Speculative Thought Experiments as Pedagogical Tools

• In Event: STS Pedagogy – Methods for Teaching Sociotechnical Ethics

Abstract

Deleuze asserts that a philosophical work “should be… in part a kind of science fiction” in the sense of writing “at the frontiers of our knowledge, at the border which separates our knowledge from our ignorance and transforms the one into the other” (1994, xx-xxi). Following Deleuze, I draw on the discourses and cultural resources of popular media—specifically SF—and non-western knowings, which tend to be ignored or devalued in mainstream science and philosophy. I explore the potential of speculative thought experiments as a pedagogical tool within the field of Environmental Education, particularly as we approach the precipice of the Anthropocene. Echoing Ursula Le Guin (2016, 4) who argues that imagination is “an essential tool of the mind … We have to learn to use it, and how to use it… Young human beings need exercises in imagination as they need exercise in all the basic skills of life.” Drawing inspiration from feminist SF scholars such as Le Guin, and science studies scholars such as Donna Haraway and Karen Barad who asks us to think otherwise and otherways, as well as deleuzian practices aimed at disrupting and complexify Kuhnian structures/strictures, progressive logics, and deterministic models, I embrace speculative thought experiments as a critical and constructive educational tool to explore what these logics do and don’t allow us to think. I will share a number of pedagogical experiences I gained teaching an undergraduate course on environmental DNA (eDNA) and citizen science, using SF to open up the curriculum to other ways of thinking the future.

Author

• Chessa Adsit-Morris, University of California, Santa Cruz