Includes bibliographical references (pages 264-273) and index
Introduction: Arthur Dent, Screwtape and the mysteries of story-telling -- - 1 - Postmodernism, grand narratives and just-so stories -- - 2 - Newton and Kissinger: Science as irony? -- - 3 - Learning to say 'I': Literature and subjectivity -- - 4 - Reconstructing religion: Fragmentation, typology and symbolism -- - 5 - The ache in the missing limb: Language, truth and presence -- - 6 - Twentieth-century fundamentalisms: Theology, truth and irony -- - 7 - Science and religion: Language, metaphor and consilience -- - Concluding conversational postscript: The tomb of Napoleon
"An increasing number of contemporary scientists, philosophers and theologians downplay their professional authority and describe their work as simply 'telling stories about the world'. If this is so, Stephen Prickett argues, literary criticism can (and should) be applied to all these fields."
"Such new-found modesty is not necessarily postmodernist scepticism towards all grand narratives, but it often conceals a widespread confusion and naivety about what 'telling stories', 'description' or 'narrative' actually involve. While postmodernists define 'narrative' in opposition to the experimental 'knowledge' of science (Lyotard), some scientists insist that science is itself story-telling (Gould); certain philosophers and theologians even see all knowledge simply as stories created by language (Rorty; Cupitt). Yet story-telling is neither innocent nor empty-handed. Register, rhetoric and imagery all manipulate in their own ways; above all, irony emerges as the natural mode of our modern fragmented culture
Prickett argues that since the eighteenth century there have been only two possible ways of understanding the world: the fundamentalist, and the ironic."--Jacket