Fiction Refracts Science: Modernist Writers from Proust to Borges

312 Pages·2005·1.101 MB·English

by  Allen Thiher

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Fiction
Refracts
Science
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Fiction
Refracts
Science
Modernist Writers
from Proust to Borges
Allen Thiher
University of Missouri Press
Columbia and London
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Copyright © 2005by
The Curators of the University of Missouri
University of Missouri Press, Columbia, Missouri 65201
Printed and bound in the United States of America
All rights reserved
5 4 3 2 1 09 08 07 06 05
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Thiher, Allen, 1941–
Fiction refracts science : modernist writers from Proust to Borges / Allen Thiher.
p. cm.
Summary: “Examines the relationship between science and the fiction developed by
modernists, including Musil, Proust, Kafka, and Joyce. Looks at Pascalian and Newtonian
cosmology, Darwinism, epistemology, relativity theory, quantum mechanics, the development
of modernist and postmodern fiction, positivism, and finally works by Woolf, Faulkner, and
Borges”—Provided by publisher.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8262-1580-7(alk. paper)
1. Literature and science. 2. Science in literature. 3. Fiction—20th century—History
and criticism. I. Title.
PN3352.S34T55 2005
809'.9336—dc22 2004029232
™ This paper meets the requirements of the
American National Standard for Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48, 1984.
Designer: Stephanie Foley
Typesetter: Phoenix Type, Inc.
Printer and binder: Thomson-Shore, Inc.
Typeface: Granjon
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For Irma
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
A Brief Overview xi
Introduction Prefatory Thoughts on Two or More Cultures 1
Chapter One What the Modernists Knew about the History
of Science from Pascal to Heisenberg 18
Chapter Two Robert Musil and the Dilemma of Modernist
Epistemology 59
Chapter Three Proust, Poincaré, and Contingency 100
Chapter Four Kafka’s Search for Laws 135
Chapter Five James Joyce and the Laws of Everything 172
Chapter Six Modernist Thought Experiments after Joyce 211
Chapter Seven Conclusion: Science and Postmodernity 246
Bibliography 277
Index 287
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Acknowledgments
This book began to take shape in courses taught at the University of
Missouri-Columbia and in research undertaken for a preceding volume about
literature and science. It took on its precise form during a year spent as a visit-
ing fellow at Clare Hall at Cambridge University. I give hearty thanks to the
Research Council at the University of Missouri for the research leave that al-
lowed me to take advantage of the stimulating environment and the research
facilities at Cambridge, and to Clare Hall and its fellows for their generous re-
ception and especially for the many discussions that stimulated my work and
ideas. I would also like to express my gratitude to the students and faculty in
the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge who or-
ganized reading groups from which I profited, as well as to Cambridge’s Isaac
Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences, whose open doors granted a neo-
phyte cosmologist entry into colloquia on some of the most exciting research
taking place today. Specific debts of gratitude must also be expressed to those
who read part or all of this work in manuscript, such as Sandy Camargo, Au-
drey Glauert, Noah Heringman, David Hayman, and Timothy Materer. And
of course special thanks to Irma Dimitrova for readings and much more.
ix