here, I mean in its narrowest sense: in the lab notebook, in scientific correspondence, in the scientific journal and book, science exists on the page or the electronic simulacra of the page. One can, I suppose, imagine a version of science which might be otherwise. Scientists could travel from lab to lab, convincing their fellows through oratory and in-person confirmation of experimental results. They could share video footage of their experiments. But since Boyle's invention of "virtual witnessing," science has depended on "literary technology" (Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump, Princeton UP, 1985). As Bruno Latour famously describes, from the outside scientists in the lab are "a strange tribe who spend the greatest part of their day coding, marking, altering, correcting, reading, and writing" (Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar, Laboratory Life, Princeton UP, p. 49).

This blog does not seek to treat science as if it were literature, but it does seek to draw attention to the many ways in which science is literary, by investigating how the concept of science, as well as scientific theories and scientific identities, are stabilized through discussions of science and scientific ideas in various texts. "Science is lit" is not meant to be a sweeping, ahistorical claim, or a manifesto, or a call to action. It is, for me, a somewhat banal statement of fact, enjoyable in large part because the obviousness of the claim pairs well with the precipitate triteness of "lit." It's a title designed to prevent readers from taking these entries too seriously. This is because, in my opinion, recognizing the "lit-ness" of science and having fun should be two activities which go hand in hand. So enjoy.