Published by De Gruyter

Literatur- und Naturwissenschaften

Edited by: Klaus Mecke, Christine Lubkoll and Aura Heydenreich

ISSN: 2365-3434

e-ISSN 2365-3949

Overview
Volumes

The series Literature and the Natural Sciences is published under the auspices of the Erlangen Research Center for Literature and Natural Science (ELINAS). Researchers from different academic disciplines pool their expertise and methodological know-how to examine how language is used in scientific research and how scientific forms of knowledge are negotiated in literature. The series is conceived as an interdisciplinary platform that reflects on the cultural significance of scientific and literary research, as well as on the rhetoric and ethics of research in the natural sciences more broadly.

Book 2023

Bertolt Brechts Interferenz mit der Quantenphysik

Das moderne Theater und die moderne Physik

Lukas Mairhofer

Volume 8 in this series

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Quantum mechanics and Brecht’s “epic theater” contemporaneously shattered the paradigm of detached observation. In two fields, assumptions were cast in doubt regarding the continuity and strict causality of the investigated processes and the singularity and identity of the observed objects. Brecht drew far-reaching aesthetic and ethical inferences from the reconceptualization of the atom and individual and their epistemological relationship.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110546354
ISBN:: 9783110546354
ISBN:: 9783110546538
ISBN:: 9783110546347
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: German Literature
Subject:: 20th Century
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Sciences
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book Open Access 2017

Zwischen Literatur und Naturwissenschaft

Debatten – Probleme – Visionen 1680–1820

Rudolf Freiburg, Christine Lubkoll, Harald Neumeyer

Volume 5 in this series

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The 18^th century witnessed diverse interactions between literature and natural science. Literary texts developed scientific themes, while scientific discourse employed literary techniques. Using representative case studies, this volume examines paradigms and transitions in the history of science (mechanics, geography, botany, chemistry/alchemy) and ways of writing and communicating (the Muses’ Almanac, didactic poetry, encyclopedias, etc.).

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110528114
ISBN:: 9783110528114
ISBN:: 9783110526509
ISBN:: 9783110523102
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Comparative Literary Studies
Subject:: German Literature
Subject:: 16th-17th Century
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Knowledge
Subject:: Sciences
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book Open Access 2017

Sprache in Wissenschaft und Dichtung

Diskursive Formationen von Mathematik, Physik, Logik und Dichtung im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert

Manuel Illi

Volume 4 in this series

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In the 17^th and 18^th centuries, language and linguistic reflections were a central determinant of the discursive relationship between mathematics, physics, logic, and literature. The volume traces these constellations, examining linguistic, technical, and poetological texts to reveal the close connections between the language of literature, poetology, and scientific discourse.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110464252
ISBN:: 9783110464252
ISBN:: 9783110464436
ISBN:: 9783110464238
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Studies, general
Subject:: German Literature
Subject:: German Literature, general
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Sciences
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book Open Access 2021

Physics and Literature

Concepts – Transfer – Aestheticization

Aura Heydenreich, Klaus Mecke

Volume 3 in this series

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Physics and Literature is a unique collaboration between physicists, literary scholars, and philosophers, the first collection of essays to examine together how science and literature, beneath their practical differences, share core dimensions – forms of questioning, thinking, discovering and communicating insights.This book advances an in-depth exploration of relations between physics and literature from both perspectives. It turns around the tendency to discuss relations between literature and science in one-sided and polarizing ways. The collection is the result of the inaugural conference of ELINAS, the Erlangen Center for Literature and Natural Science, an initiative dedicated to building bridges between literary and scientific research. ELINAS revitalizes discussion of science-literature interconnections with new topics, ideas and angles, by organizing genuine dialogue among participants across disciplinary lines.
The essays explore how scientific thought and practices are conditioned by narrative and genre, fiction, models and metaphors, and how science in turn feeds into the meaning-making of literary and philosophical texts. These interdisciplinary encounters enrich reflections on epistemology, cognition and aesthetics.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110481112
ISBN:: 9783110481112
ISBN:: 9783110479577
ISBN:: 9783110481259
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Studies, general
Subject:: German Literature
Subject:: German Literature, general
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Sciences
Subject:: Physics
Subject:: Physics, other
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book Open Access 2015

Quarks and Letters

Naturwissenschaften in der Literatur und Kultur der Gegenwart

Aura Heydenreich, Klaus Mecke

Volume 2 in this series

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Issues and insights from the fields of brain research, quantum mechanics, and evolutionary theory have passed into novels, and physicists and biologists often use rhetorical metaphors to communicate and even evoke their discoveries. The essays in this volume examine natural scientific themes in literary texts – such as the novels of Richard Powers, Can Hue, and Raoul Schrott – and the use of rhetoric and metaphor in the natural sciences.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110406542
ISBN:: 9783110406351
ISBN:: 9783110406542
ISBN:: 9783110417609
Subject:: Cultural Studies
Subject:: General Cultural Studies
Subject:: General Interest
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Sciences
Subject:: Physics
Subject:: Atom, Molecular and Plasma Physics
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book Open Access 2015

Physik und Poetik

Produktionsästhetik und Werkgenese. Autorinnen und Autoren im Dialog

Aura Heydenreich, Klaus Mecke

Volume 1 in this series

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Physics and literature are two forms of knowing the world that are both complementary and contingent. Poetical-physical ways of writing and metaphors in physical theories are two sides of a coin. Interviews with Ulrike Draesner, Durs Grünbein, Michael Hampe, Jens Harder, Reinhard Jirgl, Thomas Lehr, Ulrich Woelk, and Juli Zeh enrich our knowledge of these two cultures through voices familiar with both sides.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110440362
ISBN:: 9783110406511
ISBN:: 9783110440362
ISBN:: 9783110417883
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: German Literature
Subject:: German Literature, general
Subject:: 21st Century
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Sciences
Subject:: Physics
Subject:: Physics, other
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book Open Access 2024

Literatur und Naturwissenschaft: Interformation und epistemische Transformation

Literatur in Wechselwirkung mit Astronomie, Mikrobiologie, Relativitätstheorie und Quantenphysik

Aura Heydenreich

Volume 9 in this series

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This volume establishes theoretical and methodological principles on the relationship between literature and science. It combines approaches from the fields of cultural semiotics, narratology, and the philosophy of science, and supplements the range of existing approaches toward the nexus of literature and knowledge with a new approach, that of interformation, informed by semiotic and narrative theory, and reflecting on the theory of physics.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.0000/9783110729887
ISBN:: 9783110729887
ISBN:: 9783110726978
ISBN:: 9783110730012
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Sciences
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book Open Access 2024

Narrative and Cognition in Literature and Science

Michael Sinding, Aura Heydenreich, Klaus Mecke

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This volume explores cognitive perspectives on how science and narrative shape one another.

Narrative is a principle of cognition, and cognition is fundamental to narrative. This duality enables a deeper mapping of the feedback between story and the natural sciences.

Science, as a culturally-organized and systematic mode of knowing the world, may seem opposed to narrative thinking. Yet they are deeply interwoven.

Scientists tell many kinds of stories, across genres and media. In thought experiments, lab experiments, written arguments, and histories and philosophies of fields, they recount and interpret unfoldings of events at often uncanny scales—from particle collisions to the evolution of life to cosmic expansion.

Science stories go beyond science. Early science is entwined with myth, religion and magic. We still mythologize beneficent or evil geniuses, the promises and perils of technology. Teachers, journalists, politicians and lawyers all tell science stories for their own purposes. Literary artists use scientific ideas and forms, reimagining physical forces, causality and time in storyworlds, themes and figures.

This is the first cognition-focused multi-disciplinary analysis of these narrative-science relations.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.0000/9783110782844
ISBN:: 9783110782844
ISBN:: 9783110782790
ISBN:: 9783110782875
Subject:: Linguistics and Semiotics
Subject:: Semiotics
Subject:: Cognitive Semiotics
Subject:: Cultural Semiotics
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Narratology
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Sciences
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2022

Analogie zwischen Wissenschaft und Ästhetik

Eine Vermittlungsfigur der Moderne bei Kant, Novalis und Goethe

Sarah Maria Teresa Goeth

Volume 7 in this series

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This volume examines the significance of the analogy at the intersection between science and aesthetics around 1800. To do so, it analyzes the analogy’s mathematical and rhetorical origins in antiquity and uses them as a starting point to trace its return in modernity, where it built new bridges as a mediating figure between seemingly incompatible systems of difference.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110986969
ISBN:: 9783110986969
ISBN:: 9783110998085
ISBN:: 9783110986983
Subject:: General Interest
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: German Literature
Subject:: 18th Century
Subject:: 19th Century
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Sciences
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book Open Access 2020

Literarische Wissenschaftsgeschichte und Wissenschaftstheorie

Kehlmann – Del Giudice – Serres

Bernadette Malinowski

Volume 6 in this series

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The book examines the work of Daniel Kehlmann, Daniele del Giudice, and Michel Serres to show how writers’ reception of science has engendered a literary epistemology and history of science in the spirit of a poetica scientiae. This new approach subjects questions that science has kept unasked, open, or stifled to meticulous and often surprising ruminations, providing science with a corrective through poetics and hermeneutics.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110642384
ISBN:: 9783110642384
ISBN:: 9783110639827
ISBN:: 9783110639742
Subject:: General Interest
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Comparative Literary Studies
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Sciences
Publisher:: De Gruyter