Table Of ContentMarc-Denis Weitze · Wolfgang Chr. Goede
Wolfgang M. Heckl Eds.
Can Science
Be Witty?
Science Communication Between
Critique and Cabaret
Can Science Be Witty?
Marc-Denis Weitze
Wolfgang Chr. Goede
Wolfgang M. Heckl
Editors
Can Science Be
Witty?
Science Communication
Between Critique and Cabaret
Editors
Marc-Denis Weitze Wolfgang Chr. Goede
TUM School of Social Sciences München
and Technology München, Germany
Technical University of Munich
München, Germany
Wolfgang M. Heckl
Direktion
Deutsches Museum
München, Germany
ISBN 978-3-662-65752-2 ISBN 978-3-662-65753-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-65753-9
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Foreword
I would’ve wanted to like, but allowed to like I didn’t dare!
This squiggly saying by the brilliant Munich comedian Karl
Valentin (1882–1948) captures the theme of this book with
nano-sharp precision. How often I have found it confirmed
in my career as a scientist: Esteemed and highly competent
colleagues who come across as easygoing and funny in ev-
eryday life literally go stale when they take to the lectern or
stage, lead a seminar, or even just discuss scientific issues in
front of a few people. Yet they would have had all the tal-
ents for a lively and humorous presentation of their knowl-
edge and findings.
Too bad! Many have the best of intentions. But in front
of the public, their courage folds up like a pocket knife.
They fall into the often lifelong learned routine: deadly seri-
ous, dry, outright boring—safe is safe. Science can’t take a
joke, to laugh at it you go and hide in the basement. Really?
Rhetorical looseness has also increasingly conquered the
public sphere in Germany in recent decades. Instead of dry
facts, dressed up in passive constructions, nouns and nested
sentences, storytelling is gaining ground. If you want your
v
vi Foreword
research to be remembered, you have to combine facts with
emotions, find characters, and send them on heroic
journeys.
You see, it’s just a short step from here to humor!
In this book, you will find a captivating firework of ex-
amples and instructions for more humor in science, ignited
by practitioners and professional cabaret artists, including
those from the young genre of science cabaret.
The “Big Bang Theory” around the nerdy physicist Dr.
Sheldon Lee Cooper has probably persuaded more young
people to study physics and science than the best-made tele-
colleges. And we don’t remember the textbooks directly, but
we do remember, for example, experiments in class that went
wrong and amused us. It’s old hat in terms of learning psy-
chology that content can simply be memorized much better
via an emotional connection. So, please, become more cou-
rageous to tell anecdotes, to tell stories, to tell witty bon mots!
Browse through the 22 contributions of “Can Science Be
Witty?”, let them inspire you to experiment, to simply in-
teract with more fun for yourself and others about topics of
science and education. The fact that humor knows no
boundaries, but only many gray areas between amusement,
satire, and criticism—as another great comedian, Gerhard
Polt, found out—hopefully makes the topic and this book
all the more exciting!
And the next time you’re in Munich, pay a visit not only
to the Deutsches Museum but also to the nearby Valentin
Karlstadt Musäum.
General Director of Wolfgang M. Heckl
Deutsches Museum
Munich, Germany
Spring 2020
Contents
1 To Get Started . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Marc-Denis Weitze, Wolfgang Chr. Goede,
and Wolfgang M. Heckl
2 Science Slam About Sheep Cheese and Car Tires . . . 11
Alex Dreppec
3 Laughter Tears Down Walls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Vince Ebert
4 “Die Anstalt” TV Show as an Example
of Criticism, Satire, Humor in Science
Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Dominik Eckert
5 Date an Engineer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Georg Eggers
6 Paradigm Disease: An Almost Incurable
Scientific Epidemic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Peter L. W. Finke
7 Scientists, Magicians and Charlatans:
How Magic Creates Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Thomas Fraps
vii
viii Contents
8 S earching for Humor in the Deutsches Museum:
An Exploration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Wolfgang Chr. Goede
9 F rom Big Bang to Big Van . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Helena González Burón
and Oriol Marimon Garrido
10 W hen a Dalmatian Comes to the Cash Register . . . . 101
Eckart von Hirschhausen
11 “ Teeth Baring” at acatech . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Jaromir Konecny
12 W it and Lightness in Science: The International
Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Bruce Lewenstein
13 “ You Don’t Understand Science Anyway!” . . . . . . . . 135
Constanze Lindner and Wolfgang Chr. Goede
14 D istance, Please! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Hanns J. Neubert
15 M enu Offering for the Holy Spirit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Martin Puntigam
16 D ictatorship of Stupidity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Jean Pütz
17 A necdotes from My Physics Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Helmut Schleich
18 H umor in Knowledge Transfer: Academic
Basics and a Workshop Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Michael Suda
19 G eorg Christoph Lichtenberg: An Early
Pioneer of Witty Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Jürgen Teichmann
Contents ix
20 Can the Anthropocene Be Witty? A Science
Comic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Helmuth Trischler
21 Science Cabaret: A Script. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
Marc-Denis Weitze
22 Done. Now What?! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
Wolfgang Chr. Goede
Postscript: Corona Cabaret Critique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
1
To Get Started
Marc-Denis Weitze, Wolfgang Chr. Goede,
and Wolfgang M. Heckl
We want to open a new chapter in science communication.
Applying cabaret to research and technology. We are con-
vinced that science and society come together better
through a smile.
Science communication is facts and emotion.
M.-D. Weitze (*)
TUM School of Social Sciences and Technology,
Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany
e-mail: [email protected]
W. C. Goede
Science Facilitation, Munich, Germany
W. M. Heckl
Deutsches Museum, Munich, Germany
e-mail: [email protected]
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, 1
DE, part of Springer Nature 2023
M.-D. Weitze et al. (eds.), Can Science Be Witty?,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-65753-9_1
