Elitism and Pseudoscience in NASA/TREK

Within “NASA/TREK”, Constance Penley heaps harsh criticism on members of the ‘elitist’ scientific establishment. She believes scientific elites to be sadly removed from the public desire for scientific and technological knowledge, too wrapped up in their preconceived notions of mass culture to engage with the masses on productive or amicable terms. Her examples of scientific elitism, however, end up undermining her arguments about the public thirst for science: “popular science”, as Penley deploys the term, becomes a means of excusing the rampant scientific illiteracy that IS present in our society.

Penley spends much of the introduction castigating Carl Sagan for starting from the assumption that “most citizens are shamefully ignorant of scientific issues.” (5) Sagan criticizes popular science fiction shows, such as Star Trek and the X-Files, believing that these productions fool viewers into accepting pseudoscience by “eschewing the most elementary scientific facts.”(5) Penley then states that “Entertainment, for Sagan, is the opposite of enlightenment”: however, Sagan made a name for himself by producing a TV miniseries (Cosmos) and novel (Contact) that enjoyed widespread appeal. Sagan’s works became successful by marrying easily accessible narrative to scientifically sound theoretical underpinning: he, if anything, completely undermined any existing entertainment/enlightenment dichotomy, proving that science fiction can be fun without engaging in the radical misrepresentation of science as fact.

Penley remarks that “Penley does not seem to recognize that ‘precious facet’ as what he earlier called the natural appetite for science.” (7) ‘Science’, as we commonly understand it, involves a respect for empirical proof and logical structure: popular culture, as described in NASA/TREK, does not seem to be interested in science, but rather in the fantastical aura that some aspects of science have maintained. Sagan doesn’t deny that science and science fiction possess a socially significant magnetism: he objects to situations where the fancies of science fiction help to deceive in matters where truth and clarity are essential.

We live in an age where scientific and technological literacy is a crucial part of becoming an informed and productive citizen. The mitigation of global climate change and implementation of alternative energy infrastructures, stem cell research and HIV prevention: these movements, among others, are essential to the continued well-being of our people and planet, but have been delayed and undermined by the irresponsible decisions of electorates and officials that are woefully scientifically ignorant. Heaping lavish praise on pseudoscience implicitly encourages society to retreat within politically and socially neutered fantasy, rather than critically engaging with the realities of science and its effect upon the world. Sagan is clearly deeply concerned with the potential danger of widespread scientific ignorance. This concern is not the result of latent elitism, but of the desire for widespread scientific literacy, or “popular science” in its original sense.

On Genre and Narrative

In “On the Poetics of the Science Fiction Genre”, Suvin argues that fantasy is a genre which imposes “anti-cognitive laws” on its environment, whereas science fiction is characterized by a framework cognitively consistent with the author’s surroundings. This implies a tension between these genres which causes them to be mutually exclusive, but The Left Hand of Darkness shows that they cannot be neatly compartmentalized in the manner Suvin suggests. Though the main narrative – told from the perspectives of Ai and Estraven – can certainly be identified as employing a cognitive framework insofar as the technology, social structure and physiology of the Gethenians are constructed and presented in an internally consistent, logically plausible manner, the sections referencing Gethenian mythology, which might be properly characterized as fantasy, are not as “anti-cognitive” as Suvin might claim. For instance, the mystical and seemingly unscientific ability of the Handdaran Foretellers to predict the future, referred to in “The Nineteenth Day”, is reconciled with the Gethenian environment when Ai suggests that this strange ability might be somehow related to his mindspeech, which he has a biological explanation for. Similarly, the Gethenians’ discovery of the expanding-universe hypothesis as a result of “The Sayings of Tuhulme” provides cognitive, scientific grounding to an otherwise fantastical religious scripture describing Meshe’s ability to foretell what would happen ten thousand years from his time. Indeed, the very fact that myths and legends are a highly significant part of the oral literary tradition in Karhide, a technologically developed nation, suggests that the fantastic and the scientific need not always exist in opposition to one another. Thus fantasy is not necessarily as “anti-cognitive” as Suvin claims it to be, suggesting that the boundaries between fantasy and science fiction may often be blurred by their similarities.

Another aspect of The Left Hand of Darkness which I found interesting was how the tone of the narrative very closely reflected what Ai was thinking. While in Mishnory, Ai finds that the buildings are somehow “insubstantial”, and his host Shusgis “vague around the corners and edges, just a little bit unreal”, suggesting he is somehow detached from his surroundings, and finds his environment uninteresting. His narration of his time in Mishnory reflects this, as he glosses over details of the city around him, focusing instead on the conversations he has with the city’s politicians. Conversely, when trekking over the Gobrin Ice to return to Karhide, Ai is fully aware of and engaged in his surroundings, often describing the terrain and weather conditions he and Estraven were facing in great detail (“Sove snows in flurries, and thick ash with it”; “A peak rises up out of the Ice, the sharp graceful barren cone of a young volcano”). Because Ai and Estraven were struggling to survive in the face of difficult weather and terrain conditions, their physical surroundings must have seemed particularly real to them, and this is reflected in the tone of the narrative. Thus constructed in this way, the narrative of The Left Hand of Darkness provides us with an additional layer of insight into Ai’s mind, telling us not only what he is thinking, but how his thoughts are influenced by his surroundings as well.