Science frictions : science, folklore, and "the future"

Abstract

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI-COLUMBIA AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] Folklore and science, along with the subject of the future which has slowly over time worked its way into the discourses of both, have a long, complicated history together. One that lives on in the present. (And one that might even prevail into the time to come). This work is not entirely that story. But it is a part of it, presented here as it is in the interest of opening new channels of discourse between two areas of research that are often seen by participants on all sides to be rather divergent, if not entirely oppositional to one another. This exploration culminates in a consideration of the contemporary status of popular science trends and how folklore might continue to operate within them--a proposal which identifies an increasingly emergent (although certainly not exclusively novel) form of folk expression that arises out of the friction caused by queries of scientific "truth," "promise," and "possibility" that is still stuck in a liminal wait for "the future." Both a widespread present-day phenomenon and subsequent set of narratives, expressions, beliefs, and actions that this work has chosen to call "science frictions."