Mission To Abisko: Stories and Myths In The Creation of Scientific ""Truth"" - Softcover

Casti, John L.; Karlqvist, Anders

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0738201677 ISBN 13: 9780738201672

Publisher: Basic Books, 1999

Synopsis

In May 1997, acclaimed science author John Casti led a dozen gifted writers to a remote Swedish village called Abisko, far above the Arctic Circle, to discuss the nature of scientific truth. Their discussions and debates focused on one major question: How do the stories that scientists tell each other, and the public, affect the way they do their science? This book is the outcome of that lively meeting of the minds. Each chapter is by a noted scientist who writes, or science fiction writer who practices science, and the cast includes John Barrow, Greg Bear, Ian Stewart, Gregory Benford, Larry Niven, and John Casti himself. In this fascinating look behind the scenes of science, eleven of the world's top scientist-authors examine the phenomenon of science as storytelling.As these authors demonstrate, the tales scientists tell each other are often even more mysterious or fanciful than those they tell the public. Many of these tales are called ”thought experiments,” and their purpose is to focus and encapsulate large amounts of knowledge into short, pithy pictures, that capture the essence and the shortcomings of a scientific theory. Nevertheless, some of these tales such as ” Schrödinger's Cat ” and ” Hilbert's Infinite Hotel ” have worked their way into the public consciousness, almost to the point of being household words. Mission to Abisko is a must-read for people curious about our perception of scientific ”truth.”

About this title

Review:

Abisko is a minute village and scientific research station in far northern Sweden. In 1997 John L. Casti organized a meeting of historians, science writers, and writers of "hard" science fiction, under the midnight sun, to discuss the ways, means, and ends of scientific storytelling. Each of the 12 participants wrote a chapter in this book.

The quote marks around Truth in the title are nearly misleading. The writers mostly agree that there is such a thing as truth, even Truth, and that science tries to find it. But they also agree that science is not culture-free any more than modern culture can be made science-free. For the science fiction writers, in particular, this is a source of vibrant wit and insight.

Gregory Benford's personal take on cloning, for instance: "Speaking as a twin, clones seem a lesser form." The issue of cloning and the broader question of what is a human being run through the book, from Benford to Jack Cohen's image of the Make-a-Human-Being Kit to Paul McAuley's comparison of horror and science fiction's response to genetic manipulation. The feedback loops within and between chapters make Mission to Abisko the standard that all conference proceedings should hope to achieve: a partial record of a meeting of minds. --Mary Ellen Curtin

About the Author:

John L. Casti, a member of the faculty of both the Santa Fe Institute and the Technical Unviersity of Vienna, has written numerous acclaimed popular scinece books, including Would-be Worlds, Five Golden Rules , and The Cambridge Quintet .

About this edition

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0738201677
• ISBN 13: 9780738201672
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208