Publications
“Synontological Spaces.” The Routledge Handbook of Popular Culture and Tourism, edited by Christine Lundberg and
Vassilios Ziakas, Routledge, 2018, pp.31-42.
“Mise en Abyme and Quantum Mechanics: The Reader as Observer.” Interface between Literature and Science: Cross-
disciplinary Approaches to Latin American Texts, edited by Victoria Carpenter, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015,
pp. 115-140.
“Ontology and Superposition: Where the Muppets Meet and Do Not Meet Schrödinger’s Cat.” Jim Henson and Philosophy,
edited by Timothy M. Dale and Joseph F. Foy, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2015, pp. 199-208.
“Charting the Extraordinary: Sentient and Transontological Spaces.” Literary Cartographies: Spatiality, Representation, and
Narrative, edited by Robert T. Tally Jr., Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, pp. 199-213.
“The Bible’s Paradise and Oryx and Crake’s Paradice: A Comparison of the Relationships between Humans and Nature.”
Plants and Literature: Essays in Critical Plant Studies, edited by Randy Laist, Rodopi Press, 2013, pp. 165-180.
“Alternate History as Countermonument.” We Are What We Remember: The American Past Through Commemoration, edited
by Laura M. D’Amore and Jeffrey Meriwether, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012, pp. 114-133.
Works in Progress and Under Review
“Fi-Sci Pattern Mapping.” Journal of Narrative Theory, special issue “Narratologies of Science,” edited by Daniel Aureliano Newman, forthcoming.
“Borges’ Lens: The Symphony of a Rhizomatic Course.” Approaches to Teaching the Works of Jorge Luis Borges, edited
by José Eduardo González, Modern Language Association, forthcoming.
Fi-Sci: The Remarkable Role of Fiction in Conceptualizations of Science
Cognitive studies of metaphor and analogy suggest that we reason about each experience or concept in terms of another. But what happens when the concept is indiscernible, such as DNA recombination, or inconceivable, like an eleven-dimensional space? Our minds reach out to these concepts via analogy as well, but with one crucial difference: the only experience in terms of which we can reason about them is fiction. A rhetorical approach reveals that fiction uniquely offers conceptual access to strange and confounding natural phenomena, in a process of fiction—science pattern mapping. When a form in fiction is analogous to a form in science, we can reason about the latter in terms of the former. Though we encounter the science without the assumption of fictionality that cloaks us when we read fiction, we carry over the form perceived in the story. This carrying over – this recognition of similitude – is the mechanism that opens conceptual access to the indiscernible and the inconceivable.
“Synontological Spaces.” The Routledge Handbook of Popular Culture and Tourism, edited by Christine Lundberg and
Vassilios Ziakas, Routledge, 2018, pp.31-42.
“Mise en Abyme and Quantum Mechanics: The Reader as Observer.” Interface between Literature and Science: Cross-
disciplinary Approaches to Latin American Texts, edited by Victoria Carpenter, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015,
pp. 115-140.
“Ontology and Superposition: Where the Muppets Meet and Do Not Meet Schrödinger’s Cat.” Jim Henson and Philosophy,
edited by Timothy M. Dale and Joseph F. Foy, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2015, pp. 199-208.
“Charting the Extraordinary: Sentient and Transontological Spaces.” Literary Cartographies: Spatiality, Representation, and
Narrative, edited by Robert T. Tally Jr., Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, pp. 199-213.
“The Bible’s Paradise and Oryx and Crake’s Paradice: A Comparison of the Relationships between Humans and Nature.”
Plants and Literature: Essays in Critical Plant Studies, edited by Randy Laist, Rodopi Press, 2013, pp. 165-180.
“Alternate History as Countermonument.” We Are What We Remember: The American Past Through Commemoration, edited
by Laura M. D’Amore and Jeffrey Meriwether, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012, pp. 114-133.
Works in Progress and Under Review
“Fi-Sci Pattern Mapping.” Journal of Narrative Theory, special issue “Narratologies of Science,” edited by Daniel Aureliano Newman, forthcoming.
“Borges’ Lens: The Symphony of a Rhizomatic Course.” Approaches to Teaching the Works of Jorge Luis Borges, edited
by José Eduardo González, Modern Language Association, forthcoming.
Fi-Sci: The Remarkable Role of Fiction in Conceptualizations of Science
Cognitive studies of metaphor and analogy suggest that we reason about each experience or concept in terms of another. But what happens when the concept is indiscernible, such as DNA recombination, or inconceivable, like an eleven-dimensional space? Our minds reach out to these concepts via analogy as well, but with one crucial difference: the only experience in terms of which we can reason about them is fiction. A rhetorical approach reveals that fiction uniquely offers conceptual access to strange and confounding natural phenomena, in a process of fiction—science pattern mapping. When a form in fiction is analogous to a form in science, we can reason about the latter in terms of the former. Though we encounter the science without the assumption of fictionality that cloaks us when we read fiction, we carry over the form perceived in the story. This carrying over – this recognition of similitude – is the mechanism that opens conceptual access to the indiscernible and the inconceivable.