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The Relationship Between the Aristotelian, Newtonian and Holistic Scientific Paradigms and Selected British Detective Fiction 1980 - 2010

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The Relationship Between the Aristotelian, Newtonian and Holistic Scientific Paradigms and Selected British Detective Fiction 1980 - 2010 THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE ARISTOTELIAN, NEWTONIAN AND HOLISTIC SCIENTIFIC PARADIGMS AND SELECTED BRITISH DETECTIVE FICTION 1980 - 2010 HILARY ANNE GOLDSMITH A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Greenwich for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy July 2010 i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to acknowledge the help and support I have received throughout my studies from the academic staff at the University of Greenwich, especially that of my supervisors. I would especially like to acknowledge the unerring support and encouragement I have received from Professor Susan Rowland, my first supervisor. iii ABSTRACT This thesis examines the changing relationship between key elements of the Aristotelian, Newtonian and holistic scientific paradigms and contemporary detective fiction. The work of scholars including N. Katherine Hayles, Martha A. Turner has applied Thomas S. Kuhn’s notion of scientific paradigms to literary works, especially those of the Victorian period. There seemed to be an absence, however, of research of a similar academic standard exploring the relationship between scientific worldviews and detective fiction. Extending their scholarship, this thesis seeks to open up debate in what was perceived to be an under-represented area of literary study. The thesis begins by identifying the main precepts of the three paradigms. It then offers a chronological overview of the developing relationship between these precepts and detective fiction from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Sign of Four (1890) to P.D.James’s The Black Tower (1975). The present state of this interaction is assessed through a detailed analysis of representative examples of the detective fiction of Reginald Hill, Barbara Nadel, and Quintin Jardine written between 1980 and 2010. The thesis concludes that by presenting the interrelatedness characteristic of the holistic paradigm in a positive light, the work of Hill, Nadel and Jardine may facilitate a paradigm shift away from the dominant Newtonian paradigm towards a more holistic worldview. Further, contemporary detective fiction may have an important role to play in acclimatising its readership to a more inclusive worldview. This research identifies several areas for future study. It would be interesting to extend this work to take account of detective fiction from other cultures. It would also be fascinating to investigate the relationship between structure (of both the narrative and the plot) and scientific pattern in order to assess just how far scientific concepts and detective fiction are interconnected. iv CONTENTS Declaration ii Acknowledgements iii Abstract iv Contents v Introduction 1 Chapter 1 The Notion of Scientific Paradigms 10 Changes in World view from Aristotle to Hawking Chapter 2 Scientific Paradigms and the Evolution of the Genre 42 Classic Detective Fiction from Conan Doyle to P.D. James Chapter 3 Scientific Paradigms and the Dalziel and Pascoe Novels of 97 Reginald Hill Chapter 4 Questioning the Newtonian Paradigm 145 The Bob Skinner novels of Quintin Jardine Chapter 5 Towards a New Holistic Worldview 192 The Detective Fiction of Barbara Nadel Conclusion 241 Bibliography 246 v Introduction [T]he chemical laboratory [...] was a loft chamber, lined and littered with countless bottles. Broad, low tables were scattered about, which bristled with retorts, test-tubes, and little Bunsen lamps, with their blue flickering flames. There was only one student in the room, who was bending over a distant table absorbed in his work. (Doyle 17) It would be safe to assume from the above quotation that the student is engaged in some form of scientific observation or experimentation. This is indeed the case. The student is about to discover a chemical test for the presence of blood. The student is perhaps better known as the ‘apotheosis’ (Knight 55) of the fictional detective, ‘the greatest of Great Detectives’ (Symonds 66) Mr Sherlock Holmes. Detective fiction and science both seek knowledge. They are both experiments in that their outcome is uncertain. The relationship between science and the fictional detective has been noted and discussed by literary scholars from Dorothy L Sayers, in the Introduction to The Omnibus of Crime (1929) up to the present day. Recent decades have witnessed an increase in the amount of critical work in the field of the relationship between literature and science, especially in the nineteenth century novel. Studies such as Gillian Beer’s 1983 publication Darwin’s Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth Century Fiction; Tess Cossett’s Science and Religion in the Nineteenth Century (1984) and George Levine’s Darwin and the Novelists: Patterns of Science in Victorian Fiction (1988), discuss the relationship between science and literature in the Victorian era. However, with the exception of Gill Plain’s Twentieth Century Crime Fiction (2001) discussed in more detail below, there seems little published of a similar scholarly standard which relates to the most recent literature and virtually none at all that investigates the relationship between science and contemporary detective fiction. This omission is surprising as preliminary studies suggest this to be an area which would repay study bearing in mind the rapid growth of science and technology in the present era and the undiminished interest in detective fiction. This study aims in some part to address the lack of critical work in this area. Moreover it seeks to stimulate academic discussion by presenting the case for further research. 1 Whilst confining this investigation to encompass the work of British authors alone this study wishes to acknowledge the debt the development of the genre owes to examples from other cultures, such as the Swedish Inspector Kurt Wallender series of Henning Mankell (b.1948) and the novels of Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995) in America. Also highly influential, but again lying outside the scope of this thesis is the rise in importance and popularity of the television detective, especially investigators whose role as a detective is secondary to their career. Examples of this include such British television series as BBC Television’s Silent Witness and the CSI series in America. A definition of the terms ‘science’ and ‘detective fiction’ as they would be understood within the context of this research was considered an essential prerequisite. The nature of science, and its interaction with detective fiction, has altered considerably since the Sherlock Holmes era. This is partly because the high degree of specialization reached within the discipline of forensic science places it outside the expertise of the fictional detective. Today, it is carried out in state of the art laboratories using high-specification equipment by teams of experts. There is therefore little overt scientific practice apparent within the British detective fiction novel of today. This study will demonstrate, however, that a wealth of science functions within detective fiction at a far deeper level. It informs the worldview or paradigm within and against which the plot is played out. In 1967 Thomas S. Kuhn introduced, in his seminal work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, the notion of scientific paradigms. For Kuhn, a paradigm is a set of fundamental beliefs and practices, knowledge and acceptance of which guides current scientific activity. Science progresses not by accumulating ever more facts, but by the gradual ‘shifts in vision’ between one paradigm and that proceeding it (116). The new paradigm must be able to answer more questions satisfactorily than the previous one. By doing so it implies ‘a new and more rigid definition of the field’ (17). Kuhn also discusses ‘normal science’, that is, scientific research and practices operating within the confines of the prevailing paradigm which serve to both articulate and reinforce the dominant paradigm. Such practices include the practice of forensic science both in the real world and in the world of the detective fiction novel. The first thesis chapter identifies the main salient features of the Aristotelian, Newtonian and holistic 2 scientific paradigms showing how these features relate to specific examples from detective fiction. In Twentieth Century Crime Fiction, Plain offers a critique of Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions defining ways in which Kuhn’s theory of paradigms is equally applicable to crime fiction. Kuhn argues that new scientific ideas do not supersede old ones. The development of science is not a cumulative one. The same can be argued for the history of detective fiction. In Part II of her book, ‘The Normal Science of Detection,’ Plain draws parallels between the writers of detective fiction and Kuhn’s ‘normal science’. For Plain, the writers ‘experiment, they explore, they develop and hypothesise’ within the paradigm of detective fiction (87). Again the parallels Plain draws between detective fiction and science are closely related to this research. This is because, through tracing these parallels it is possible to link the development of the detective fiction genre with the development of our attitudes to science which shape our view of the contemporary world. As science tests the bounds of the possible and the knowable, detective fiction can push back the boundaries of narrative convention but ultimately does not exceed them. The aim of the second chapter of this thesis was two-fold. Its first aim was to arrive a suitable definition of detective fiction: its second to trace
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