Academic Evolution and Hybridization:
Literature and The Sciences
An Interdisciplinary Symposium
November 24-25, 2008
Black Cultural Center (New Location)
1800 Melrose Ave.
9:00am - 4:30pm
The University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Hosted by the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology faculty colloquy
Click here to view full Program
Ever since C.P. Snow’s famed “The Two Cultures” manifesto in 1959, there has been debate over how the “soft” sciences and the “hard” sciences interrelate. In recent years, literary study has fostered a growing number of new, scientifically tinged methodologies. Such efforts as these, which view the arts as connected empirically to the natural state of the human animal, offer a startling new perspective on how the arts, in this case literature, can be studied as part of a scientific examination of behavior.
From the opposite direction, some scientists have come to advocate a vision of reality that embraces some of the lessons and sensitivities of aesthetics. Such holistic approaches to science search for ways to emphasize the qualitative aspect of scientific work. For this type of scientist, art itself becomes a place for learning how to explore and reconceptualize empirical data.
These two innovative tendencies come from radically different sets of underlying assumptions. It is vital that they be brought into direct contact, with the hope that each will have a special light to shed on the other. This symposium hopes to foster a clear set of questions concerning the epistemological claims of both literature (as representative of the fine arts) and the natural sciences, seen as simultaneously expressive and knowledge-oriented.
The symposium will consist of four half-day sessions, each centered around a keynote lecture by an eminent visiting scholar. Local participants' talks will complement the keynote lectures. Papers will address the boundary zone between the sciences and the arts from various perspectives.
The keynote speakers and focal topics are:
Monday, Nov. 24:
Peter Godfrey-Smith (Professor of Philosophy,
“Models and Fictions in Science.”
Science spends a lot of time discussing entities and systems that are known to be fictions - infinite populations, perfectly rational agents, and the like. In which ways are these things similar to the fictions of literature, and in which ways are they different? To what extent can we see the same faculties of human imagination at work in these two areas?
Peter Godfrey-Smith is author of Complexity and the Function of Mind in Nature (Cambridge, 1996) and Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science (Chicago, 2003). Current projects include a new book, Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection (which will appear with Oxford in 2009), and a book in progress on Dewey.
Arthur Zajonc (Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Physics,
“Toward an Integrative Understanding of Science.”
Science and the arts surely are distinct, but I will argue that
C. P Snow's division of the two cultures is founded not on a deep
understanding of these domains but on a superficial set of differences.
By turning toward the central cognitive-imaginative act of scientist and
artist, we can locate the common core of these enterprises. Moreover, we
come to appreciate the conditions and practices that lead to becoming an
artist or scientist, which transcend particular knowledge and skills but
which are essential to the actual practice of creative art and original
science. By attending to this axial dimension of genuine art and
science, we uncover the genius in each and also an oft overlooked
pedagogical principle.
Arthur Zajonc's many authored and edited books include:
The New Physics and Cosmology Dialogues with the Dalai Lama (with Zarah Houshmand, Oxford, 2004), Catching the Light: The Entwined History of Light and Mind (Oxford, 1995), The Quantum Challenge: Modern Research on the Foundations of Quantum (with George Greenstein; Jones and Bartlett, 1997), and Goethe's Way of Science: A Phenomenology of Nature (with David Seamon: State University of New York Press, 1993).
Tuesday, Nov. 25:
Brian Boyd (University Distinguished Professor of English, University of
“Heads and Tales.”
Why do humans spend so much time in concocting and consuming stories: why have we evolved into a storytelling species? What implications does understanding storytelling as a natural human behavior have for literary theory and for literary criticism? And how can studying literature help science probe human minds and behavior past and present?
Brian Boyd is best known for his books on and editions of work by Nabokov, including his two-volume biography, Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years and Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years and his books on Pale Fire and Ada. Books in press include an edition of Nabokov’s verse translations, Verse and Versions (co-edited with Stanislav Shvabrin, Harcourt Houghton Mifflin, November 2008); On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction (Belknap/Harvard, May 2009); Evolutionary Approaches to Literature: A Reader in Art and Science (co-edited with Joseph Carroll and Jonathan Gottschall, Columbia, fall 2009) and an edition of Nabokov’s Pale Fire. He is currently researching a biography of philosopher of science Karl Popper and will edit the remaining twelve volumes of Nabokov’s uncollected or unpublished work.
Pierre Laszlo (Professor of Chemistry,
“The Circulation of Concepts.”
A major obstacle to chemistry being a deductive science is that its core concepts very often are defined in
circular manner: it is impossible to explain what an acid is without reference to the complementary concept of a base. There are many such dual pairs among the core concepts of chemistry. Such circulation of concepts, rather than an
infirmity chemistry is beset with, is seen as a source of vitality and dynamism.
Pierre Laszlo has written 17 books, including most recently Citrus: A History; Salt: A Grain of Life; and Communicating Science: A Practical Guide. He has written extensively on organic spectroscopy, on the history and philosophy of chemistry, on literature and philosophy, on the language of science, on the science of perfume, on science as play, and much more.
Program is now available. Registration is open to all, and free, at the symposium.
For more information, please email Stephen Blackwell.
Sponsored by the UTK College of Arts and Sciences Humanities Initiative, the Haines-Morris Endowment, and the Departments of Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures, Physics, Philosophy, English, and the University Studies program. Site art created by Sarah Stanhope. Site design: S. Blackwell.