Introduction: Science and Literature Special Isssue

Abstract

The most extraordinary fact about the need for a discussion of the relationship of Science and Literature, is that it needs discussing. The strangeness of the idea can be more fully elaborated if we consider it next to two other great conjunctions, Science and History and Science and Philosophy. The former, Science and History, was in existence even before Science and History acquired their present disciplinary panoplies. There is a well-documented story of how history was used in understanding the work of early modern natural philosophers, for example, or how History of Science itself emerged as a coherent modern discipline within the Twentieth century (Kragh 1989, pp. 1–19). The latter conjunction, Science and Philosophy, had its origins in the birth of systematized thinking. From there, it has only grown stronger. In these cases, there seems to be no need to establish the necessity of the rapprochement or argue for its inevitability. What is then the differentiating factor for Science and Literature? What is the reason that two such broad and archetypical fields of study are only cautiously approached together? Or to be more provocative, why aren’t there Departments of Science and Literature alongside the venerable History and Philosophy of Science Departments and Programs? These are of course rather rhetorical questions. But in the next few pages, we will try to take them at face value, in order to show how this special issue of Science & Education tackles the subject of Science and Literature. A first attempt to examine the apparent incompatibility of Science and Literature is to consider their relationship historically. It could be the case that what we today call Science did not intersect with Literature, in their evolution towards modern disciplinary status. But recent scholarship has done much to dispel such notions. Even in the case of exemplary figures of early modern sciences, such as Galileo Galilei or Nikolaus Copernicus, it has