Science and literature, post-1945

July 5, 2006 5:24 PM

Next year I'm teaching a course on science and literature after 1945. What should I put on the syllabus?

The course will be a one-on-one tutorial with a college junior. Some names seem obvious (for example: Pynchon, DeLillo, Powers)--but I'm not sure what else would be interesting. Novels, poems, plays, experiments--anything literary that seems related to science after WW2 would be a possibility. Actually, so would not-strictly-literary items: psychology, Thomas Kuhn, and so on.

I'm teaching this in the spring, but thought I'd get started reading early--so give me some pointers!

posted by josh to society & culture (28 comments total)

Lem - His Master's Voice. An ton of insight into what scientific work is really like, and a grabby read.
posted by Wolfdog at 5:30 PM on July 5, 2006

A couple of plays: Dürrenmatt's "The Physicists" and Frayn's "Copenhagen".
posted by mr_roboto at 5:30 PM on July 5, 2006

James D. Watson, The Double Helix (about working out the structure of DNA). Great (although questionable on some level) account of an important discovery. I highly recommend the Norton Critical Edition, especially for its alternative accounts.
posted by bluefrog at 5:48 PM on July 5, 2006

And of course, Snow's Two Cultures
posted by bluefrog at 5:54 PM on July 5, 2006

Jonathan Lethem, As She Climbed Across The Table, is a good physics novel. Probably some piece of Oulipo, which in some ways was "experimental literature" with the word "experiment" used in its scientific sense.
posted by escabeche at 6:07 PM on July 5, 2006

Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 has some good science material, though it's not exactly about science.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 6:16 PM on July 5, 2006

Hmm... I can think of a bunch of books that comment on contemporary science, but it's hard to know exactly what themes you're aiming for. Selections from Martin Amis's Einstein's Monsters would be good choices, I think. In particular, "Bujak and the Strong Force" and the opening essay. The collection depicts paranoia about the cold war and nuclear physics very eloquently.

Hardened materialism vs. romantic humanism is a pretty common trope. Would that kind of stuff interest you? I thought Ian McEwan's Saturday was an interesting representation of a science-minded individual who didn't get fiction. (it included some riffs on quantum mechanics, too.) David Lodge's Thinks features a cognitive scientist as a main character, but it's not so great. I imagine that Lodge, doyen of the university comic novel, has other books about the campus lives of academic scientists (though I can't think of any others).

Is science fiction OK? (Your Powers reference suggests yes). It would be easy to pick out books that capture contemporary fears about the internet or cloning. Neuromancer, Never Let Me Go, etc.
posted by painquale at 6:20 PM on July 5, 2006

Oh, and Richard Feynman and Oliver Sacks would be great too.
posted by painquale at 6:22 PM on July 5, 2006

There are probably a few short Borges pieces that might fit the bill. "Del rigor en la ciencia", for instance.
posted by mr_roboto at 6:32 PM on July 5, 2006

Marguerite Duras's Hiroshima Mon Amour presents an interesting contrast of European perceptions of the war versus Japanese perceptions of the war, and (in my mind) dives into the psychological implications of having been young and in love during that time period, which I think would appeal to someone in their 20s. The film is superb, but I've seen just the screenplay (which is truly beautiful) assigned in a lot of French lit classes, so I don't see why you couldn't read it in translation for a lit course. (Or just "read" the subtitled film!)

Another interesting choice might be Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye. The narrator describes growing up in Canada during WWII, with her father as a biologist, and her brother grows up to work in astrophysics (if I'm remembering correctly). She speaks a lot about daily life during the war, and the debates between the father and the brother start to get into some of changing ideas about what "science" meant as post-modern nihilism starts coming in during the 50s. (The rest of it is a near-perfect exploration of friendship and competition between women; if your student is a hard-core science geek guy, it might not be interesting to him, though I'd argue it'd still be good for him.)

In a course I took on WWII, we read a book about the Enola Gay that I liked, and I'm thinking it was this one.
posted by occhiblu at 6:37 PM on July 5, 2006

(Hiroshima Mon Amour also spends a lot of time on the effects of the atomic bomb, and the environmental and medical fall-out from it.)
posted by occhiblu at 6:40 PM on July 5, 2006

Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle was the first thing that came to my mind. Definitely check it out.
posted by BackwardsCity at 6:43 PM on July 5, 2006

There's also a rather odd book called Nabokov's Butterflies which attempts to integrate his scientific and literary work via the juxtaposition of excerpts from both published and previously unpublished writings. I don't know how successful it is, but it's definitely worth a look: Nabokov was a literary giant of the second half of the 20th century, and he was an honest-to-goodness professional scientist, too.
posted by mr_roboto at 6:47 PM on July 5, 2006

I lied about the Enola Gay book. I think we actually read Enola Gay and the Court of History by Robert P. Newman. I remember discussing the Smithsonian exhibit, which is mentioned in the write-up for this one.
posted by occhiblu at 6:54 PM on July 5, 2006

Sigh. The publication dates mean that we couldn't have read the Newman book. I'll just say that I remember debating the Enola Gay exhibit, remember that debate being interesting, and recommend a book about the whole thing, even if I can't give you a title!
posted by occhiblu at 6:56 PM on July 5, 2006

The Sokal hoax might be fun for the final week.
posted by jmgorman at 7:13 PM on July 5, 2006

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
posted by Argyle at 7:14 PM on July 5, 2006

I'd be remiss if I didn't recommend looking at Asimov, as he was both scientist and ... literaturist? I'm afraid I don't know his corpus well beyond the obvious ten or twelve books. Arthur C. Clarke might also be worth looking into, especially if you wanted to look at the original paper in which he described geostationary satellite orbits.
posted by Emperor SnooKloze at 8:00 PM on July 5, 2006

I'm confused; is this an english course with a science bent or vice versa? Or do college courses no longer fall into such strict divisions (which I would've liked)?

Vonnegut, specifically Cat's Cradle, was the first thing I thought of too. Makes you think differently of literature and science. To a lesser literary degree, Contact by Carl Sagan.
posted by Terminal Verbosity at 8:09 PM on July 5, 2006

Hey everyone, thanks for so many great answers (please keep them coming!).

To clarify: I'm a teaching fellow in the English department (and a 'regular' English graduate student). Our department allows students who want to study something not covered by the course offerings to request special tutorial classes. In this case, a student (I'm guessing from the History of Science department) has requested a course on science and literature after WW2, which I'll be teaching this coming spring.

This is, in other words, definitely a literature class (which means no Isaac Asimov, for example, since he's not really literary). A few examples of science and literature in other time periods might help:

- Theories of evolution and nature red in tooth and claw and Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks;

- Copernicus, the size of the universe, and the 18th century travel novel (Gulliver's Travels);

- Psychology ("the stream of thought") and the modernist novel (Ulysses)

All of these are examples of literary works that draw upon (or in fact influence) the scientific thought of their time periods. And there are, of course, examples of scientific writing that is literary in character (for example, Freud's "Dora" or "Beyond the Pleasure Principle").

Ideally, I'd like to put together a syllabus that looks at major ideas in science over the last half-century--whether they 'panned out' or not--in a literary context. Quantum mechanics, AI, biotechnology, emergence, new spins on evolution, psychotherapy, neuroscience, etc.; a good example would be the recent fad for Jared Diamond-style deterministic geography. All that stuff seems up for grabs. I'm less interested in science fiction as such, although some examples (like Neuromancer) seem interesting.

I hope that helps--more suggestions, please, and thanks!
posted by josh at 8:21 PM on July 5, 2006

I did a science in literature class, I think the only post WW2 book we did was Calvino's t zero - I didn't get it :P

If you were doing technology in literature I would recommend Vonnegut's Player Piano. Strangely overlooked among his works, I feel that it really captures something important about the business of engineering.

Hmm.. What are the main themes for science in literature? Voyage of discovery, hubris, the whole is greater than the sum of parts, law of unintended consequences.. There must be a much more interesting list of themes to look at, just trying to figure out where to go with the question..
posted by Chuckles at 8:47 PM on July 5, 2006

Primo Levi's "The Periodic Table" is the first thing that comes to mind.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 9:04 PM on July 5, 2006

Ah, that's helpful. So you're not looking about books that are explicitly about science, but ones that are influenced by the science of the times. One theme you shouldn't miss is that of genetic determinism and the fear that we can't escape our biological imperatives. That's a pretty major part of the current zeitgeist. I really think Never Let Me Go is the book you want to use. (I love that book.)

Drug and pharmaceutical research has surely impacted themes in literature since the 50s. In the 60s and 70s, perception became malleable, and in the last couple of decades, personality became malleable. I can think of a couple of recent books that focus on the way we get to sculpt new identites using drugs... but unfortunately, no good ones. (Well, there's a bit of it in White Noise, but not much.)

Sounds like a fun course to design.
posted by painquale at 9:34 PM on July 5, 2006

As a scientist who really likes to read, I strongly agree with your choice of Powers (Goldbug Variations is probably the best here). I also second Ian McEwan's Saturday, and I thought A.S. Byatt did a good job with the neurobiology in The Whistling Woman (admittedly, a small part of the book). Stanislaw Lem is also a good suggestion (I would recommend Solaris). I would also suggest some of Tom Stoppard's plays (Jumpers, Arcadia), as well as Michael Frayn's Copenhagen. Carl Djerrasi may be of interest, as well as lablit.com. You might also take a look at the science fiction pieces that have been published in Nature recently, as well as in 2000 (though these may be too much science and too little literature), as well as the Daedalus column that used to be published in Nature.
posted by pombe at 9:37 PM on July 5, 2006

Gerald Vizenor's The Heirs of Columbus deals with new/novel applications of biotechnology and the processes of evolution, especially in the last third of the book. Vizenor's focus is on the genetic signature of (indigenous) cultural survivance and its potential to heal. As such, he deals with hard science from a decidedly different perspective. For example

"Molecular biologists and genetic engineers representing five countries rushed to the new tribal nation in search of a place to conduct their genetic research without state or federal restrictions. The research on polymerase chain reaction in gene copies, genetic therapies, intro, and intromission, for instance, was unwarrantable and banned in most nations to protect the interests of major pharmaceutical companies. Thosands of wounded children would be humored, honored, and healed in Point Assinika" (132).
posted by lumiere at 3:57 AM on July 6, 2006

The Sokal hoax might be fun for the final week.

Excellent idea!
posted by languagehat at 5:47 AM on July 6, 2006

this sounds like a great course. I'd like to take it.

houellebecq's elementary particles comes to mind.

there are also contemporary books that explore consciousness through a narrator with an unusual perspective, ie, mark haddon's curious incident... (autism) or jonatham letham's motherless brooklyn (tourette's).

ray kurzweil's age of spiritual machines has a (pretty bad) fiction segment intertwined into it (a conversation with a future robot, IIRC).

the soviet author victor pelevin? maybe that's more mystical-esque than really science-y. It's definitely 'literature of ideas in a late 20 c. context,' though.

of those I mentioned, I would only unquestioningly recommend houellebecq & pelevin as writers, and the former is a true misanthrope if you've not tried him before (I think he's good, but it kinda hurts)
posted by mdn at 6:08 AM on July 6, 2006

Do the "human sciences" count? I'm coming to this late... but it seems that much depends on whether you're more interested in physics and chemistry (and AI and nanotech) or in sociology, urban design, and psychotherapy. Especially since the post-war period took on the question of the humanities as a science explicitly (and this had an enormous impact on literature.)
posted by anotherpanacea at 1:26 PM on July 13, 2006