The Fourth Dimension of Space in Late 19th-Century Science/Fiction - Einzelansicht

Funktionen:

Veranstaltungsart	Seminar	Veranstaltungsnummer	3209
SWS	2	Semester	SoSe 2015
Einrichtung	Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik	Sprache	englisch
Weitere Links	comment
Belegungsfrist	01.04.2015 - 20.05.2015 Belegung über PULS

Gruppe 1:

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		Tag	Zeit	Rhythmus	Dauer	Raum	Lehrperson	Ausfall-/Ausweichtermine	Max. Teilnehmer/-innen
	Seminar	Do	16:00 bis 18:00	wöchentlich	16.04.2015 bis 23.07.2015	1.11.2.03	Dr. Coffey		30
Einzeltermine: 16.04.2015 23.04.2015 30.04.2015 07.05.2015 21.05.2015 28.05.2015 04.06.2015 11.06.2015 18.06.2015 25.06.2015 02.07.2015 09.07.2015 16.07.2015 23.07.2015

Kommentar	Please follow the "comment" link above for more information on comments, course readings, course requirements and grading. In 1884, the scholar, teacher and clergyman Edward A. Abbott published the short novel Flatland in which he imagined a two-dimensional world populated by squares, triangles, and lines, and ruled over by circles. The narrator of the novel, a square, encounters a being from the third dimension – a sphere – and is made to realize that what he has taken for the natural limits of knowlege and imagination – his flat world – is in fact part of a larger three-dimensional reality. Abbott uses this science fiction tale to reflect upon and criticize his own society and to think about the (im-) mutability of our certainties about our world. He does so by taking up mathematical and geometrical notions of a fourth spacial dimension that had been developed in the course of the 19th century – before Albert Einstein redefined the fourth dimension as a primarily temporal phenomenon. The fourth dimension was much discussed in the late 19th and early 20th century, and was used not only to ask questions about science and epistemology, but also to formulate a critique of society and of common modes of representation (in Cubism for example). Some writers even used the fourth dimension to “explain” the spiritualist practices of a well-known and notorious medium. The seminar will take Abbott’s novel as a starting point to investigate the idea of the fourth dimension as it was taken up in various works of fiction (e.g., Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, several stories by H. G. Wells, and The Ghost of Canterville by Oscar Wilde) as well as philosophical and (pseudo-) scientific treatises. It will look at a specific moment of the history of science and at the ways scientific thought and popular culture intersected and influenced each other at that time.

Kommentar

Please follow the "comment" link above for more information on comments, course readings, course requirements and grading.

In 1884, the scholar, teacher and clergyman Edward A. Abbott published the short novel Flatland in which he imagined a two-dimensional world populated by squares, triangles, and lines, and ruled over by circles. The narrator of the novel, a square, encounters a being from the third dimension – a sphere – and is made to realize that what he has taken for the natural limits of knowlege and imagination – his flat world – is in fact part of a larger three-dimensional reality.
Abbott uses this science fiction tale to reflect upon and criticize his own society and to think about the (im-) mutability of our certainties about our world. He does so by taking up mathematical and geometrical notions of a fourth spacial dimension that had been developed in the course of the 19th century – before Albert Einstein redefined the fourth dimension as a primarily temporal phenomenon. The fourth dimension was much discussed in the late 19th and early 20th century, and was used not only to ask questions about science and epistemology, but also to formulate a critique of society and of common modes of representation (in Cubism for example). Some writers even used the fourth dimension to “explain” the spiritualist practices of a well-known and notorious medium.
The seminar will take Abbott’s novel as a starting point to investigate the idea of the fourth dimension as it was taken up in various works of fiction (e.g., Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, several stories by H. G. Wells, and The Ghost of Canterville by Oscar Wilde) as well as philosophical and (pseudo-) scientific treatises. It will look at a specific moment of the history of science and at the ways scientific thought and popular culture intersected and influenced each other at that time.

Strukturbaum

Keine Einordnung ins Vorlesungsverzeichnis vorhanden. Veranstaltung ist aus dem Semester SoSe 2015 , Aktuelles Semester: SoSe 2024