The Grand Scientific Narrative: Science in Popular Culture as a Means to Re-Enchant the Secular West

• In Event: Science in the Public Sphere: Representation, Mediation, Interpretation

Abstract

Modern science has now revealed in reliable detail nearly all the relevant mechanisms which have allowed for the creation and evolution of the cosmos. Through processes of peer review, scientific theories become accepted as scientific facts, and popularizers of science turn scientific facts into widely distributed knowledge. Science popularizers and Hollywood teams have, I suggest, used such knowledge, from the Big Bang to the ‘awakening’ of life, to emulate the creation of biblical canon with a cohesive and seamless narrative based on scientific findings. This narrative type I call the grand scientific narrative. Such a narrative has inspired many creative teams to embark on projects that are the source of my study. I argue that modern Hollywood films such as Interstellar, The Tree of Life, and Noah, as well as the science communication program, Cosmos, use religious narrative strategies, themes, and symbolism to purposefully present secular understandings of life and cosmos via the affect made possible by sensory experience. I use a novel experiential presentation style to present samples of the above mentioned while simultaneously explaining that Max Weber’s disenchantment theory was both correct in practice but wrong in finality. As revealed by the secularization thesis outlined by Charles Taylor and Norbert Elias, rationalization has deeply penetrated the living practices of Western culture but has also provided space for enchanted discourses. I offer that by reconstituting religious symbolism into popular secular presentations of scientific content, the mediums of popular culture that utilize this grand scientific narrative are doing so in an attempt to re-enchant the secular West as a counter movement against common feelings of meaninglessness and purposelessness, which John Haught refers to as “cosmic pessimism.”

Author

• Anthony Nairn, University of Toronto