Narrative Explanation as Aesthetic Scaffolding

Abstract

Narrative explanation figures prominently in the historical natural sciences, whether we are talking about evolutionary narratives that purport to explain some of the strange features of dinosaurs, or geological narratives about the origin of landscape features. The rich and diverse literature on scientific narrative, a literature that overlaps with work in the philosophy of history and historiography, has prioritized questions about narrative’s explanatory function and epistemic status: How exactly do narratives explain? And how do (and should) scientists assess narrative explanations empirically? Background worries about narratives being too easy to dream up and too difficult to test (i.e. that they are “just-so stories”), as well as background concerns about the status of the historical sciences vis-à-vis other sorts of scientific practice, have helped to keep philosophical attention focused on narrative’s explanatory work and epistemic status.

Narrative explanations in the historical sciences also have an aesthetic dimension, though, and this dimension remains under-explored. I argue that historical scientific narratives are more than mere explanations: they also have a variety of aesthetic functions. I spell this out by borrowing and repurposing an idea from Adrian Currie, who emphasizes the importance of epistemic scaffolding in historical science: Sometimes, scientific investigation of one set of problems effectively builds a structure that can then be used to make some progress on a different set of problems. I argue that it’s helpful to understand narrative explanations in historical science as a kind of aesthetic scaffolding. Once in place, those narratives can help structure and improve our aesthetic engagement with places, with geological formations, with fossils, and with other things that historical scientists engage with as part of their research practice.