Socio (Dec 2019)
Pour une analyse symétrique des illustrations de science et de science-fiction
Abstract
Beginning with the famous scene in Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea (1869–71) in which a giant squid appears facing the large window of the Nautilus, just as the heroes were discussing its possible existence, this article is an attempt to question a contradiction in the discourse on the images in science. The popular novel and the scientific vulgarisation are constantly constructing images of scientists who are looking directly at reality, like the heroes in Jules Verne, images which illustrate a two-fold discourse on the sciences and on popular culture. Whereas the scientists are looking directly at nature precisely because they are capable of going beyond the ‘shadows in the cave’ and the influence of images, those who are not scientists would take a great risk if they were to do the same precisely because they may well be influenced by these popular novel images and might imagine all sorts of things which do not exist. This article attempts to demonstrate that these images gain by being analysed in other terms while at the same time bearing in mind that it is precisely a question of images and by constructing a symmetrical analysis which deals with the scientific images and these “popular” images in the same terms. This enables us to move away from the opposition between scientific thought and popular beliefs to describe how the images display both scientific knowledge and public discourse on the sciences.
Keywords
