Discussion Main / ScienceHero

My pick is Dr. Chemistry, Walt's surrogate from the Breaking Bad minisode "Team Science". While Walt might be a science anti-hero, Dr. Chemistry is a full on hero.

Mac Gyver trumps Stark. Sorry...

Exactly! Just how does being self-referential prevent a Science Hero from appearing?

Exactly! Just how does being self-referential prevent a Science Hero from appearing?

It's not being self-referential. It's demanding a personal motivation, and it's rejecting progress for progress's sake.

If you reject progress for progress's sake, then you cannot have a pure Science Hero. If progress for progress's sake is rejected, then For Science! is the mark of a Mad Scientist — and while there may be good and heroic Mad Scientists, they tend to be more fallible than the classic examples of this trope.

The same mentality that rejects progress for progress's sake tends to reject abstract altruism as a sane personal reason for doing something — wanting the good of mankind/the Earth/the universe/etc. is not considered a good reason, and modern scientists who have that reason are likely to be Well Intentioned Extremists instead of heroes. Personal reasons that are considered good either have endpoints, making them The Quest — since the character will often stop pursuing the science once the reason he pursued it is met — or are better achieved by non-scientific means....

I put some of this in the article. Feel free to reword if I wasn't clear there.

1) That's a great explanation. Thank you. :)

2) I disagree with the postmodernists entirely.

Interesting explanation. Just when I thought I couldn't dislike postmodernists any more than I already did...

Ummmm ... a science hero isn't a cambellian hero ... at least not according to the five minutes of reseaarch that I put into it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces