3. Applied Literature
Mohammad Ghaffary; Sara Karimi
Abstract
In the wake of WWII, how far science and technology may advance and the ethical responsibilities they bring became prominent problematics in philosophy and literature, including Kurt Vonnegut’s novels, particularly Cat’s Cradle (1963), a work of post-apocalyptic science fiction that intriguingly ...
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In the wake of WWII, how far science and technology may advance and the ethical responsibilities they bring became prominent problematics in philosophy and literature, including Kurt Vonnegut’s novels, particularly Cat’s Cradle (1963), a work of post-apocalyptic science fiction that intriguingly displays the dual nature of science as both creative and destructive. Since the novel deals with the catastrophic potentials of scientific inventions, it provides fertile ground for an ethical analysis based on Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s Poststructuralist thought, which has not previously been employed to analyze the concept of science in this novel. Considering this and using a descriptive-critical method, this qualitative, library-based study explores how in Cat’s Cradle science actualizes virtual possibilities, comparing it with artistic creation. Based on Deleuzeoguattarian theory, the analysis delves into the ethical implications of scientific knowledge as truth and the (im)morality of science. The results suggest that in Vonnegut’s narrative science is essentially neither moral nor immoral, but rather virtually amoral, since Dr. Hoenikker is depicted as a scientist who, unaffected by morality, recognizes the virtual power of creation in science and represents what Deleuze terms active science. The findings of the study, thus, elucidate the virtual potentials underlying science in the novel, the way it affects the characters’ deterritorialization, its relation to ethics, and its capacity not only to extract functions but also create presubjective concepts and affects. The findings of the study carry significant implications for investigating the nature of science in (post-)apocalyptic science fiction, not least Vonnegut’s other novels.
3. Applied Literature
Ali Emamipour; Farideh Pourgiv
Abstract
It has been quite a while since research in different disciplines has become widely cross-fertilized. The cultural matrix of our era has made it possible for ideas and metaphors to move across disciplines. John Barth has been one of the most-celebrated cross-disciplinary fiction writers, who has been ...
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It has been quite a while since research in different disciplines has become widely cross-fertilized. The cultural matrix of our era has made it possible for ideas and metaphors to move across disciplines. John Barth has been one of the most-celebrated cross-disciplinary fiction writers, who has been perceptive of and receptive to breakthroughs in other disciplines to reinvigorate fiction. Despite the fact that Barth’s literary career, particularly from Lost in the Funhouse (Funhouse), coincides with the coronation of Quantum Mechanics as the regime capable of addressing reality in a more precise way, the recognition of the influence of Quantum Mechanics on Funhouse has been conspicuously absent from the critical enterprise, and the bulk of research has viewed it in the light of Poststructuralism, whose application to contemporary fiction has been exhaustible by now. Establishing the framework of the Article based on some concepts for which the Copenhagen Interpretation and the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics are famous, the present study offers a new perspective to approach the idiosyncrasies of Ambrose in the series, thereby employing an unprecedented methodology to replenish a work which has been subjected to a barrage of metafictional readings.
3. Applied Literature
Mehdi Azari Samani
Abstract
This paper analyses Thomas Pynchon’s V. (1961) in light of two contradictory scientific perspectives and argues that Pynchon uses complex science-based formulations on different semantic levels to give shape to a seemingly shapeless world of uncertainty. V. is considered by many critics a historiographic ...
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This paper analyses Thomas Pynchon’s V. (1961) in light of two contradictory scientific perspectives and argues that Pynchon uses complex science-based formulations on different semantic levels to give shape to a seemingly shapeless world of uncertainty. V. is considered by many critics a historiographic metafiction which evolves through certain new readings of the early 20th century Europe’s colonialism and is given a sense of uncertainty to historical consciousness via Pynchon’s postmodernist style. This paper suggests that though Pynchon uses the techniques (on the syntactical level) which define postmodernism and create a pandemonium of complexity and meaninglessness, he leaves hidden blueprints which give shape and order to the syntactical and semantic chaos created in his works. To achieve this goal, the main methodological focus of the paper would be on Claude. E. Shannon’s (1948) “information theory.”
