Contents

• General Description
• Texts
• Provisional Course Requirements
• Provisional Schedule
• Select Bibliography of Reference Materials

General Description

This course discusses readings, 1800-the present, from works of literature and of science that share a common concern with scientific topics, that is, texts from imaginative genres (poetry, plays, short stories, science fiction) and from scientific ones (the treatise, popular science reporting, travel diary, essay, and the autobiography). The course groups these topics into seven areas: the history of science and its relation to literature and imaginative thinking, cosmological theories (of everything), geology and evolution, physics and chemistry, genetics, cognitivity, and futurology. Specific fields represented in course readings include the life and death of the earth and the universe (Adams, Atkins, Bear), evolution and human engineering (Shelley, Darwin, Clarke), relativity (Einstein), fundamental particle theory (Levi, Amis), genetics (James Watson, Dawkins), linguistic anthropology (Ian Watson), neuroscience (Sacks, Damasio), and quantum theory (Born, Simmons).

Texts

All print editions (starred *) are available from the Bob Miller Book Room, 180 Bloor Street West, Toronto, Ont. M5S 2V6. 416-922-3557. All texts are held together on a separate shelf there.

Other texts are available on-line through the course Web page.

Literary Works

• * Adams, Douglas. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. 1979.
• * Amis, Martin. Einstein's Monsters. 1987.
• Arnold, Matthew. "Literature and Science." 1882. Available on-line.
• * Bear, Greg. The Forge of God. 1987.
• * Eliot, T. S. Four Quartets. 1968.
• *Clarke, Arthur C. Childhood's End. 1954.
• Keats, John. Selected poems and letters. Available on-line.
• * Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus. The 1818 Text. Ed. Marilyn Butler. 1994.
• Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Defence of Poetry. Available on-line.
• * Simmons, Dan. The Hollow Man. 1993.
• * Stoppard, Tom. Arcadia. 1995.
• Tennyson, Alfred lord. "In Memoriam." Available on-line.
• * Watson, Ian. The Embedding. 1973.

Scientific works

• * Atkins, Peter. Creation Revisited: The Origin of Space, Time and the Universe. 1992: Penguin, 1994.
• * Carey, John, ed. The Faber Book of Science. London: Faber and Faber, 1995.
• * Darwin, Charles. Voyage of the Beagle. Ed. Janet Browne and Michael Neve. Penguin, 1839.
• * Damasio, Antonio R. Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York: Avon, 1994..
• Huxley, Thomas. "Science and Culture." 1880. Available on-line. Also Available on-line: "The Progress of Science" (1887).
• * Mason, Stephen F. A History of the Sciences. 1962.
• * Watson, James D., The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA. Ed. Gunther S. Stent. New York: W. W. Norton, 1980.

Additional Recommended Reading

• Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 2nd edn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970.

Provisional Course Requirements

The course grade will consist of a first term test, an essay, a seminar paper, seminar participation, and a final examination, as follows:

1. seminar paper (10 pages; written copy to be handed in)--20%.
2. Dec. 5: first-term test--10%.
3. 2,000-word essay--20% (due Jan. 9 and April 13).
4. informed seminar participation--10%.
5. April-May: 3-hour final examination--40%.

Each week the course will have two lecture-classes and one class for discussion of a topic. A student will prepare a 25-minute paper to introduce each seminar. This paper will normally be based on a book or article or journal. The seminar paper must be handed in at the end of the seminar.

The course paper will discuss how one English literary author of the 19th or 20th century incorporates science in his life and works. Topic authors include John Keats, Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Alfred lord Tennyson, Lewis Carroll (all 19th-century); and T. S. Eliot, William Golding, Dan Simmons, Tom Stoppard, and Ursula Le Guin (all 20th century). These papers will have a research component: you will have to read their works and biographies. Essays must be handed into me personally into class or date-stamped at the Porter's Lodge at Wetmore Hall. No e-mail submissions. Late essays will be penalized 5% per day late.

Sensibly, you should do your seminar paper in one term, and your essay in the other. Students who choose seminar topics in the first term should do essays in the second, and vice versa. Every student should meet with me to discuss the seminar topic before giving the paper.

The compulsary final exam will be administered by the Faculty and will cover the complete course.

Provisional Schedule

• First Term

  • Week 1: Sept. 8, 10, 12. Preliminaries.
    • Introduction. Sources. Analyzing the creative and the scientific imagination and rhetoric.

  • Week 2: Sept. 15, 17, 19. General--Science 1800-1900.
    • READINGS: Selections from Carey, John, ed., The Faber Book of Science (1995): 58-210. Mason, Stephen F., A History of the Sciences (1962): 395-526.

  • Week 3: Sept. 22, 24, 26. General--Science 1900-present.
    • READINGS: Selections from Carey, John, ed. The Faber Book of Science (1995): 211-516. Mason, Stephen F. A History of the Sciences (1962): 527-606.

  • Week 4: Sept. 29, Oct. 1, 3. General--Science and Literature
    • READINGS: Huxley, Thomas, "Science and Culture" (1880); Arnold, Matthew, "Literature and Science" (1882), both on the Course Web page. Snow, Charles Percy, Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (1993). AZ 361 S56 1993 ROBA.

  • Week 5: Oct. 6, 8, 10. General--Recent Theories of Everything ("toes").
    • READING: Atkins, Peter. Creation Revisited: The Origin of Space, Time and the Universe. (1994).

  • Week 6: Oct. 13 (Thanksgiving; no class), 15, 17. General--Recent Theories of Everything theorized.
    • READING: literary theory (see UTEL lexicon by Henderson and Brown); and scientific theories, especially in Kuhn, Thomas S. "Postscript," The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd edn. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970).

  • Week 7: Oct. 20, 22, 24. General--Recent Theories of Everything: parody or restatement?
    • READING: Adams, Douglas, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. (1979).
    • SEMINAR TOPIC: Northrop Frye's The Anatomy of Criticism.

  • Week 8:Oct. 27, 29, 31. Nature--Geology and Evolution.
    • READING: Darwin, Charles, Voyage of the Beagle, ed. Janet Browne and Michael Neve (1839).
    • SEMINAR TOPIC: Schiaperelli's discovery (cf. Johnson and Clareson) and the Mars mission 1997 (on-line and off-line).

  • Week 9: Nov. 3, 5, 7. Nature--Geology and Evolution.
    • READING: Tennyson, Alfred lord, "In Memoriam" (1850). Course Web page.
    • SEMINAR TOPIC: Charles S. Blinderman's "The Great Bone Case."

  • Week 10: Nov. 10, 12, 14. Nature--Physics and Chemistry
    • Core Texts: Levi, Primo, "The Story of a Carbon Atom" (1986; Carey, pp. 338-44); Frisch, Otto, Murray Gell-Mann, and John Updike, "Otto Fleish Explains Atomic Particles" (1960-94; Carey, pp. 403-15).
    • SEMINAR TOPIC: Pamela Zodine, "The Heat Death of the Universe," The Heat Death of the Universe and other Stories (Telluride, Col., 1988). PS 3576 O36H43 1987 ROBA.

  • Week 11: Nov. 17, 19, 21. Nature--Physics and Chemistry
    • READING: Amis, Martin, Einstein's Monsters (1987).
    • SEMINAR TOPIC: the literature of the Hiroshima bomb (see Hersey and Hiroshima).

  • Week 12: Nov. 24, 26, 28. Nature--Physics and Chemistry
    • READINGS: Einstein, Albert, Bertrand Russell, A. S. Eddington and others, "Relating Relativity" (1920-46; Carey, pp. 267-76); Bridgman, F. W., and others, "Uncertainty and Other Worlds" (1929-94; Carey, pp. 277-80); and Born, Max, "Quantum Mechanics: Mines and Machine Guns" (1956; Carey, pp. 281-85).
    • SEMINAR TOPIC: the end of science? (John Horgan)

  • Week 13: Dec. 1, 3, 5.
    • READING: writing popular science.
    • SEMINAR TOPIC: Bliss's Discovery of Insulin.
    • FIRST TERM TEST (Dec. 5)

• Second Term.
  • Week 1: Jan. 5, 7, 9. Nature--Physics and Chemistry
    • READING: T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets (1936-44).
    • SEMINAR TOPIC: Bay-Petersen's "T. S. Eliot and Einstein."

  • Week 2: Jan. 12, 14, 16. Nature--Physics and Chemistry
    • READING: Simmons, Dan, The Hollow Man (1993).
    • SEMINAR TOPIC: Carl Sagan, "Newton's Sleep," The Demon-Haunted World (1996): 265-79. Q 175 S215 1995X PASC.

  • Week 3: Jan. 19, 21, 23. Nature--Physics and Chemistry
    • READING: Stoppard, Tom, Arcadia (1995).
    • ANNOTATED ESSAY BIBLIOGRAPHY DUE
    • SEMINAR TOPIC: Hawkins' Strange Attractors.

  • Week 4: Jan. 26, 28, 30. Humanity--Genetics
    • READING: Watson, James D., The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA, ed. Gunther S. Stent (New York: W. W. Norton, 1980).
    • SEMINAR TOPIC: W. B. Yeats' "The Second Coming" and the gyres of history (course Web page)

  • Week 5: Feb. 2, 4, 6. Humanity--engineering ourselves
    • READING: Shelley, Mary, Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus. The 1818 Text, ed. Marilyn Butler (1994).
    • SEMINAR TOPIC: Donawerth's Frankenstein's Daughters.

  • Week 6: Feb. 9, 11, 13. Humanity--Evolution revisited
    • SEMINAR TOPIC: Dawkins, Richard, "Willow Seeds and the Encyclopedia Britannica" (1986; Carey, 482-87); Jones, Steve, "The Language of the Genes" (1991; Carey, pp. 505-7).
    • SEMINAR TOPIC: Scopes' Court Trial.

  • Feb. 16-21: Reading Week
  • Week 7: Feb. 23, 25, 27. Humanity--Cognitivity
    • READING: Watson, Ian, The Embedding (1973).
    • SEMINAR TOPIC: Meyers' Aliens and Linguists.

  • Week 8: March 2, 4, 6.
    • READINGS: Sacks, Oliver, "The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat" (1985; Carey, pp. 460-66); and "An Anthropologist on Mars," An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales (1995): 244-96.
    • SEMINAR TOPIC: Sacks' Awakenings (film and book)

  • Week 9: March 9, 11, 13. Humanity--Cognitivity
    • READING: Antonio R. Damasio, Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (1994).
    • SEMINAR TOPIC: brain research published recently in Nature

  • Week 10: March 16, 18, 20. Humanity--Cognitivity
    • READINGS: Keats, John, selected letters and poems; Shelley, Percy Bysshe, "Defence of Poetry" (1821; course Web page
    • SEMINAR TOPIC: "the language gene" (Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct (1994)).

  • Week 11: March 23, 25, 27. Humanity--and the future
    • READING: Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood's End (1954).
    • SEMINAR TOPIC: SETI (see Search and SETI).

  • Week 12: March 30, April 1, 3. Humanity--and the future
    • READING: Bear, Greg, The Forge of God (New York: Ace, 1985).
    • SEMINAR TOPIC: Isaac Asimov, "The Good Earth is Dying" (1971; in Carey, 508-16).

  • Week 13: April 6, 8. Overview.

Select Bibliography

• Abrams, M. H. "Science and Poetry in Romantic Criticism." The Mirror and the Lamp. New York: Oxford University Press, 1953. PN 769 R7A2 ROBA
• Amsler, Mark, ed. Creativity and the Imagination: Case Studies from the Classical Age to the Twentieth Century. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1987. BF 408 C7546 1987 ROBA See Leonard Isaacs, "Creation and Responsibility in Science: Some Lessons from the Modern Prometheus," pp. 59-104 [Shelley's Frankenstein; Watson and Crick]; and Stephen Brush's "History and Geology as Ways of Studying the Past," pp. 105-33 [Lyell]
• Barnie, John. No Hiding Place: Essays on the New Nature and Poetry. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1996. PR 605 N3B37 1996 ROBA
• Barr, Marleen S. Feminist Fabulation: Space/Postmodern Fiction. Iowa City: U of Iowa Press, 1992. PN 3401 B38 1992 ROBA
• Bay-Petersen, Ole. "T. S. Eliot and Einstein: The Fourth Dimension in the Four Quartets." English Studies (Netherlands) 66.2 (April 1985): 143-55. PE 1 E55 ROBA
• Bender, Bart. The Descent of Love: Darwin and the Theory of Sexual Selection in American Fiction, 1871-1926. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania Press, 1996. PS 374 L6B46 1996 ROBA
• Benjamin, Marina, ed. A Question of Identity: Women, Science, and Literature. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1993. 809.93352042/Q5 OISE
• "Bibliography: Literature and Science." Clio: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Literature 4 (1974-). AS 30 C53 ROBA
• Bleiler, Everett, and Franklin, eds., Science Fiction Writers: Critical Studies of the Major Authors from the Early Nineteenth Century to the Present Day. New York: Scribner's, 1982.
• Blinderman, Charles S. "The Great Bone Case." Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 14 (1970-71): 370-93. QH 301 P4 )2 BMES
• Bliss, Michael. The Discovery of Insulin. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1982. QP 572 I5 B54 VUPT
• Bohnenkamp, Dennis. "Post-Einsteinian Physics and Literature: Towards a New Poetics," Mosaic 22.3 (Summer 1989): 19-30. PN 851 M6 ROBA
• Broderick, Damien. Reading by Starlight: Postmodern Science Fiction. London: Routledge, 1995. PS 374 S35B76 1995 ROBA
• Carroll, Joseph. Evolution and Critical Theory. Columbia: U of Missouri Press, 1995. PN 55 C37 1995 ROBA
• Chandler, Marilyn R., "Eliot, Einstein, and the East." Approaches to Teaching Eliot's Poetry and Plays, ed. Brokker, Jewel Spears (New York: MLA, 1988): 158-61. PS 3509 L43Z624 ROBA
• Donawerth, Jane. Frankenstein's Daughters: Women Writing Science Fiction. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1997. PS 374 S35D66 1997X ROBA
• Dutton, Denis, and Michael Krausz, eds. The Concept of Creativity in Science and Art. The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1981. BH 301 C84 C66 SCAR
• Emme, Eugene M., ed. Science Fiction and Space Futures: Past and Present. San Diego: American Astronautical Society, 1982. P 96 S34S28 1982 ROBA
• Gardner, Joseph H. "A Huxley Essay as `Poem.'" Victorian Studies 14 (1970-71): 177-91. [Re: "On the Physical Basis of Life"] PR 643 V5 ROBA
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• Gliserman, Susan. "Early Victorian Science Writers and Tennyson's `In Memoriam': A Study in Cultural Exchange." Victorian Studies 18 (1974-75): 277-308, 437-59. PR 463 V5 ROBA
• Goellnight, Donald C. The Poet-Physician: Keats and Medical Science. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh Press, 1984. PR 4838 M4G63 ROBA
• Gross, Alan G. The Rhetoric of Science. 1990: Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996. [Darwin; Watson and Crick] Q 223 G77 1990 PASC
• Hawkins, Harriett. Strange Attractors: Literature, Culture, and Chaos. New York: Prentice Hall, 1995. PN 771 H348 1995 ROBA
• Hersey, John. Hiroshima. New York: Knof, 1985. D 767 .25 H6H4 ROBA
• Hiroshima: Three Witnesses. Ed. and trans. Richard H. Minear. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. D 767 .25 H6H672 1990 ROBA
• Horgan, John. The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age. London: Little, Brown, 1996. Q 175 H66 1996 ERIN and SCAR
• Hough, Graham. "The Natural Theology of In Memoriam." Review of English Studies 23 (1947): 244-56. PR 1 R39 02 ROBA
• Johnson, William B., and Thomas D. Clareson. "The Interplay of Science and Fiction: The Canals of Mars." Extrapolation 5 (1963-64): 37-39; cf. 40-48. PS 374 S35E9 ROBA
• Kemp, Peter. H. G. Wells and the Culminating Ape: Biological Themes and Imaginative Obsessions. London: Macmillan, 1982. PR 5778 B55 K4 ROBA
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• Kuberski, Philip. Chaosmos: Literature, Science, and Theory. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994. PN 49 K78 1994 ROBA
• Lerner, Frederick Andrew. Modern Science Fiction and the American Literary Community. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1985. PS 374 S35L4 1985 ROBA
• Levi, Primo. The Periodic Table. Trans. Raymond Rosenthal. London: Abacus, 1986. [memoir] PQ 4872 .E8S513 1984 TRIN
• Lewes, Dorothy. Dream Revisionaries: Gender and Genre in Women's Utopian Fiction, 1870-1920. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1995. PR 830 U7 L4 1995 Victoria College Library
• Livingston, Paisley. Literary Knowledge: Humanistic Inquiry and the Philosophy of Science. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988. PN 49 .L54 1988 SMC
• Lundeen, Kathleen. "Keats's Post-Newtonian Poetics." Keats-Shelley Journal 44 (1995): 102-16. PR 4836 A14
• Meadows, A. J. The High Firmament: A Survey of Astronomy in English Literature. Leicester: Leicester UP, 1969. PR 151 A7M4 ROBA
• Meyers, Walter Earl. Aliens and Linguists: Language Study and Science Fiction. Athens: U of Georgia Press, 1980. PN 3448 S45M46 ROBA
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• Nadeau, Robert. Readings from the New Book on Nature: Physics and Metaphysics in the Modern Novel. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1981. PS 374 P45N3 ROBA
• Nahin, Paul J. Time Machines: Time Travel in Physics, Metaphysics, and Science Fiction. New York: American Institute of Physics, 1993. PS 374 S35N34 1993 ROBA
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• Paradis, James, and Thomas Postlewait, eds. Victorian Science and Victorian Values: Literary Perspectives. New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1981. Q 11 N5 v. 360 Victoria College Library
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• Pinker, Steven. The Language Instinct. New York: Morrow, 1994. P 106 P476 1994 ROBA
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• The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence: SETI. Ed. Philip Morrison, John Billingham, and John Wolfe. Washington: NASA, 1977. QB 54 S4 PASC
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• Smith, Jonathan. Fact and Feeling: Baconian Science and the Nineteenth-century Literary Imagination. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994 PR 468 S34S65 1994 ROBA
• Snow, Charles Percy. Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. London: Cambridge UP, 1993. AZ 361 S56 1993 ROBA
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• Suvin, Darko. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre.
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• Wyatt, John. Wordsworth and the Geologists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. PR 5892 G42 W93 1995 Victoria College Library