Since the 18th century, the Experiment was used in literature as a way of finding new dimensions of poetry or inventing new plots. In doing so, literary texts often used scientific knowledge as a starting point for further explorations. Therefore, the experiment is a phenomenon where identities and differences between science and literature are negotiated.

Supervision is the main form of social power in western societies since the 18th century. Medias of different kind played an important role both in the establishment and spreading and in the description and critique of mechanisms of control. The lecture treats the relations of supervision and its medias in looking at literary and cinematic examples.

The relationship between science and literature is a well discussed field of interest since C. P. Snow’s famous lecture on the two cultures in 1959. In recent years, the science-and-literature-studies have increased largely in number, and new ideas how these areas could be linked theoretically have been developed. In the seminar, some of these concepts will be discussed.

In the romantic age, modern science is an important topic in the work of authors who we know as poets and philosophers. The seminar will demonstrate how these writers reflected and criticised the rationalist views of Nature. And it will also show how they integrated scientific facts and practices into their works and ascribed them an important role in the evolution of modern literature.

Media, technology and science, among them war-technology, physics, psychology, optics, and cinema, are in various ways the pre-condition as well as the subject of Robert Musil’s texts. In the seminar, we will read both essayistic and literary texts by Musil including parts of his dissertation on Mach and Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, supplemented by secondary literature.