This chapter examines the criteria exposed by Stephen Jay Gould’s original paper on just-so stories to sustain such a charge. I show that Gould’s concerns were neither directed to narrative explanations nor were they ineluctably linked to their narrative quality. Then I analyse how advocates of narrative science have met the challenge. I identify two basic defensive approaches: the vindication of explanatory narratives in cases where the historical, contingent and causally complex nature of the phenomena demand a narrative approach and an unveiling strategy showing how there’s a narrative behind each law-like generalization or nomological explanatory formula. The chapter’s concentration on the argumentative moves of the discussants helps clarify their positions. Moreover, the argumentative quality of their object of study (scientific reason-giving practices) is also emphasized. I claim that the dialectical requirement of openness to collective survey and discussion is what may prevent just-so charges for any kind of explanatory model.

In this chapter, phylogenetic trees are discussed in the context of narrative science and historical explanation. Phylogenetic trees are predominantly bifurcating dendrograms that biologists use to represent evolutionary trajectories and patterns of shared ancestry. By means of a case study I explain how these diagrams are constructed, show that specialists read them as narratives and argue that they represent narrative explanations. Some phylogenetic trees not only consist of a branching structure and taxa names but include additional visual and textual elements. These filigreed trees are used in different contexts to represent integrated narratives (e.g., narratives of species migration, political and pedagogical narratives) that extend beyond evolutionary narratives of origin and divergence or narratives of shared ancestry. My chapter shows that diagrams as visual representations can be the central element of a scientific narrative and that narrative is used to create coherence between heterogeneous materials.

Geology can be characterized as ‘earth history’. As such it relies on narrative forms in its explanations and interpretations. Unlike ‘mere’ stories, however, geological narratives are tightly constrained by physical laws, and they typically play an important role in geological reasoning. It is not uncommon for geological narratives to be rewritten when new evidence emerges or when theories change, as is illustrated here by the history of the changing interpretation of a particular stratigraphic layer in north-west Scotland, which had been regarded as unremarkable in the late nineteenth century. In the 1960s, it was re-evaluated as being the product of a violent volcanic eruption and was named the Stac Fada Member. A further reinterpretation in 2006 led to it being identified as the material ejected from a meteorite impact crater. This chapter examines the reasons behind the rewriting of these explanatory narratives and explores how narratives are used in geology.