Robert Nadeau - Readings from the new book on nature: physics and metaphysics in the modern novel
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Readings from the new book on nature: physics and metaphysics in the modern novel
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Readings From the New Book On Nature : Physics and Metaphysics in the Modern Novel
author
:
Nadeau, Robert.
publisher
:
University of Massachusetts Press
isbn10 | asin
:
0870233319
print isbn13
:
9780870233319
ebook isbn13
:
9780585276878
language
:
English
subject
American fiction--20th century--History and criticism, Metaphysics in literature, Physics in literature, Literature and science.
publication date
:
1981
lcc
:
PS374.P45N3eb
ddc
:
813/.54/09356
subject
:
American fiction--20th century--History and criticism, Metaphysics in literature, Physics in literature, Literature and science.
Page i
Readings from the New Book on Nature
Page ii
Page iii
Readings from the New Book on Nature
Physics and Metaphysics in the Modern Novel
Robert Nadeau
Page iv
Copyright 1981 by The University of Massachusetts Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Nadeau, Robert L., 1944 Readings from the new book on nature. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. American fiction20th centuryHistory and criticism. 2. Physics in literature. 3. Literature and science. I. Title. PS374.P45N3 813'.54'09356 81-2625 ISBN 0-87023-331-9 AACR2
Acknowledgments made to publishers for permission to reprint selections from copyrighted materials appear on the last page of this book.
Page v
To my parents, Richard E. and Mary Virginia Nadeau, and to my daughter Langdon.
Page vii
Contents
Preface
1
1. Common Sense and the Nature of Things
17
2. Metaphysics and the New Physics
39
3. John Fowles
65
4. John Barth
77
5. John Updike
95
6. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
121
7. Thomas Pynchon
135
8. Tom Robbins
149
9. Don DeLillo
161
10. Physics, Metaphysics, and the Form of the Novel
183
Notes
199
Selected Bibliography
207
Index
211
Page ix
Acknowledgments
I wish to express my special thanks to Professor Molly B. Tinsley for her encouragement and helpful suggestions during the preparation of this manuscript. I am also extremely grateful to Professor Stephen G. Brush for his invaluable assistance in researching and writing the portion of this book dealing with the origins and history of scientific concepts. To the National Endowment for the Humanities, which provided the opportunity to study with Professor Brush, let me also indicate my indebtedness.
Page 1
Preface
Not so many years ago a rocket plunged through the sweet milk of the earth's cloud cover into the whisperless dark of outer space. The on-board camera panned through the glittering immensity beyond to focus on the only object on that alien horizon that seemed designed for warm and secure habitation. And what an impossibly beautiful sight it was! Against the backdrop of the interstellar night hung the great ball of the earth, with the intense blue of its oceans and the delicate ochres of its land masses shimmering beneath the vibrant and translucent layer of its atmosphere. The distances between us seemed suddenly contracted, the ecosystem more fragile, but the impression that sent the adrenalin flowing through my system was the overwhelming sense that the thing was alive! The teeming billions of organisms writhing about under the protective blanket of atmosphere ceased in the shock of that visual moment to be separatethey were interdependent, fluid, blending presences in the one organic dance of the planet's life.
Although everything in the above paragraph may seem true in emotional terms, or at least fit the preconceived, a cursory examination of implicit assumptions would probably lead to the conclusion that it is anything but an objective analysis of the content of the visual image. What we have here is an attempt by a humanist to communicate my own value-laden, subjectively based conception of existence in a world presumably represented by a visual image. In addition to the anthropomorphizing of various details of the image, we also detect here a metaphysical assumption, i.e., all life forms are interdependent and may even participate in some fundamental unity.
Page 2
The fact that I readily made that assumption and that many readers of the passage might have little difficulty assenting to it may imply a good deal about our present intellectual climate, but there is nothing in the image itself that makes the assumption either actual or necessary. If the impulse were to free us of cultural bias in order to seek a more objective view of the elements in this visual field, we would probably turn to the work of scientists, like those of NASA.
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