posted 08-10-2010 07:50 AM               

It's because we are all influenced by the power of 'narrativium.'* This strange force, present in large quantities in our world, causes things to happen that you would not expect from the laws of nature. For example, these laws seem to forbid an earthbound object suddenly leaping up and landing on the Moon. That is not to say it won't happen, only that you'd have to wait a very, very long time before it did. Nevertheless, there are several things on the Moon that came from Earth.

These objects are on the Moon because centuries ago people told stories about it. First, she was a goddess and when full could turn men into werewolves. Then it changed into being another world.

Stories said that by harnessing swans or spheres containing dew men could fly there. Later, a giant gun could fire a hollow cylinder to our nearest neighbour. In the 1960's the stories came true as swans turned into rockets and the hollow cylinder into an Apollo capsule.

But - if we hadn't told ourselves stories about the Moon, why would we have thought about going there? The answer is that we've been telling stories about going there for several hundred years. These stories made it inevitable that humans would go. It was a story waiting to be finished and the ending was written in July 1969.

It seems humans run on narrativium.

posted 08-10-2010 09:50 AM               

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Originally posted by garymilgrom:
Swans did not turn into rockets by telling stories.

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The point Prof. Stewart was making is that if a long time ago someone had not looked up at the bright, silvery disc in the night sky and said, "I wonder what it's like up there.", then there would have been no stories about it and no urge to ever go there. This is the power of narrativium. It led to an expectation that one day Man would find the means of going to the Moon. That day came in 1969.

Narrativium creates an expectation. As another example, we expect our heroes to be tall, dark and handsome, unless, that is, you happen to be called Cohen the Barbarian.

As for not being magic... was it not Arthur Clarke who said something about modern technology being indistinguishable from magic? Can you think of anything more magical that the sight of a Saturn V leaving the launch pad bound for the Moon?

posted 08-10-2010 10:29 AM               

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Originally posted by moorouge:
Incidentally, to take Robert's point - The Science of Discworld 2 (The Globe) offers a much better explanation of narrativium.

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posted 08-10-2010 05:12 PM               

When we first thought about doing a science of Discworld book, we were thinking of modeling it on "The Physics of Star Trek," which was the first book of this kind. The idea there was to take things from the fictional area and use them as a route into science, which to some extent was closely related. So not exactly 'this is how you make a warp drive work' but here are things in physics that are similar to warp drives.

We thought we might do this with Discworld and we approached Terry with this and he said, "I'd love to do it but it won't work like that."

It won't work because Discworld is flat, carried by four elephants on the back of a turtle swimming through space, and you can't explain that scientifically because it doesn't happen. But more than that, Discworld runs on magic and magic is things happening because people want them to happen and it runs on narrative imperative, which is things happening because the structure of the story requires them to happen...

Purpose, narrative imperative, these are things that do not exist in Roundworld. It turns out what does exist in Roundworld is rules...

posted 08-11-2010 04:44 AM               

Roundworld priests, politicians, scientists, teachers and journalists have learned to use the power of the story (narrativium) to get their message across to the public and to manipulate or persuade people to behave in particular ways.

When Mind evolved on Earth, a kind of narrativium evolved alongside it. Unlike the Discworld variety of narrativium, which on the Disc is just as real as iron or copper or praseodymium, our variety is purely mental. It is an imperative, but the imperative has not been reified into a thing. However, we have the sort of mind that responds to imperatives and to many other non-things. And so it FEELS to us as if our universe runs on narrativium.

posted 08-11-2010 07:09 AM               

And so it FEELS to us as if our universe runs on narrativium.

posted 08-11-2010 09:54 AM               

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Originally posted by Larry McGlynn:
I wonder who told the stories about air?

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