Science fiction. If this doesn't bring to mind Star Trek, then your planet evidently has not been visited by the U.S.S. Enterprise. But, seriously, what does "science fiction" say to you? Aliens? Space ships? Super-cool gizmos? My answer is "all of the above." But apparently I'm an ignoramus.
I'm not una grande aficionada of sf, but I've read a few books now. Here's a rough list: Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle, The Tripods Attack! by John McNichol (though it's more steampunk than sf), The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins, One Door Away from Heaven by Dean Koontz, Death Panels by Michelle Buckman, and Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Most of these books have something in common: technology that didn't exist at the time of its publication, but possibly could exist one day down the road. That is, scientific advances that are mere speculation. All the books on my list fit that description pretty well - except the last one.
Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is about a group of American men who find their way into an all-female country hidden in South America. The only special thing they use to enter said country is an airplane. Granted, the book was published in 1915, so airplanes hadn't been around all that long. But they still existed. The Herlanders have no special gadgets to help them along. In fact, they seem to be almost devoid of what we typically classify as machinery. They have a few cars, but that seems to be the extent of their technology. Cars already existed in 1915, as well.
So here's my question: Where's the science? Answer: It's a sociological science fiction book. I kid you not. Sociology, which some people have graced with the title "science," is considered scientific enough to put a book like Herland into the sf genre. The idiocy of this label is so ridiculous that it is a little difficult to fully describe. Science is based on observable knowledge. When you pour one chemical into another and you observe that the mixture blows up in your face, you can assume that the combination of those two chemicals makes an explosive. But before you can state it as a fact, you must make sure that it was really those two chemicals alone that caused the explosion. For example, you must isolate them from possible contributing factors like air. Once you're sure that it really was the chemicals, you can announce your discovery to the world.
Sociology, on the other hand, cannot hope to reach this level of certainty in its conclusions. Human behavior cannot be isolated or pigeon-holed. You cannot say for certain that there are no other contributing factors in your equation that could have affected the outcome. So to say sociology is a "science" is to be intellectually inconsistent.
However, having non-scientific subjects like sociology labeled as a "science" only makes sense in the modern world. "Science" is looked up to and worshiped like a god - science knows all! (Who cares whether everything we know will be looked upon by future generations as we now look on the idea that blood-letting will cure all illnesses? But I digress.) This is not only ridiculous, it has ruined science. Any time one facet of life is crowned king over the rest, that facet is dragged down into the dirt. Science used to be the lofty pursuit of understanding the natural world through experimentation and observation. It now lives in the slums of making more or less educated guesses about life based on "data" that represents things far more complex than any computer.
Now, I'm not saying that science ought to be completely severed from the rest of life. I'm not even saying the typically formulaic idea of sf is not in need of improving. What I'm saying is that it's idiotic to call a kangaroo a duck. Not only idiotic, but it robs the kangaroo of its identity. The taint of such a stupid idea even leaks into literature, and as a result we have "science" fiction books like Herland.
What you said!
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