ABSTRACT The experiment of this article is to have its form mirror—or at least be analogous to—the duality of light referenced in the title to its object of study, Andrew Porter’s “The Theory of Light and Matter.” More specifically, the article progresses by alternating between sections devoted to “Particles” and sections devoted to “Waves” of my argument. The argument itself is about the relation between the nonfictionality of Porter’s title and the fictionality of his short story. Using a rhetorical approach to fictionality, this article contends that Porter sets up two-way traffic between the title and the story. The title partially explains his treatment of the love triangle among his character narrator, Heather, her physics teacher Robert, and her boyfriend and eventual husband, Colin. At the same time Porter’s treatment points to significant differences between the nonhuman scientific phenomena named in the title and the human experience of love. Ultimately, the science illuminates the fiction, and the fiction illuminates the science. And if the experiment in form works, it further illuminates the story’s play with the relationships between science and fiction.
James Phelan (Fri,) studied this question.