{"id":275,"date":"2010-03-09T21:20:59","date_gmt":"2010-03-09T21:20:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/2010\/03\/09\/talking_about_stories_of_science_1\/"},"modified":"2011-03-02T20:30:16","modified_gmt":"2011-03-02T20:30:16","slug":"talking_about_stories_of_science_1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/2010\/03\/09\/talking_about_stories_of_science_1\/","title":{"rendered":"Talking about stories of science"},"content":{"rendered":"

I attended my first ever Fiction Lab<\/a> last week. I’ve been meaning to get along to one of their meetings for ages – it has been going for two years, meeting monthly – so was glad to finally make it. Several Nature Network regulars were there – Richard<\/a>, Stephen<\/a>, and Jenny<\/a> who runs it.
\nThe book choice was Arcadia by Tom Stoppard, which I must admit was a strong draw for me as I love Stoppard. This was the first time the group has discussed a play – usually they discuss novels. I would not normally class plays as fiction (different Dewey Decimal class numbers, don’t you know) but I guess plays are all about telling stories so it’s fiction in a way.
\nThe book choice attracted a larger than usual audience – about 20 people – several of them like myself first-time attendees. We were a varied group: some practising scientists, some ex-scientists, someone from the marketing world, one person who had done an Eng Lit degree before moving into science, a couple of people involved in public engagement work, a clinical psychologist, some science\/literature crossbreeds, and a librarian.
\nWe sat in a big circle in the cafe at the Royal Institution and Jenny welcomed us, giving a quick run down of how things would proceed. Then each person in turn briefly introduced who they were and gave a more-or-less pithy statement of their reaction to the book, plus a score (marks out of ten). Jenny made a note of the scores and calculated an average at the end. This took about 30 minutes.
\nAfter that first round of reactions the discussion was declared open and proceeded in a pretty informal manner. Most people had enjoyed the book, and most loved it, though there were some dissenting voices. Several people had seen it produced as a stage play and one person had acted in the play. This was an interesting extra dimension in the discussion.
\nI had enjoyed Stoppard’s trademark verbal wit and dexterity, his fizzing dialogue and intellectual fireworks. The play was set in two time periods – 1809 and 1989. Some of the 1989 characters were trying to establish the history of some of the 1809 characters. This involved hunting through archives and books for scraps of evidence. Some of the fun came from the mis-interpretation of partial evidence trails, and the over-hasty rush to conclusions. (It couldn’t happen in science of course).I marked the book 8 out of 10 as I had really enjoyed it but felt there was little emotional impact. Several gave it 9 out of 10 and one person even gave it 10 points.
\nThere was criticism that the scientific elements of the book (mostly mathematical) were rather shoehorned in. Some readers felt the ending was weak – I agreed. Some people found the rapid switching between time periods confusing in the final scene but I enjoyed that. That section apparently worked better on stage, prompting thoughts about other aspects of the book that we missed by simply reading it rather than seeing it performed. A couple of people suggested that the quickfire dialogue was easier to understand in performance, which surprised me. I find it easier to assimilate that kind of dialogue on the page, at a slower pace.
\nAll in all it was an enjoyable discussion and I was glad to have been given a reason to read Arcadia. I ended up thinking that if Fiction Lab didn’t exist then someone would have to invent it, and I am glad that Jenny did! Fiction Lab is well worth a visit if you are within reach of the Royal Institution on 12th April<\/a> .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I attended my first ever Fiction Lab last week. I’ve been meaning to get along to one of their meetings for ages – it has been going for two years, meeting monthly – so was glad to finally make it. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[22],"class_list":["post-275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading-recommendations","tag-stoppard-arcadia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}