Life in the Zooniverse: Working with Citizen Science.

摘要

It has become accepted orthodoxy in Literature and Science studies that relationsbetween the two domains are a “two way street,” and that literature and culture do notmeekly reflect the new findings of their dominant partner, science, but are activelyengaged in a dynamic, reciprocal set of relations with scientific practice and thedevelopment of scientific ideas. It is an attractive position (and one to which I havealways subscribed), but such reciprocity is decidedly easier to track in historicalcontext, before the consolidation of structures of institutional and professionalscience, than in the current period. The call for the AHRC “Science in Culture” largegrants scheme was thus challenging: applicants were asked not merely to analysereciprocal relations between science and culture, but to work directly with scientists,and to develop new insights and new methodologies for both sides. A tall order!Over the years I have participated in numerous workshops and conferences withscientists, trying to discover common ground, but never engaged directly incollaborative research. Originally Gowan Dawson and I had been envisaging a strictlyhistorical project, addressing all those thousands of scientific and medical journalswhich lie mouldering in library basements (and are still largely untouched bydigitisation). As historians we are familiar with the “big names”, those journals likethe Lancet, the BMJ or Nature which have survived into the present day, and whosedominance in the historical record is now reaffirmed by the digitisation of backnumbers, making it easier for scholars to work with them. But what about all thoselocal natural history journals, or medical or public health journals which have fadedfrom historical memory?