Physik und Literatur. Theorie – Popularisierung – Ästhetisierung
Gründungstagung ELINAS
Erlangen Center for Literature and Natural Sciences
FAU Erlangen/Germany, 29.05 – 01.06.2014

Physics, literature, and literary criticism are discourses of knowledge production which have drifted apart considerably in the course of the modern functional differentiation of social systems. At the same time, both discourses contribute to the comprehension and mastery of present and future problems, which invariably have both technological and cultural implications. Technologies and worldviews, shaped by physical knowledge, often acquire the status of central myths and determine human life worlds. Thus, they are of tremendous cultural relevance. The evaluation and assessment of their goals, limitations, and effects as well as of their inherent chances and risks is an ongoing process and cannot be negotiated within the necessarily narrow limits of physical discourse alone. At present more well- informed and highly reflective literary texts dealing with physical issues are being published than ever before. Employing dialogue and narration, they translate physical knowledge from mathematical-symbolic into verbal-polyvalent forms of representation and re-embed it in specific cultural contexts. This is why recent literary criticism and linguistic studies have therefore begun to investigate discursive and narrative modulations of physical theories both in literary texts and in scientific literature. Physics is itself becoming increasingly aware, both of the linguistic dimension of scientific communication and research and of the general cultural dimension of physical knowledge. The field has begun to reflect on both: on the epistemological importance of metaphor and on the communicative and cultural conditions determining the goals, priorities, and ethical limits of scientific research.

These points of intersection between physical and cultural practices a constitute research field recognized for its considerable importance and interdisciplinary potential. Unconventional avenues of communication between highly specialized expert discourses are necessary to advance research in this field. The analysis of concept formation in the natural sciences can profit from the competence of literary theory, while the analysis of the transformation of physical knowledge in literary texts needs to be complemented by a sound knowledge of physical theory. ELINAS provides a platform for this exchange. ELINAS is an Emerging-Field-Project of the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen Nürnberg, which will be founded by the Faculty of Humanities, the Faculty of Sciences, the Faculty of Medicine, and the Faculty of Engineering through the Departments of Physics, Mathematics, Physiology, Material Sciences, as well as the Departments of German, English and American Studies.

The conference will focus on the hitherto only exemplarily researched history of the interrelations between physics and literature and concentrates on historically specific thematic fields. While during The Early Modern Period physics primarily discusses questions of movement and force, the 18th Century is dominated by debates on Newton’s mechanics and optics (up until Goethe’s Farbenlehre, 1810). The expansion of experimental investigations, coupled with technological progress, causes a shift towards chemical (C. Berthollet, A. Lavoisier) as well as thermal (T. Young, N. Carnot) and electro-magnetic phenomena (A. Volta, G. S. Ohm, M. Faraday, J. C. Maxwell) but also to astronomy, in particular in its popularized form (A. Clerke, S. Newcomb, J. Mädler). These also move to the foreground in the literature around 1800 (G. C. Lichtenberg, H. v. Kleist, E. T. A. Hoffmann, A. v. Arnim). – A century later, the reconceptualization of the relationship of space-time and energy/matter in Einstein’s special and general relativity theory, and the debate over the development of quantum-theory created epistemological problems, which are reflected in literature up until today, and which shape the structures of literary writing. The question of how, with the help of quantum-theory, knowledge and its relations to uncertain knowledge can be problematized and represented is central (H. Broch, D. Dath). A further focus in this context will be the interplay of natural-scientific and literary theory formation. One conference section will be reserved for the presentation of other literature and natural science initiatives, networks or institutions.

PROGRAMME

THURSDAY, 29.05.2014

13.00 – 13.30
Antje Kley
Vice-President, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen
Welcome Speech

Klaus Mecke / Christine Lubkoll / Aura Heydenreich
Department Physik / Department Germanistik und Komparatistik
ELINAS

13.30 – 16.00
Arkady Plotnitsky
Department of English, Purdue University, Indiana
Reality and Probability in Physics and Literature. From Laplace and Kleist to Heisenberg and Musil

Dirk Vanderbeke
Department of English, Jena University
Physics of the Fantastic – Fantastic Physics

Jörn Wilms
Astronomical Institute, Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen
Science in Science Fiction – How Does an Astronomer Read Science Fiction?

16.00 – 16.30
Coffee break

16.30 – 18.00
Brian Schwartz
Physics Department, University of New York
Communication of Science through the Performing Arts: Theater, Music and Dance and Strategies for the Dissemination to the General Public

Seth Clabough
Sweet Briar College, Virginia
Quantum Physics, Physics Fiction, and All Things Await

18.00
Reception, Orangerie

20.00
Durs Grünbein
Rom
Lesung aus: Cyrano oder die Rückkehr vom Mond

FRIDAY, 30.05.2014

09.00 – 11.15
Giovanni Vignale
Physics Department, Northwestern University, Missouri-Columbia
The Beautiful Invisible. Creativity, Imagination and Theoretical Physics

Jay Labinger
Chemistry Department, California Institute of Technology
The Role of Language in Conceptions of Atomic and Molecular Orbitals and Chemical Bonding Models

Klaus Mecke
Physics Department, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen
Quantitative Metaphors: How Physics Discovers Synonyms in Narrated Nature

11.15 – 11.45
Coffee break

11.45 – 12.30
Susan M. Gaines
Fiction meets Science, Bremen
Beyond Metaphor: Science as Subject in the Contemporary Literary Novel

14.00 – 16.15
Winfried Thielmann
Germanistische Linguistik, Universität Chemnitz
Physikalische Begriffsbildung aus linguistischer Sicht

Nikola Kompa
Institut für Philosophie, Universität Osnabrück
Vom Nutzen und Nachteil metaphorischer Rede

Lutz Kasper
Didaktik der Physik, Pädagogische Hochschule Schwäbisch-Gmünd
Die Bedeutung von Subjektivierung und Ästhetisierung für den naturwissenschaftlichen Erkenntnisprozess

16.15 – 16.45
Coffee break

Ab 16.45
Nürnberger Burg / Dürer Haus

ab 19.30
Hausbrauerei Altstadthof
Nürnberg, Bergstraße 19

19.30 – 21.00
Ignatius McGovern
Physics Department, Trinity College, Dublin
The Making of „A Mystic Dream of 4“

Peter Maria Schuster
History of Physics Group of the European Physical Society, Vienna
Johann Winkler
Salzburg
Wie kann man sich dem Schaffensvorgang und der Erkenntnisfindung eines Physikers annähern? / Lesung aus: „Schöpfungswoche – Tag eins, Christian Doppler zur Huldigung“

23.00
Rückfahrt Erlangen
SATURDAY, 31.05.2014

09.00 – 11.15
Maximilian Bergengruen
Institut für Germanistik, Karlsruher Institut für Technologie
Physik der Metaphysik: Zur Technik der Geistererscheinungen in Gryphius’ „Catharina von Georgien“ und „Carolus Stuardus“

Barbara Wiedemann
Deutsches Seminar, Universität Tübingen
“In der Blasenkammer”. Paul Celans physikalische ‘Anreicherung’.

Bernadette Malinowski
Institut für Germanistik und Kommunikation, Universität Chemnitz
Literarische Epistemologie: Daniele DelGiudices „Atlante occidentale“

11.15 – 11.45
Coffee break

11.45 – 13.10
Michael Gamper
Deutsches Seminar, Universität Hannover
Ästhetische Eigenzeiten der Physik

Aura Heydenreich
Department Germanistik und Komparatistik, Erlangen-Nürnberg
Gödels Zeitschleifen und Bachs Musikalisches Opfer als Modelle der Identitätskonstruktion in Richard Powers’ „The Time of Our Singing“

Sektion I
Wassersaal der Orangerie

14.30 – 15.40
Sonja Front
Institute of English Cultures and Literatures, University of Silesia, Poland
Temporality in British Quantum Fiction – an Overview

Carlos Gámez Pérez
Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, University of Miami
Postmodern Physics in Contemporary Spanish Literature: The case of Agustín Fernández Mallo

15.40 – 16.10
Coffee break

16.10 – 17.20
Nina Engelhardt
a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities Cologne
From Universal Force to Fictitious Force – Gravity in Thomas Pynchon’s „Gravity’s Rainbow“

Marta Silvera, Juani Guerra & Adán Martín
Departamento de Filologia Moderna, Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
Artphysics at work: A time-based cognitive mapping of Thomas Pynchon’s conceptual organization of entropy

SATURDAY, 31.05.2014

Sektion II
Musiksaal der Orangerie

14.30 – 15.40
Laetitia Rimpau
Institut für Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft, Universität Frankfurt am Main
Wie Dichter Astronomiegeschichte erklären: Dantes „Convivio“ und Keplers „Rudolfinische Tafeln“

Rudolf Drux
Institut für deutsche Sprache und Literatur, Universität Köln
Von der „Atomzertrümmerung“ und den „Bewegungen der Himmelskörper“. Die Kernphysik im literarischen Spiegel frühneuzeitlicher Astronomie

15.40 – 16.10
Coffee break

16.10 – 17.20
Clemens Özelt
Universität Zürich, Deutsches Seminar
Die Evidenz im Blickwechsel: Galileis Dialoge als Gattungsmodell im 20. Jahrhundert

Susanne Hartwig
Lehrstuhl für Romanische Literaturen, Universität Passau
Der 11. September 2001 oder Attraktoren in der Interpretation von Gegenwartsliteratur

17.20 – 18.30
Klaus Mecke / Christine Lubkoll
Physics and Literature – Discussion on future projects

20.00
Conference Dinner “Mein lieber Schwan”

SUNDAY, 01.06.2014

Sektion I
Wassersaal der Orangerie

09.00 – 11.00
Kieran Murphy
Department of French and Italian, University of Colorado at Boulder
The Art and Science of the Electromagnetic Age

Leonardo Colletti
Department of Physics, Trento
Meeting Husserl’s Crisis of the European Science: developing a richer science – and richer humanity-from cross-fertilization of physics with literature

Gwen Le Cor
Département d’Études des Pays Anglophones, Université de Paris 8, Vincennes-Saint-Denis
A poetics of catastrophe theory? : (Un)-reading Stephanie Strickland’s „costal chreods“

Sektion II
Musiksaal der Orangerie

09.00 – 11.00
Lukas Mairhofer
Fakultät für Physik, Universität Wien
Als Brecht in Heisenbergs Mikroskop blickte

Angela Gencarelli
Institut für Germanistik, Universität Bonn
Teilchenphysik und Poetik in Irmtraud Morgners Novelle „Das Seil“

Betül Dilmac
Romanisches Seminar, Universität Freiburg
»Le chat de Schrödinger« von Philippe Forest. ›Il était deux fois‹: Experimentelle Schreibanordnungen im Zeichen der Trauer

11.00 – 11.30
Coffee break

11.30 – 13.00
Matinee: Lesung Ulrike Draesner
Berlin
Aus dem Roman: Sieben Sprünge vom Rand der Welt

13.00 – 13.30
Klaus Mecke / Antje Kley / Christine Lubkoll / Aura Heydenreich
ELINAS
Ausblick/Abschlussdiskussion