Connecting Literature and Science

Jay A. Labinger

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781032129129
  9781032053509
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000472974
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Biological Sciences

This book presents a case for engagement between the sciences and the humanities. The author, a professional chemist, seeks to demonstrate that the connections between those fields of intellectual activity are far more significant than anything that separates them. The book combines a historical survey of the relationships between science and literature with a number of case studies that examine specific scientific episodes—several drawn from the author's own research—juxtaposed with a variety of literary works spanning a wide range of period and genre—Dante to detective fiction, War and Peace to White Teeth—to elicit their common themes. The work argues for an empirical, non-theory-based approach, one that is closely analogous to connectionist models of brain development and function, and that can appeal to general readers, as well as to literary scholars and practicing scientists, who are open to the idea that literature and science should not be compartmentalized.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements Page
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Epigraphs
• 1 Introduction
• 2 A Brief History of Literature and Science
• 3 The Science Wars
• 4 Models of Engagement
• 5 Encoding an Infinite Message: Richard Powers’s The Gold Bug Variations
• 6 Is That a Coded Message? It May Not Be So Simple!
• 7 Found in Translation
• 8 Entropy as Time’s (Double-Headed) Arrow in Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia
• 9 Chirality and Life
• 10 Making New Life
• 11 The End of Irony and/or the End of Science?
• 12 Conclusion
• Appendices
• Works Cited
• Index