Where science and story meet
Despite the verities of science, we feel compelled to tell stories that venture beyond the facts.
When we first see separate ideas, we feel obliged to find a relationship between the ideas to form a coherent picture. Once a possible relationship has been established, we feel the need to come up with an explanation.
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Stories are the primary way through which we make sense of our world. We explain ideas by telling stories.
Even science uses storytelling when they use data of the physical world to explain phenomena that cannot be reduced to physical facts, or when they extend incomplete data to draw general conclusions.
For example, knowing the atomic weight of carbon and oxygen cannot explain to us what life is.
When the brain pieces separate bits of an image together to form a coherent picture, it is known as pattern recognition. Once we recognize a pattern, it can spark a degree of pleasure, often described as that "a-ha" moment.
Science is about making up stories called hypotheses and testing them, then coming up with better stories. Once a story is complete, science goes to a lab to test it. While a story is useful, it can also be a problem if we run with an incomplete story. Our brains' reward for possible pattern-matching can overlook conflicting information as it searches for patterns, not identical inputs.
We earn a dopamine reward every time we understand something - even if the explanation is defective. This may result in misinterpreting data.
Good science = precise data - possible interpretations.
Good science is a humble recognition of the limits of what scientific data can say.
- Ensure that any science you trust has passed through the peer-review process. And even then it might not be accurate.
- Search for information on the limits of the data in science reports. Were assumptions made? Be concerned if the discussion of them is missing.
- Assess the preciseness of language, tightness of structure and restraint with which they present moral issues.
- Assess the historical, cultural, and personal context of the study.
- Are they willing to entertain alternative opinions and interpretations?
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Our sense of smell works in wondrous ways since the chemical composition of our surrounding change instantly and constantly. Our noses pick up volatile airborne compounds that interact with our olfactory receptors.
The information that we get from our surroundings pass through our noses and then to the core cortex in the brain. We, humans have about 400 types of olfactory receptors which is used to identify many different types of chemicals that have varying odor quality.
A story can put your whole brain to work.
When we are being told a story, not only are the language processing parts in our brain activated, but any other area in our brain that we would use when experiencing the events of the story are too.
According to Will Storr, author of ‘The Science Of Storytelling’, reality is just a phrase for a common set of shared facts and surroundings and is mainly a mind construct. We may not be living in reality, but through our internal storytelling, we are constructing a reality. We may just be the sum of the stories inside our minds.