ABSTRACT While fiction-science (fi-sci) pattern mapping has been discussed as a way to use fictional patterns to help learners understand analogous patterns in science, this article embeds that pedagogical objective within a larger framework in Literature and Science Studies. If one of the affordances of fictionality is to lower barriers to scientific comprehension, this article argues that, reciprocally, literary engagements with science can provide the spur and material for critical inquiry and literary interpretation. Grounded in a study of David Lodge’s novel Thinks . . . , the article’s two sections and conclusion thus seek to model the recursive process of literary criticism as a sequence of readings and rereadings that begins with detecting analogies between scientific and fictional patterns. Specifically, this article uses fi-sci pattern mapping to identify, then explore, the intriguing analogy Thinks . . . sets up between the whodunit plot (a fictional pattern) and the phenomenon of quantum superposition, as manifested in Schrödinger’s cat paradox. In addition to helping nonscientists understand quantum physics, this analogy serves as the foundation for a counterintuitive reading of the novel’s narrative form and ethics and, more broadly, as an illustration of how fi-sci pattern mapping can be integrated into a broader approach to reading in Literature and Science Studies.
Daniel Aureliano Newman (Fri,) studied this question.