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Originally Posted by shugh
You're asking the exact same questions I'm interested in pursuing in my film. I don't come from a science background, but took some classes in my undergraduate years at Yale, specifically on fractals and astronomy. Although I am an amateur science buff, I've always been fascinated with the dissemination of information in the scientific community and how science history is written.
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Ahhh, this tiptoes into MY field! I'm a graduate student in anthropology and am interested in the same thing (doing preliminary research on the spread of information in internet societies... will do a poster presentation on this at AIAA this spring in Dallas)
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I want to go in with as little "slant" as possible. Your analogy of science as the supreme court is a good one. I'm doing a part of my doc on the careers of Nikola Tesla and Immanuel Velikovsky. Science history seem to regard these men with a certain myth-making respect, radical scientists who were later vindicated, men ahead of their times. I want to investigate whether it is possible to be ahead of the times in science, what does vindication mean, and what role does "personality" play in science.
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Culturally speaking, "yes", "proof emerging that the visionary was correct", and Oh Yes -- at least on this side of the Big Pond (Atlantic.) One difference between Europe and America is the culture of personality and the impact of personalities (we see this in anthropology as well.)
As to why some are popularized, it really depends on the culture that the information is inserted into. I remember when Velikovsky's books came out in the late 60's and early 70's, and because the climate was one of "expand the consciousness" and so forth, they gained wider acceptance than they would have if they'd come out in the 1950's.
They died back with the rise of the sciences in the 1970's... lately, with the milennium hysteria, the y2K hysterian, the religious hysteria and the denial of science (and problems in the education system) AND the rise of Internet and the changing of the Hero myth, we see these things resurface. I think it's because our Hero myth has gone astray. We would all like to be heroes but we don't recognize what it takes to be a hero. So many dream of the Earth gone awry and destruction all around and themselves emerging as the Champion of the People.
(at least, that's my theory and I'm sticking to it!)
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Does science always "rule" in favor of the "truth" - what does "winning theories" mean.
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This would depend on what tools it takes to measure the theory.
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I would like to be as open in my film as possible to both sides of the argument, if there are even two sides of the argument on this case...
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I admit to being quite intrigued -- you see, I planned to take two courses in filmmaking (we have to take two courses outside our major discipline in getting the Masters') and do a documentary myself.