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Science Studies and Literature

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Published/Copyright: March 9, 2015
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Abstract

As an inter- and transdisciplinary inquiry into how science and technology work and have worked, science studies is inextricably entwined, I argue, with the cultural work of literary texts that probe the history of knowledge production. When engaging the question what fiction and poetry know, science studies may even present itself as an effect of an intense discussion on the relation between the sciences and literature that has been going on for centuries. This essay, in its first part, lays out the scope of and situates science studies within a larger debate of the history of science and technology. In part two, my contribution historicizes the interrelation between science studies and literature by revisiting the ongoing “one”, “two”, and “more cultures” debate. Focusing on the fiction of Richard Powers, its third and final part interrogates how some literary texts more than others operate as a variety of science studies. Like science studies, Powers’s novels reflect intensively on the history of science and technology; unlike science studies, they aim at putting literary and scientific practice on par.

Acknowledgement

I thank Björn Bosserhoff for competent research assistance and final touches on the manuscript.

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Published Online: 2015-3-9
Published in Print: 2015-3-1

엎 2015 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Munich/Boston

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Frontmatter
  3. Special Issue: Literature and Science
  4. Articles
  5. Literature and Science: Introduction
  6. Science Studies and Literature
  7. Environmental Literature and the Ambiguities of Science
  8. Life Sciences and Life Writing
  9. A Feeling for Life: Biosemiotics, Autopoiesis and the Orders of Discourse
  10. The Living Diffractions of Matter and Text: Narrative Agency, Strategic Anthropomorphism, and how Interpretation Works
  11. Quantum Physics and Literature
  12. ‘Secret Integrations’: Leibniz, Mathematics, and Literature
  13. ‘Pity Party’: Metaphors for a Banned Emotion
  14. ‘Primitive Purity and Shortness’: The Language of Science in Science and Literature
  15. The Chromosome as Concept and Metaphor in Amitav Ghosh’s The Calcutta Chromosome
  16. Reviews
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  18. Roland Weidle. Englische Literatur der Frühen Neuzeit: Eine Einführung. Grundlagen der Anglistik und Amerikanistik 37. Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2013, 280 pp., € 19.95.
  19. Doris Feldmann and Christian Krug (eds.).Viktorianismus: Eine literatur- und kulturwissenschaftliche Einführung. Grundlagen der Anglistik und Amerikanistik 38. Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2013, 207 pp., 9 illustr., € 19.95.
  20. John Rodden and John Rossi.The Cambridge Introduction to George Orwell. Cambridge Introductions to Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012, xiv + 146 pp., £ 44.99 (hb)/£ 14.99 (pb).
  21. Susanne Peters, Klaus Stierstorfer, Dirk Vanderbeke and Laurenz Volkmann (eds.).Film. Parts I & II. Teaching Contemporary Literature and Culture 3. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2013, 692 pp., 74 illustr., € 32.50 (Part I), € 32.50 (Part II).
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  23. Susanna Layh.Finstere neue Welten: Gattungsparadigmatische Transformationen der literarischen Utopie und Dystopie. Text & Theorie 13. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2014, 320 pp., € 48.00.
  24. Roman Bartosch. EnvironMentality: Ecocriticism and the Event of Postcolonial Fiction. Nature, Culture and Literature 9. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2013, 315 pp., € 78.00/$ 104.00.
  25. Carmen Birkle and Johanna Heil (eds.).Communicating Disease: Cultural Representations of American Medicine. American Studies – A Monograph Series 236. Heidelberg: Winter, 2013, xxxiv + 465 pp., € 56.00.
  26. Books Received
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