What is the difference between the time-bound cause and effect nature of stories and the cause and effect nature of scientific description/explanation? The scientist asks the question: why does this happen? What makes it fizz? What is the smoke? Why does it explode? etc, and attempts to answer it through experimentation. The storyteller asks the question why did he do this? What explains this breakup? How did she achieve that? And then attempts to explain it through a dramatization.
To answer these questions, relationships have to be established and fit into a theoretical paradigm (composed of a series of assumption i.e. gravity, conservation of energy, etc for science, and love, achievement, democracy, etc. for story) that allows for those elements to co-exist and interact in meaningful ways that will lead to the inevitable conclusion/answer (liquification,explosion -- murder, marriage).
Interesting to think about how that natural human inclination to ask the question WHY? in different times/cultures or indeed individuals, leads to both story explanation and scientific explanation (think of the American Indian's earlier explanations for a sunrise versus an astronomer's).
Is that scientific explanation still a KIND of story?
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