ABOUT

All scientific research involves attempts to resolve a mystery, overcome an obstacle or solve a problem. This circumstance gives to scientific papers a formidable narrative potential. However, most scientific papers lack basic storytelling mechanisms, reducing in this way their potential audience. The idea of the Scientific Evolutionary Writing (SEW) Workshop comes precisely from acknowledging the intrinsic limitation every scientific paper can suffer. The starting point is the assumption that the act of writing can be paralleled to an evolutionary process. By writing and rewriting, authors create variants (mutations), merge different sections (horizontal transfer), select the preferred version (selection) and, after a certain number of versions (generations) they converge to the final text (fixation). Tracking this complex process is far from being trivial, and no systematic tools focused so far on microscopic monitoring of the process of writing. This workshop aims at filling this gap by exploring storytelling techniques and how they can be used in scientific papers while maintaining the world’s top journals’ scientific rigour. Participants will be challenged to embark in an evolutionary process of their creations to rewrite and refine their texts till to a point in which “texts can only be worsened.” A dedicated monitoring tool (WeWrite) will follow the whole process, allowing for deep insight into creativity mechanisms.

LATEST EVENT

Sew Workshop 4′ edition was held
online on March 1-5 2021.

Please, visit SEW Workshop 4 Online 2021 website for more!

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

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– 2 full days of workshop (9am-6pm)
– you are willing to actively engage in the workshop and are
interested in writing something on a scientific matter
– you have a Gmail account
– you bring your own laptop
– you agree to release the rights for use of your whole
production at the workshop to INSERM and Sony CSL for
scientific purposes only; you will keep the intellectual
property rights on your creations
– the whole writing process will be fully monitored to gather
relevant data for the scientific investigation of the
evolutionary dynamics underlying the writing process

The workshop will be held February 19-20, 2019 at Complexity Science Hub Vienna, Josefstaedter Strasse 39, 1080, Vienna

PROGRAM

The workshop will last two full days, from 9am to 6pm on February 19-20, 2019.

We will not disclose details of the program in order not to bias the expected evolutionary

process of the writing.

MATERIALS

Workshop handout

Introduction

Cognitive elements of communication I

Editing as an Evolutionary Algorithm

Cognitive elements of communication II

Editing exercises

Cognitive elements of communication III

Evolutionary barriers and opportunities

Tips for your final edit

TEACHERS

Mark Buchanan

Mark Buchanan is a physicist and science writer based in Europe. A former editor with the
international science journal Nature and also New Scientist, he is the author of three books and
numerous articles exploring the ideas of modern physics. He writes occasionally for the New York Times, and has a monthly column in Nature Physics.

Justin Mullins

Justin Mullins is a consultant editor at New Scientist where he has covered topics ranging from Chernobyl to the emergence of artificial intelligence. He was New Scientist’s San Francisco bureau chief during the first dotcom boom and later its Boston Editor and Technology Editor. He is a former teaching fellow at the University of California, Berkeley.

ORGANISERS

Stefan Thurner
CSHV

Verena Ahne
CSHV

SEW COORDINATORS

Vittorio Loreto
Sony CSL Paris, Sapienza University of Rome and CSHV

Vittoria Colizza
INSERM

LOCATION

Our workshop took place at Complexity Science Hub Vienna, Josefstaedter Strasse 39, 1080, Vienna.

Map

PAST EVENTS

Sew Workshop 1′ edition was held
@Institut des Systèmes Complexes Paris, Île-de-France, 113 rue Nationale, 75013, Paris, France
on January 30-31 2019.

Please, visit SEW Workshop Paris 2019 website for more!

Sew Workshop 2′ edition was held
@Complexity Science Hub Vienna, Josefstaedter Strasse 39, 1080, Vienna
on February 19-20 2019.

Please, visit SEW Workshop Vienna 2019 website for more!

Sew Workshop 3′ edition was held
@Albert Einstein Center for Fundamental Physics, Building “Exakte Wissenschaften”, Sidlerstrasse 5, 3012, Bern
on January 14-16 2020.

Please, visit SEW Workshop Bern 2020 website for more!