Narrative: A General-Purpose Technology for Science
Mary S. Morgan
Abstract
Narrative is ubiquitous in the sciences. Whilst it might be hidden, evident only from its traces, it can be found regularly in scientists' accounts of their research, and of the natural, human and social worlds they study. Investigating the functions of narrative, it becomes clear that narrative-making provides scientists with a means of making sense of the materials in their field, that narrative provides a means of representing that knowledge and that narrative may even provide the site for scientific reasoning and knowledge claims. Narrative emerges as a 'general-purpose technology', used in many different forms in different sites of science, enabling scientists to figure out and to express their scientific knowledge. Understanding scientists' use of narrative in this way suggests that narrative functions as a bridge between the interventionist practices of science and the knowledge gained from those practices.