In current English, the term ‘narrative’ covers a lot of conceptual ground – from an overarching position on some big issue, to all kinds of storytelling, to a general attention to language or metaphor. This chapter argues for narrowing our conception of ‘narrative’ to add value to scholarship in the history and philosophy of science (HPS). This narrower Narrative Science Approach treats narrative as a distinct and complex discursive form, subject to careful technical theorizing in its own right. By using analytical categories from narrative theory, we can identify in rigorous detail how scientific narratives are put together, what might distinguish them from other narrative forms, and the questions they raise for HPS and narrative enquiry. Similarly, when scientists use narrative ways of reasoning, tools from cognitive narratology enable us to reconstruct their imaginative activity. As a reciprocal movement, our Narrative Science Approach promises to enrich narrative studies.

The chapters in this volume show that narrative can be found on many levels and in many media in science. This contribution locates narratives in one of the most prominent forms of scientific literature in the twentieth century: the research article. It shows how in the experimental sciences accounts of natural processes and accounts of research activities both take the form of narratives, ‘narratives of nature’ and ‘research narratives’, respectively. For a hypothesis to enter the former or to be criticized, members of a scientific community need to grasp the research approach from which it emerges. The chapter argues that research narratives are designed to make readers familiar with an approach. Such narratives draw a path through epistemic scenes inhabited by a character representing the researchers. By stylistic means the researchers are construed as exemplars for members of the community, and their activities as exemplifying the approach to a shared problem.