Imagination and Narratives to Tell Stories About Natural History

Abstract

Biology is a science that tries to explain “how” and “why” living being became what they are, in this sense, it has a historical nature. We try to discuss the tension between the concepts of “reproductive” and “productive imagination,” proposed by Paul Ricoeur, to show its importance to describe and to explain historical events and facts. Within the Ricoeur’s theory of narrative we show that, to tell a story, the imagination is necessary in at least three process: Firstly, the author reconstructs facts and actions; secondly, the author relates these elements around a plot, as necessary conditions for the formation of a coherent and meaningful sense of story; thirdly, reader engages with the story through a refiguration of it. In the light of this framework, we analyze Natural History and its usefulness to teach evolution. We denote that evolutionary stories could be an effective tool to learn about evolution. However, to fulfill this goal, evolutionary stories should use narratives not only like a simply recount of information but also to capture the imagination of readers in such a way that they are involved in and by the story, “providing oneself a figure of...” In this respect, it should be noted the risk of managing, on the one hand, the realism of facts and events and, on the other, the idealism of the narrative or the text, which could well do without “real” to present an artificial reality. We conclude that Natural History could be combine reality and imagination in order to tell and to explain biology’s big questions: “how” and “why” life became what it is.