Abstract
In the recent past, narratives have been hailed as a promising instrument for improving the effectiveness of science communication to nonscientist audiences. Narratives play an important part in how individuals comprehend the world, and persuasive narratives may often be more successful in communicating complex scientific issues to the general public than evidence-based arguments. At the same time, however, narratives have the potential to perpetuate misinformation and inaccuracies about science due to their formal characteristics. Also, as narratives are not subject to the same truth requirements as scientific argumentation, they cannot be easily countered, which can lead to serious misconceptions about important scientific topics. In this article, the role of narratives and narrative explanations in science communication is discussed regarding the genre of popular science. The essay approaches the affordances and limits of narrative in this context with two primary examples representing recent popular-science best-sellers: Elisabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (2014) and Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011).
Published Version
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