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 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.
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