Heydenreich A (2025)
Publication Language: English
Publication Type: Book chapter / Article in edited volumes
Publication year: 2025
Publisher: De Gruyter Brill
Edited Volumes: Narrative and Cognition in Literature and Science
City/Town: Berlin und Boston
Pages Range: 131-179
DOI: 10.1515/9783110782844-006
This paper is centered on modes of exchange between literature and astrophysics and addresses the new concept of interformation (Heydenreich 2024) through which discourses and practices of knowledge production, representation and simulation are intersected, leading to epistemic transformations. The chapter addresses the interformative exchanges between Carl Sagan’s novel Contact (1985) and Kip Thorne and Michael Morris’s research on traversable wormholes, which resulted in the scientific paper “Wormholes in Spacetime and Their Use for Interstellar Travel”, published in the American Journal of Physics in 1988. The chapter analyzes how the intersection between literature and physics can lead to new epistemic approaches within scientific discourse through explorative modeling and simulation. Additionally, it shows how Morris and Thorne employ narrative techniques like focalization, cognitive immersion, experientiality, and metalepsis to explore the new theoretical model of traversable wormholes. Thorne and Morris plead in their scientific paper for the epistemic power of imagination evolving from narration in order to reconceptualize existing research questions on traversable wormholes and to reorganize research discourses, as the scientific impact of their paper demonstrates.
APA:
Heydenreich, A. (2025). The epistemic power of imagination through interformation between astrophysics and literature: Carl Sagan's novel "Contact" and Kip Thorne's model of traversable wormholes. In Michael Sinding, Aura Heydenreich, Klaus Mecke (Eds.), Narrative and Cognition in Literature and Science. (pp. 131-179). Berlin und Boston: De Gruyter Brill.
MLA:
Heydenreich, Aura. "The epistemic power of imagination through interformation between astrophysics and literature: Carl Sagan's novel "Contact" and Kip Thorne's model of traversable wormholes." Narrative and Cognition in Literature and Science. Ed. Michael Sinding, Aura Heydenreich, Klaus Mecke, Berlin und Boston: De Gruyter Brill, 2025. 131-179.
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