The Nuclear Muse

In The Nuclear Muse, John Canaday, poet, teacher, tutor, and student of science, using techniques of literary analysis (close reading of texts with a touch of Derrida), tries to demonstrate that science (specifically physics) and literature share "crucial common ground" (p. xiii). In so doing, Canaday joins the ranks of sociologists, historians, and anthropologists (Bruno Latour, Sharon Traweek, Hugh Gusterson, among others) who have donned literary lab coats and peered into the universe beneath the microscope. Canaday's approach, much like Gusterson's, is to examine a number of "texts" produced by physicists: Niels Bohr's "The Quantum Postulate," his notable attempt to describe the unintelligible paradox of complementarity; the Blegdamsvej Faust, a humorous rewriting and performance of the Faust myth by physicists at the end of a 1932 conference in Copenhagen; The Los Alamos Primer, lectures used to train newcomers to Los Alamos; and Leo Szilard's 1961 novella, The Voice of the Dolphins. Canaday also scrutinizes Riddley Walker, Russell Hoban's remarkable futuristic novel about England after a nuclear holocaust

Art · Art history · Bohr model · FAUST · Literature · Mythology · Novella · Physics · Quantum mechanics · Contemporary Literature and Criticism · History · Literature, Film, and Journalism Analysis · Philosophy · Science Education and Perceptions