The natural universe remains captivating when it skips the people Premium

On the captivating wonders of the natural universe beyond human narratives in science journalism.

Of all the irreconcilable splits in science journalism, the one concerned with what we write about and how we go about has been my bugbear. On the one hand there are journalists focused on telling stories through people. On the other are journalists like me who believe there is more to acknowledging the world and understanding how it works than those with people at the hearts of their narratives can convey.

The first group is much larger and more popular because it carries forth a powerful argument: people like to read about people. Their narratives are often more easily arresting as well as command larger audiences. This argument blared to the fore when in 2017 science journalist Cassandra Willyard wrote on The Last Word on Nothing: “… humans like stories, mostly stories about other humans. I might not be interested in gravitational waves, but I am interested in science as a process. Humanize the process, and you’ll hook me every time.”

But there are many corners of the natural universe that have nothing to do with people or the human experience. There is no science sans scientists and no journalism sans readers; my point simply is there are ways and things to understand that are equally, if not better, served by not humanising the narrative, and insisting on the latter would overlook them.

Take the work of Ben Feringa, Jean-Pierre Sauvage, and J. Fraser Stoddard, for instance. In the 1980s, Stoddard started off trying to improve the efficacy of a herbicide, created fun molecules called catenanes and rotaxanes, and ended up in a field called molecular electronics. Just as much as these molecules would not have existed if not for the (documented) curiosity and perseverance of Stoddard et al., his curiosity and perseverance would be meaningless without the molecule itself. Sauvage et al. then found a way to make these molecules in large quantities and today they are used to make molecular machines.

In the 1990s, Ben Feringa and his team used similar chemistry to altogether build a ‘nanocar’: a block of molecules that moved on a surface when some energy was supplied to it. Scientists have since adapted many of the techniques that came about in the course of developing these wonderful machines to other applications, including for the ever-present real-world.

But just for a moment, what if we hang back and marvel at the nanocar itself? People have in fact even organised nanocar races, with molecular cars of different designs competing against each other on minuscule tracks. These things exist, and science journalism should be concerned about them as well, maintaining a space for unfettered wonder and a curiosity of the manner of things.