Rather than focusing on the technological achievements or latest discoveries that are generally highlighted, this project aims to explore the margins of science in several major research centers between France and Switzerland to investigate how scientists represent themselves and their practices.
Through these sometimes naive or excessive tales, we are invited to consider the place of individuality in scientific research, and the need for narratives as compasses in the context of a loss of direction.
“For the most important form of human thinking is not reason or analysis, not intuition or feeling, but rather narration. All our experiences, our memories, our goals and aspiration, our rationales, vindications, apologies and excuses - our whole life is organized into a narrative form. It is not logic, mathematics, or physics that can resolve the uncertainties to which humans are exposed in a social environnement. Only stories can supply any kind of reliable compass in the vague world of togetherness, where coalitions regulary shift.”
Werner Siefer, Brain specialist and german Biologist, Der Erzählinstinkt: Warum das (The narrative instinct: why the brain thinks in stories)