ABSTRACT
Hans U. Fuchs Institute of Applied Mathematics and Physics, School of Engineering, Zurich University
of Applied Sciences at Winterthur, Winterthur, Switzerland
Narrative in science learning has become an important field of inquiry. Most applications of
narrative are extrinsic to science-such as when they are used for creating affect and context.
Where they are intrinsic, they are often limited to special cases and uses. To extend the reach of
narrative in science, a hypothesis of narrative framing of natural and technical scenes is
formulated. The term narrative framing is used in a double sense, to represent (1) the enlisting of
narrative intelligence in the perception of phenomena and (2) the telling of stories that contain
conceptual elements used in the creation of scientific models of these phenomena. The concrete
case for narrative framing is made by conceptual analyses of simple stories of natural phenomena
and of products related to modern continuum thermodynamics that reveal particular figurative
structures. Importantly, there is evidence for a medium-scale perceptual gestalt called FORCE OF
NATURE that is structured metaphorically and narratively. The resulting figurative conceptual
structure gives rise to the notion of natural agents acting and suffering in storyworlds. In order to
show that formal scientific models are deeply related to these storyworlds, a link between using
(i.e. simulating) models and storytelling is employed. This link has recently been postulated in
studies of narrative in computational science and economics.
