SCIENCE, DRAMA AND THE AESTHETIC

Russell Tytler and Vaughan Prain

 

Abstract

In this chapter we review the variety of themes opened up by the authors in this book and situate these themes within a semiotic aesthetic theoretical framing drawing on the work of the pragmatist semiotician Charles Sanders Peirce. We trace the historical divergence and interactions between art and science to argue that both disciplines create, reason about, and communicate knowledge and meaning through the inventive development and use of sign systems, infused with disciplinary aesthetics/values. We claim that this focus on meaning-making through sign systems allows us to see more clearly multiple opportunities for the symbiotic relationship between drama and science advocated by many chapter authors and by the editors in their Chapter 1 scene setting. 

Drawing on Peirce, we outline both (a) the interrelations between experiences of phenomena, sign systems and meaning-making and (b) the inevitable entwining of feeling and meaning in this process. We argue that a Peircean theoretical lens explains and warrants the value of drama’s embodied, narrative semiotic resources in supporting students’ construction of meaning in science classrooms, and their appreciation of dramatic forms in opening up meanings that have conceptual and human dimensions. We claim that this enrichment of focus and methods is a key to students developing a positive aesthetic sense of scientific ways of reasoning and acting in the world. Conversely, drama’s aesthetic perspective and semiotic resources are well placed to explore and interrogate themes, successes, and contemporary issues raised by science. 

Key Words

Science, Drama, Pragmatist semiotics, Aesthetics, Narrative, Meaning-making