Heroism Science: Frameworks for an Emerging Field

Abstract

This article outlines the conceptual framework for a new science focused on heroism using multiple perspectives to generate a science that is explicitly in service to humanity. The role of heroism as a case study for deviant interdisciplinarity, heroism science as storytelling and story revising, and its impacts for research and communities are considered. The primary concern of the deviant agenda of heroism science is the unity of knowledge and the testability of narrative-driven scientific inquiry. In this agenda, science as “episteme” and heroism are unified in their core epistemic function. Heroism science is posited as a prime candidate for promoting science as enabler for improving the world, based on Hefner’s concept of embodied science, and a nonlinear, open, and participatory model of science. Contemporary heroism research trends across the disciplines are mapped in a preliminary taxonomy of peak, emerging, and low subfields of research activity. Heroism science is defined as a nascent multiple disciplinary field which seeks to reconceptualize heroism and its correlates through a close examination of the origins, types, and processes of these interrelated phenomena.