War of the Worlds? Science and Religion in Contemporary Literature

《世界大战》的主要目标是什么？《当代文学中的科学与宗教》旨在阐明和解释宗教与自然科学之间的话语交流对英语世界文学的持续相关性。为了给这个复杂的研究领域提供一个令人信服的方法论基础，该项目借鉴并结合了两个不同的理论前提。首先，它找到了一个理由来解释所研究的争论，一个深深植根于西方社会思想史的理由，在争论中，由C。斯诺在1959年关于两种文化（人文科学和自然科学）主导西方的知识生活。在这场辩论的背景下，该项目将集中讨论宗教知情的世界观（斯诺所制定的对立中的人文学科的代表）和那些赞成对宇宙和人类生活背后的机制进行科学解释的人之间的争论。在过去的几十年里，这场争论一直在以越来越大的（情感）活力进行着。传统上，宗教和哲学应该为宇宙的起源和本质以及人类生活的意义和目的等基本问题提供相关的答案;然而，近年来，来自不同学科的知识分子声称自然科学比以往任何时候都更有特权。因此，该项目将重建几个参赛者在争议中交换的各种论点，这项调查将为分析处理手头问题的选定小说文本提供基础。研究的目的是，然后，揭示这些文本捕捉争论的本质的不同方式，翻译，因为他们做的几个基本方面到叙事学概念，提供深刻的意识形态谈判和新的语境框架。语言的普遍符号系统是宗教、自然科学和文学之间的纽带，因此，这些不同学科之间的意识形态鸿沟和话语策略似乎并不像乍看之下那样互不相容。文学总是关注目前正在争论的基本问题（自从培根科学出现以来一直如此），它的叙述似乎可以显示出一条出路，走出知识分子自己陷入的一些意识形态僵局。通过这种方式，该项目将大大有助于当代文化研究的一个核心方面，它将帮助我们更深入地了解思想史上最持久的智力竞赛之一。

The principal objective of War of the Worlds? Science and Religion in Contemporary Literature is to illuminate and explain the continuing relevance of the discursive exchange between religion and the natural sciences for the literatures of the English speaking world. In order to provide a convincing methodological foundation for this complex field of study, the project draws on and combines two different theoretical premises. For one, it finds a rationale explaining the controversy under examination, one which is deeply embedded in the history of ideas of western societies, in the debate, initiated (or rtaher revived) by C. P. Snow in 1959, about the two cultures (the humanities and the natural sciences) dominating the intellectual life of the occident. In the context of this debate, the project will then focus on the arguments exchanged between champions of a religiously informed Weltanschauung (representative of the humanities in the antithesis Snow has formulated) and those favouring scientific explanations of the mechanisms behind the universe and human life. This controversy has been fought with increasing (emotional) vigour over the past few decades. Traditionally, religion and philosophy were supposed to provide the relevant answers to those fundamental questions about the origin and nature of the universe as well as correspondent problems concerning the meaning and telos of human life; in recent years, however, intellectuals from different academic disciplines have claimed this prerogative, more insistently than ever, for the natural sciences. The project will therefore reconstruct the various arguments exchanged by the several contestants in the controversy, and this survey will provide the basis for the analyses of select fictional texts dealing with the issues at hand. The aim of the study is, then, to reveal the different ways in which these texts capture the essence of the controversy, translating as they do several of its fundamental aspects into narratological concepts, providing profound ideological negotiations and new contextual frameworks. The universal sign system of language being the link between religion, natural science, and literature, it will appear that both the ideological trenches between and discursive strategies of these different disciplines are not as incompatible as they may appear at first sight. Literature has always been concerned with the fundamental questions that are currently under debate (and have been so ever since the advent of Baconian science), and it will appear that its narratives can perhaps show a way out of some of the ideological impasses intellectuals have manoeuvred themselves into. In this way, the project will contribute substantially to a central aspect of contemporary cultural studies and it will help us reach a deeper understanding of one of the most enduring intellectual contests the history of ideas has ever seen.