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Mariellyssa Wenk's picture

science and story telling

In grade school and high school I have been taught that story telling is, generally, a practice of improvisation and creativity, making things up as one goes along, and that science is a definate practice that is set by evidence and documentation. It wasn't until class with Professor Grobstein that I learned that story telling and science are not only related but work hand in hand. From the prospective I have now it is clear that Darwin's work was full of improvisation and "looking outside the box"of other theories that were popular in his tim. Whether he was aware of it or not, Darwin was using scientific observation to eliminate the deffinately wrong observations in his attempt at "getting it less wrong." 
Like Darwin, authors use a system of "getting it less wrong" as well. They referr to that as revision. Anyone who writes knows that revising and editing is an arduous and tedious necessity, and it is the writer's way of getting rid of the "deffinately wrong observations" that they may have made in their piece. In this sense, a hypothesis or a system of observations is similar to the gathering of ideas for a story, a first draft is similar to the implications made as those ideas and observations are brought together, and the revision process, like I said, is similar to the collecting of new observations and making corrections to the original observations or ideas.

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