In 1959, the British scientist and novelist C. P. Snow published an influential book on The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. Snow argued that a deepening division between science and the humanities was a major obstacle to solving the world's problems. Despite his arguments, subjects like physics and chemistry remained separate from history and English in the education systems of many countries during the twentieth century. Nevertheless, interdisciplinary educators sought to overcome this divide by using SF literature and film to teach natural and social sciences. In the 1970s, Martin Harry Greenberg of the University of Wisconsin edited a series of short-story anthologies for classroom use with titles like Introductory Psychology Through Science Fiction, Anthropology Through Science Fiction or Sociology Through Science Fiction. In the 1990s, Lawrence Krauss of Case Western Reserve University wrote a bestselling book on The Physics of Star Trek that inspired a host of similar works with titles like The Biology of Star Trek and The Science of the X-Files. While Greenberg and Krauss taught at universities, educators at museums and planetariums also opened their institutions to popular culture. Many planetariums performed adaptations of Isaac Asimov's short story The Last Question to draw audiences and teach them about astronomy. The National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC and the Science Museum in London collected models of the Enterprise and other fictional spaceships for display in exhibitions and gift shops. In part, they responded to a lack of public funding by putting on blockbuster shows for revenue generation. However, they also sought to garner new visitors, especially those insufficiently served by traditional methods of schooling. Science fiction thus contributed significantly to the rise of edutainment and of interdisciplinary education more broadly.
Jörg Matthias Determann (Sat,) studied this question.