Fi-Sci (el. knyga) (skaityta knyga) | Rhona Trauvitch | knygos.lt

Aprašymas

Lays out a rhetorical approach to fictionality as key to understanding scientific phenomena that otherwise might be beyond imagination.

In Fi-Sci, Rhona Trauvitch melds literary and scientific thought to advance a theory of how narrative, and specifically fictionality, is one of the most powerful tools we have for understanding science, particularly those concepts that defy imagination. Centering her argument on a rhetorical approach to fictionality, she proposes that fiction uniquely offers a means of conceptualizing and understanding perplexing and counterintuitive scientific phenomena, such as recombinant DNA or quantum superposition: Through finding analogous patterns in fiction, we can open up new pathways to understanding. Put another way, our abilities to perceive strange and confounding science phenomena are bolstered and even enabled by our experiences with fiction.

Drawing on a range of theorists such as James Phelan, Gérard Genette, Erwin Schrödinger, and others in her analysis of texts by Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, Ursula K. Le Guin, Richard Powers, and many more, Trauvitch shows how literary forms--such as metafiction, metalepsis, and recursion--mirror and clarify complex scientific concepts including genetics, spacetime curvature, and quantum mechanics. In this way, she shows us how fiction is key to unlocking conceptual access to the indiscernible and inconceivable.