Specificity of scientific and artistic literature. Scientific and fiction literature

Science describes the phenomena and processes of the surrounding reality. It gives a person the opportunity to:

Observe and analyze processes and phenomena,

To find out at a qualitative level the mechanism of their occurrence,

Enter quantitative characteristics;

Predict the course of the process and its results

Art, which includes fiction, reflects the world in images - verbal, visual.

Both named ways of reflecting the real world complement and enrich each other. This is due to the fact that a person by nature has relatively independent functioning of two channels for transmitting and processing information - verbal and emotional-figurative. This is due to the properties of our brain.

Science and art reflect differently public consciousness. The language of science is concepts, formulas. The language of art is images. Artistic images evoke in people's minds persistent, vivid, emotionally charged ideas, which, complementing the content of concepts, form a personal attitude towards reality, towards the material being studied. Formulas, relationships, dependencies can be beautiful, but you need to be able to feel it, then study instead dire necessity can be a difficult but enjoyable experience. Pictures are often found in works of art physical phenomena in nature, descriptions of various technical processes, designs, materials, information about scientists. IN science fiction many scientific assumptions and hypotheses are reflected. A special vision of the world, mastery of words and the ability to generalize allows writers to achieve surprisingly accurate, easily imaginable descriptions in their works.

Descriptions of scientific knowledge appear as in classical literature, and in modern. Such descriptions are especially in demand in the genre of fiction, since in its essence it is based on the presentation of various scientific hypotheses, presented in the language of fiction.

Fantasy as a technique, as a means of expression, belongs entirely to the form of a work of art, or more precisely, to its plot. But it is possible to understand the arrangement and relationships of social characters in their individual manifestation only based on the situation of the work, which is a category of content.

Science fiction, if considered in this regard, has the same subject as art - “the ideologically conscious characteristic of the social life of people and, in one way or another, the characteristic of the life of nature,” with an emphasis primarily on the second part of this definition. Therefore, one cannot agree with the conclusions of T. A. Chernysheva, who believes that “the specificity ... (of science fiction - V. Ch.) is not that it comes to literature new hero- scientist, and not that the content of science fiction works is social, “human” consequences scientific discoveries”, but that in “science... fiction gradually emerged new topic: man and the natural environment, and art is now interested in the physical properties of this environment, and it is perceived not only in the aesthetic aspect.”

It is quite possible that the artist as an individual may be interested in certain aspects of physical phenomena environment or nature in general. Examples of such interest, when a writer, poet is not limited to purely artistic field There is a lot of activity in the historical and literary process. In this regard, it is enough to recall the names of Goethe, Voltaire, Diderot, etc.

However, the question is not so much in justifying or condemning such an interest, but rather in the nature of this interest: either the “physical properties of the environment” are of interest to the writer, primarily in their essential moments, as a manifestation of certain objective laws of nature, or they are realized through the prism features human life, thereby receiving a certain understanding and emotional and ideological assessment. In the first case, even if the artist tries to create a work of art based on a system of knowledge that has been consolidated in his theoretical thinking, it will inevitably be illustrative in nature, without achieving the degree of artistic generality and expressiveness that is inherent in works of art.

If, due to the ideological worldview of the writer, the “physical properties of the environment” acquire one or another emotional and ideological orientation, it can become the subject of art in general and science fiction in particular. The difficulty of differentiating modern fiction in its content significance lies in the fact that it can act as a reflection of the prospects for the development of science and technology or the “physical properties of the environment,” carrying out in a figurative form the popularization of certain problems or achievements of science and technology, and “figurative “form” in such a case does not go further than illustrativeness. And at the same time, “science” fiction, which was born and fully formed in turn of the 19th century- 20th century, is “interested” in the problems and themes of scientific achievements that bear the imprint of the social characteristics of people’s lives and society in their national-historical conditioning. In this case, we can conditionally distinguish two “branches” in science fiction, in its content: science fiction, which understands and reflects the problems of the natural sciences in their social and ideological orientation, and science fiction, which is “interested” in the problems of the social sciences.

However, modern “science” fiction is not limited to the genre of utopia. Data from social and natural sciences, in addition to their objective cognitive value, are increasingly influencing the social relationships of people, expressed both in changes and revisions of moral, ethical standards, and in the need to foresee the results of scientific discoveries for the benefit or harm of all humanity. The industrial and technological revolution, which began in the 20th century, poses a number of social, ethical, philosophical, and not just technical problems to humanity. The changes taking place in this “changing” world and caused by the development of science are what science fiction “deals with,” which since the time of Wells has been called social. The essence of this type of “science” fiction was best expressed by the Strugatsky brothers. “Literature,” they write, “should try to explore typical societies, that is, practically consider the whole variety of connections between people, groups and the second nature created by them. Modern world so complex, there are so many connections and they are so intricate that literature can solve this problem by means of certain sociological generalizations, the construction of sociological models, necessarily simplified, but preserving the most characteristic trends and patterns. Of course, the most important tendencies of these models continue to be typical people, but acting in circumstances typified not along the lines of concreteness, but along the lines of trends." An example of such fiction can be the works of the Strugatskys themselves ("It's Hard to Be a God" and others), "Return from stars" by Stanislaw Lem, etc.

A number of outdated opinions regarding science fiction, which boiled down mainly to the fact that its content should be scientific hypothesis, the goal is a scientific forecast, and the purpose is the popularization and propaganda of scientific knowledge, have now been refuted not so much by the efforts of critics and literary scholars, but by the literary practice. Most writers on science fiction now agree that it is a special branch of fiction with a specific area of ​​creative interests and unique techniques for depicting reality. And yet, most of the works devoted to science fiction are characterized by insufficient development of the positive part of the program, in particular, such a fundamental issue as the role and significance of the “principle of science,” the solution of which could clarify a number of controversial issues related to the nature of science fiction and her artistic capabilities. For a researcher of modern science fiction, it is extremely necessary to find out the nature of its connection with science, as well as the meaning and purpose of such a commonwealth.

The first and, perhaps, the most serious consequence of the “scientificization” of science fiction was its modernity. The emergence of science fiction in the second half of the 19th century. was to a certain extent predetermined by the enormous acceleration (compared to previous centuries) of scientific and technological progress, the dissemination of scientific knowledge in society, and the formation of a scientific, materialistic vision of the world. The scientific was accepted as a plausible justification for the fantastic then, notes the writer G. Gurevich, “when technology gained strength and miracles began to be done behind the fences of factories: steam chariots without horses, ships without sails, sailing against the wind.”

However, science fiction in fiction is not just an ordinary sign of the times. The scientific principle adopted by science fiction prepared and armed it for the development of the most complex modern problems.

Most writers on science fiction agree with the idea that the criterion of scientificity is necessary for science fiction. “...The problem of the compass, the problem of the criterion cannot be removed,” notes A.F. Britikov, for whom the criterion of science in fiction is equivalent to the criterion of a person. Sun. Revich obviously reduces the criterion of scientificity to the wish of a science fiction writer to know his chosen field well and not allow elementary errors against science: “It’s funny when a person who claims to be a soothsayer makes elementary scientific mistakes.” True, the critic immediately stipulates that scientific awareness for a science fiction writer is not the main thing and not the only thing required quality, and even an elementary scientific miscalculation made by him may not affect the artistic merits of the work. To this we must also add that not every science fiction writer, as we know, claims to be a soothsayer. The question of scientific criteria in V. Mikhailov’s article “Science Fiction” is complicated. The author of the article either claims that the single “scientific” word mentioned by a science fiction writer makes his work science fiction (such as the word “rocket”) and agrees with the scientific nature of Wells’s time machine, then criticizes modern science fiction writers who use the idea in their works photon rocket and flight at sub-light speeds, since “calculations have been published” indicating the technical impracticability of both. Z. I. Fainburg pushes the boundaries of science fiction as widely as possible, arguing that “in situations and solutions of science fiction, assumptions are made, as a rule, on the basis of what is at least ideally possible, that is, at least not fundamentally inconsistent with the materiality of the world.”

In modern science fiction there are many gradations, degrees of scientificity. Some modern science fiction writers go much further than Wells along the path of transforming scientific justification into a kind of artistic technique, increasing credibility, or simply a sign of the times. Becoming more and more formal scientific basis is becoming more and more conditional.

We can talk about man and the world in the categories of exact and natural sciences, in the language of psychology, or in complex philosophical concepts. You can revel in the fear of the unknowability of life or proudly affirm the idea of ​​rational evidence of what is happening and behavior based on genuine knowledge. Writers confront characters with the inevitable necessity of action, force them to be guided by social motives or irrational impulses, force them to become victims of their own illusions. Literature reveals necessary and unconditional conditions human existence, correlates them with the mental social experience of the reader, projects the reader’s aspirations in the form of a certain model of the realized past or expected future, formulates them in the context of the chosen artistic method and genre.

A scientific experiment is based on the facts within which it is conducted. The activity of a scientist often excludes everything that can be considered subjective and arbitrary. The undoubted purpose of the experiment is to achieve objective scientific truth. However, often the subjective path of knowledge leads to it, intuition, which, with a successful combination of circumstances and results, will become an axiom and become an observation model and paradigm for followers, because science tends to ignore all particular situations. It is on this basis that it is based.

The world that opened as a result of scientific activity, and the world that became the result literary creativity, marked by differences. For the author of a work of art, unlike a scientist, there are no “random” facts. Reality is so contradictory that it is difficult to guess which element of it should be preferred and which should be ignored. Reality in all its diversity, or, on the contrary, truncated to fragments, is transferred to the book and resides in it in an unbalanced unity.

The diverse facts presented in the text create the illusion of a holistically reproduced world. The boundaries of artistically meaningful reality are no less arbitrary than the source material. Products used artistic expression marked by subjective author's tasks. However, the work cannot be reduced to a random and intuitive expression of the writer's intentions. Any artistic innovation or phenomenon of creative arbitrariness in the selection of material and its artistic development is determined by the psychology of the artist, his tastes, passions, ideological position, moral preferences of the writer, who interprets the world in accordance with the amount of knowledge and from certain philosophical and aesthetic positions. In addition, a literary work develops according to the laws of genre and style. The creative basis for the author is the style, method, and poetics common in a particular era, which define the boundaries of the corresponding tradition.

With all the randomness of the writer’s selection of material, the conventions and subjectivity of creativity - the spontaneity of preference for certain facts, the arbitrariness of the commentary, the paradoxical nature of the time sequence, etc. - his ultimate goal is to offer the reader an image of reality in which the “random” will become an impulse for understanding the probabilistic the nature of private phenomena and human existence.

As a result of artistic generalization, the effect of verisimilitude and recognition by the reader of the world created by the author is achieved. Artistic creativity does not exclude, and often even implies, provocative forms of depicting reality. The intermittent and at first glance chaotic reality of events and sensations for each person acquires a logical picture in the book. The reader perceives the image of reality created by the author’s artistic consciousness as one of the hypothetical options for the realization of the world, which should be avoided or should be transferred to the reality of one’s own existence.

The existence of the heroes, marked with the stamp of uniqueness, becomes the basis of the reader’s “reliable” ideas about life. In this sense, literature can be called a projective model of the reader’s existence and can be partly correlated with the results of a scientific experiment: experience literary heroes becomes a standard model or a false philosophical premise for life project reader. A person correlates the knowledge obtained from a book with his own existence, experiences it, comprehends it, and adjusts the surrounding reality according to the artistic world. Literature becomes a source of reader intuition and subjective assessments that generalize reality.

Of course, the interpretation of any experience mainly depends on the knowledge accumulated by a person. The process of influence of literature on a person can be meaningful and unconscious; the author in the work reveals the diverse connections of the reader with the world around him.

A person makes daily decisions that are determined by the experience gained from the events that have taken place. Nevertheless, any cognitive act is partly the result of the projection of literary situations onto reality. Behavior is guided by intuition, which is based on the synthesis of subjective knowledge ( life experience) with objective knowledge of the situations proposed by the literature. The world presented in the book is contradictory, but the logical boundaries of the presentation - composition, genre, style, completed images, author's reasoning, movement and resolution of the conflict - act as a guarantee of a certain world order. Each work, therefore, bears the stamp of orderliness and relative stability, which encourages the reader to correlate his life with the world artistically created by the writer. Hence the exceptional importance of literature as an institution that offers procedural reality in the form of realized and completed models that determine a person’s place not only in the physical, social, but also in the spiritual world.

The influence of science on literature should not be exaggerated. And yet there are cases when scientific discoveries prepared certain original artistic solutions. Poets of Baroque, Classicism, and the Age of Enlightenment, admiring the omnipotence of science, introduce images of measuring instruments into their works. M.V. Lomonosov composes “Letter on the benefits of glass.” O. de Balzac bases the idea of ​​the “Human Comedy” on natural science theories. O. Comte's positivism - the rejection of metaphysical claims to reveal causes and essences - largely shaped the aesthetics of naturalism. The ideas of N. Lobachevsky influenced philosophical concept lyrics of the “poet-lyubomud” D. Venevitinov. Scientific ideas became the starting point for the artistic experiments of L. Carroll, the fantastic projects of H. Wells, and the poetic searches of V. Khlebnikov. The model of the universe based on the biosphere concept of V. Vernadsky influenced the artistic quest of Russian writers.

Structural linguistics has largely determined the prospects for humanities research and literary practice XX century. The 60s of the 20th century in our country were marked by a dispute between “physicists” and “lyricists”.

There are no less numerous examples of scientists recognizing the grandeur of the creative genius of writers. L. Boltzmann spoke about wealth spiritual content equations of the theory of J. C. Maxwell in the words of J. V. Goethe from the poem “Faust”: “Didn’t God inscribe these signs? They reveal the nature of strength and fill our hearts with bliss.”

References to authoritative thoughts are certainly not proof, but A. Einstein’s words that Dostoevsky gives him more than Gauss have become widely known. The meaning of recognition is obvious: the work of a brilliant artist can liberate the creative consciousness of a scientist and give impetus to his scientific imagination. Any scientific discovery or work of art is a revision of established ideas and often a rejection of existing stereotypes.

Avant-garde writers of the 20th century classify the previously dominant understanding of poetry as an expression of thoughts and feelings or a generalization of spiritual experience as anachronisms. It is argued that poetic thought and feeling cannot penetrate the depths of the spiritual world of our time. The immediate semantic load of the work becomes unnecessary and meaningless.

Experiments with abstractions and the use of scientific research methods in poetry destroy the conceptual and emotional basis literary work, bring to life an associative letter that is created through complex integrated systems poetic images and multi-stage allusions.

Studying the problem of man in his connections with reality, urban poets survey city highways and communications that connect and contrast individual social groups chaotic crowds. In many ways, such motives and moods are caused by the dynamism of the scientific and technological revolution, which, on the one hand, inspired the idea of ​​grandiose changes in human life, and on the other, frightened with unknown prospects.

Introduction to literary criticism (N.L. Vershinina, E.V. Volkova, A.A. Ilyushin, etc.) / Ed. L.M. Krupchanov. - M, 2005

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