Hazan, (2005) 'Weaving science webs', E-learning and Virtual Science Centers, Ed. Leo Tan Wee Hin and R. Subramaniam, Idea Group Publishing, Hershey

 

Chapter V. Weaving Science Webs: E-Learning and Virtual Science Centers (P.93)
Susan Hazan

 

Science is feasible when the variables are few and can be enumerated; when their combinations are distinct and clear. We are tending toward the condition of science and aspiring to do it. The artist works out his own formulas; the interest of science lies in the art of making science (Paul Valéry 1871-1945).

  History, ethnography, art and anthropology museums weave stories around social and cultural narratives and lead us to compare our own narratives with those on display, and in doing so distance ourselves from, or connect with specific threads that bind geographically and temporally distanced cultures. While these kinds of exhibitions serve to reaffirm our own histories and social affiliations, these cultural mappings are not the only kinds of knowledge that inflect the meta-narratives of society. Science museums on the other hand, like their sister institutions, the university-based, science faculties are concerned with the systematized knowledge of the physical or natural world and in doing so purport to display finite knowledge, knowledge that can be demonstrated through controlled experimentation. This separation may be seen as artificial, as all of scientific practice is articulated in social space and their ramifications culturally inflected. 

 Bruno Latour re-places science and technology into its social context, blurring the boundaries between nature and science, between human and thing, while dissolving the familiar dichotomy inscribed in the rationalizing project of modernity (1993). The webs woven across science channels, science museums and natural history museums, as well across the Internet all work together to construct the rational and empirical knowledge base of scientific discourse.  While scientifically determined projects tend to be seen as distilled from anything as serendipitous as culture, this chapter will argue that they do in fact construct a wealth of culturally invigorated narratives.  In an investigation of the social and cultural messages inscribed in these practices and conventions, it becomes clear that these kinds of narratives impact the ways we think about our lives and our environment and serve to transform society no less than the c