Fictions of the Cosmos
Science and Literature in the Seventeenth Century
In today's academe, the fields of science and literature are considered unconnected, one relying on raw data and fact, the other focusing on fiction. During the period between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, however, the two fields were not so distinct. Just as the natural philosophers of the era were discovering in and adopting from literature new strategies and techniques for their discourse, so too were poets and storytellers finding inspiration in natural philosophy, particularly in astronomy.
A work that speaks to the history of science and literary studies, "Fictions of the Cosmos" explores the evolving relationship that ensued between fiction and astronomical authority. By examining writings of Kepler, Godwin, Hooke, Cyrano, Cavendish, Fontenelle, and others, Frederique Ait-Touati shows that it was through the telling of stories – such as through accounts of celestial journeys – that the Copernican hypothesis, for example, found an ontological weight that its geometric models did not provide. Ait-Touati draws from both cosmological treatises and fictions of travel and knowledge, as well as personal correspondences, drawings, and instruments, to emphasize the multiple borrowings between scientific and literary discourses. This volume sheds new light on the practices of scientific invention, experimentation, and hypothesis formation by situating them according to their fictional or factual tendencies.
Reviews
"Many scientists fear that the association of the words 'fact' and 'fiction' weakens their claims to objectivity. They tend to forget that science and literature had to drink at the same sources long before they began to part company and started to pit imagination against reality. Only by going back to the origin of this long and sad divorce, as Frederique Ait-Touati has so beautifully shown, it is possible to discover how much objectivity owes to the powers of the tale – not to weaken science, but to strengthen it" – Bruno Latour, Sciences Po Paris
"This witty and intelligent study of a wide range of writings about cosmos and travel in early modern Europe argues for a new model of the relation between literary and scientific imagination. The book shows in fascinating detail how an entirely new cosmology was sustained through remarkable feats of invention. It demonstrates the crucial relation between novel devices of astronomy and optics and equally subversive devices of fiction and rhetoric. This is an invaluable contribution both to Baroque literary history and to studies of the writing of the sciences. In her astute definition of a widespread 'Copernican poetics', Ait-Touati sets out exciting and provocative theses about the transformation of travel stories and cosmological fantasy in a period of dramatic European crisis" – Simon Schaffer, University of Cambridge
"'Fictions of the Cosmos' is one of the most original and engrossing books to appear in ages from within the whole field of literature and science. What Frederique Ait-Touati does is to put aside the merely analogical use of science by literary figures, and instead to examine the way natural philosophers and literary figures shared productive strategies about how to narrate the physical world. Drawing from the history of philosophy, classical literature, motifs, and rhetoric, she shows vividly how some of the key figures of the scientific revolution (among others, Kepler, Huygens, Hooke, and Margaret Cavendish) constructed their stories of nature. Fictions deepens our understanding of early modern science, showing how writing gave ontological weight and persuasive force to the universes evoked: micro-realities and cosmologies, instruments and voyages to other worlds. It is a remarkable book" – Peter Galison, Harvard University
