Helmut Müller-Sievers

One of the most contentious questions in contemporary literary studies is whether there can ever be a science of literature that can lay claim to objectivity and universality, for example by concentrating on philological criticism, by appealing to cognitive science, or by exposing the underlying media of literary communication. The present collection of essays seeks to open up this discussion by posing the question’s historical and systematic double: has there been a science of literature, i.e. a mode of presentation and practice of reference in science that owes its coherence to the discourse of literature? Detailed analyses of scientific, literary and philosophical texts show that from the late 18th to the late 19th century science and literature were bound to one another through an intricate web of mutual dependence and distinct yet incalculable difference. The Science of Literature suggests that this legacy continues to shape the relation between literary and scientific discourses inside and outside of academia.

Essays on an Incalculable Difference

The Science of Literature

David E. Wellbery

Do literary texts provide distinctive access to the history of science? Is the study of literature based on scientific procedures? Is there a connection between scientific processes and literary forms? The essays in this collection show how literary and scientific texts from the late 18th to the late 19th centuries revolve around these questions. What emerges is a picture of the mutual dependence and the incalculable difference between literature and science in the period of their modern formation.

Anatomie und Dichtung bei Georg Büchner

Desorientierung

The book begins by describing how and why epigenesis came to replace the reigning model of biological origination, preformation - the theory that all organisms were preformed at the creation of the world. Contemporary with these developments, Kant used the figures of epigenesis and self-formation to illustrate his concepts of the origin of the categories, the possible success of practical reason, and the validity of aesthetic and teleological judgments. The author shows how Kant's figurative use of self-generation was turned into an indispensable determination by Fichte and his successors: philosophical knowledge can claim absolute certainty only if it can prove that it generates itself in logically accountable procedures.

Helmut Müller-Sievers

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