Claire's Literature Corner

  Introduction The relationship between science and literature has always been problematic. If we analyze the question from an epistemological point of view, what emerges is that science, since its very beginning (that is to say since the17 th  century, the birth of science as we conceive it today) has claimed to be the only group of disciplines that provides a universal knowledge. In this, science has put itself in the position of being totally against literature, claiming that the latter was only entertainment or, even worse, embellishment. That’s the reason why, still today, a vast majority of people believes that literature has almost nothing to do with the transmission of knowledge or, rather, that literature cannot provide universal ‘truths’. Literature has much to do with imagination, therefore many people think that it does nor deal with ‘real’ and important things, as on the contrary science does (or claims to do). This approach to literature might appear partially tr...