CANCELLED!
COMP 242 Science and Literature (Same as History of Science 242)
What is the difference between science and fiction? The answer may seem intuitive to you, but this is a question that has inspired fierce debate since the Renaissance, when critics first tried to define this strange new thing called science and separate it from poetry. The controversy continues into the twentieth century: while some literary critics have struggled to turn literature into an objective science like physics, at the same time radical philosophers of science have asserted that scientific discourse itself is a kind of fiction. This course investigates the blurry boundary between science and literature from the perspective of critical theory, by examining some of the aesthetic philosophies that have tried to separate or relate the two. Texts will be drawn from several of the following areas: classical criticism (Plato, Aristotle), Empiricism (Locke, Reynolds), theories of the sublime (Longinus, Addison, Burke, Kant, Schiller, Nietzsche), American New Criticism, critiques of modernism and postmodernism (Baudrillard, Lyotard, Jameson, Karatani, Hayles), and/or philosophy of science (Kuhn, Feyerabend). As our test cases, we will also look at a sampling of fiction that seeks to cross or confuse the line between literature and science, by authors like Abe Kobo, Philip K. Dick, Don DeLillo, William Gibson, Mark Leyner, and/or Thomas Pynchon. All readings in English. Format: lecture/discussion. Requirements: two short papers, in-class presentation, and a final exam. No prerequisites. Enrollment limit: 15 (expected: 10). (Literature and Theory)