Portraying the Uncertainty of Facts

By bcohen on May 7, 2007.

Cat and Girl offers a smashing take on facts and fiction. An excerpt from Spoiler Alert:

i-b0071f7eb4bd8b686e4c150f086ae426-Cat and Girl Spoiler sm.jpg

So many ways to pose a question here:

How come fiction reigns over fact?

Do you think facts are more meaningful?

Can you believe these people, suggesting that facts don't rule?

What is the danger of promoting fiction?

But facts are important of course, we know, so what place fiction?

Dare you propose we have to choose?

Yet, yet, where is beauty?

Oh please, go to some poetry blog for crissakes, alright?

But the world is larger than you or I, isn't it?

Depends what you mean...what do you mean?

I don't follow. Are you driving at something here?

Where are the answers in fiction? Where is the certainty?

How many different answers can we come to from facts? Where is the certainty?

Get over it, it's far too vague?

Oh I don't like this blog.

Link above courtesy of the unlinkable WJG.

More like this

#11: When Talking About Science is Dangerous (Ten Best of the Decade from Half of the World's Fair)

I'm threading the needle between eight days of Hanukkah, twelve days of Christmas, Top Ten lists, seven deadly sins, and any other enumerations with this eleven-item top ten list. So, as promised earlier, to continue on this Marlowe-esque Long Goodbye here is a reprint of a post I enjoyed writing…

When Talking About Science is Dangerous

I mean the title in a different sense than most science bloggers or SciBlog readers will likely presume. I mean it as one who studies science, not one who practices it - given the complexity, esteem, importance, and promise of the scientific enterprise, such deeper understandings of what this…

Grampa Simpson (apparently) on Philosophy and/of Physics

So I see this link from Arts & Letters Daily which says physicists shouldn't be meta-physical and should be strictly Popperian instead. And it seems so very quaint and old-fashioned and grandfatherly, and all I can think is that, as Abraham Simpson once waxed poetic about when trying to…

Why Are You So Angry?

Thegoodman really, really wants to know. If you do not consider yourself a failure, that is great. Why then are you so angry about this situation? If it has worked out well for you, what is driving your passionate hatred for our patriarch society? Like many gender discussions/arguments, your…

I'm gonna have to side with the girl in the comic strip on this one. Mainly, because, dude - cats can't talk.

Advertisment

Donate

ScienceBlogs is where scientists communicate directly with the public. We are part of Science 2.0, a science education nonprofit operating under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Please make a tax-deductible donation if you value independent science communication, collaboration, participation, and open access.

You can also shop using Amazon Smile and though you pay nothing more we get a tiny something.

Science 2.0

Science Codex

More by this author

The myopia of energy production: "Nothing will go wrong"

May 16, 2010

Me again. I once put up a post on the problems with trusting the safety of energy producing systems. The post was not well received; I see as I re-read the comments that I was particularly irritable about it. But I find the point I was trying to make way back when captured better in the…

#1: Cannonballs and the Meaning of Truth

December 24, 2009

"The world is full of light and life, and the true crime is not to be interested in it." A.S. Byatt "What seems a detour has a way of becoming, in time, a direct route." Richard Powers I had more fun doing this series than anything else in the past 3+ years here at the Fair. It was a unique…

#2: The Current Literature on Science: Author-meets-Blogger Series in Review

December 23, 2009

(Ten Best of the Decade from Half of the World's Fair) This series began with the kindness of a friend who agreed to let me ask him about his book about Barry Commoner, science, and modern environmentalism. It then spawned a series of 17 interviews with authors of books in science studies,…

#3: Landscape and Modernity (Ten Best of the Decade from Half of the World's Fair)

December 22, 2009

These never got formalized into an official series (not to demystify it too much, but that formalization process requires mostly that Dave make an icon to put on the sidebar). Nevertheless, they ended up as an eight-part set of posts about landscape art of various types. I'll put a representative…

#4: Science Showdown (Ten Best of the Decade from Half of the World's Fair)

December 21, 2009

This one was immense. It was also a dual effort (and not by "one of the guys" at the blog). Like the Puzzle Fantastica, this one is very difficult to re-post in its entirety. Luckily, Dave made a great graphic with links embedded to each game. I'll reprint the Press Center, then, which includes…