Litterary Cognition and Scientific Fiction Litterature As Subject of Knowledge Digressions Around the Pathic VS Epistemic Connection

This presentation aims to consider on one hand science as narrative, as fiction, and on the other hand literature as production, as knowledge. We will therefore talk here of literary cognition and scientific fiction by analyzing the confrontation of two areas: literary and scientific (sociological).

The analysis will be organised around four cases (two for each area) :

- For the area of literary fiction :

• On one hand the case of E. A. Poe who consistently stages throughout his whole work the  theme of experimental science aiming to make us wonder about the workings of nature ;

 

• And on the other hand the case of Julio Cortazar (who incidentally translated Poe) who for his part stages the theme of the most everyday aspects of social life, in a neo-fantastic way, aiming to make us question the functioning of this social life.

-  For the area of scientific narrative :

 

• On one hand the case of T.-S. Kuhn who addresses this issue by the introduction of the science of Nature (so called explanatory, to use Weber's distinction) by constructing the concept of experiment of the thought ;

 

• And on the other hand the case of Jean Duvignaud who addresses this issue by the introduction of the science of Culture (so called comprehensive, to use Weber's distinction) by developing the concept of utopian reconstruction.

This perspective will allow to show how the narrative thinks, how to write is to argue, is to think. We will thus see that narrative categories function as conceptual categories of discovery, as argumentations, as cognitive categories, literature and science (sociology) each appearing sometimes as creation, sometimes as discovery.