The world in which we live is becoming ever-more globalised, with a clear predominance of information and communications media, packed with interactivity and feedback. This makes it more difficult to sustain the increasingly topical idea of a potential schism between scientific-technical and artistic knowledge. Of all types of artistic expression, probably literature has most clearly shown us the blurred line between science and art. Indeed literature has historically contributed not only texts that recreate scientific activity, but that also reflect on the moral implications – both social and ethical – of science, as a human construct.
The ease with which science has permeated a discipline such as literature is easy to understand, given the scientific catalyst driving intellectual progress in the last two centuries, as literature tends to reflect not only the multifaceted human condition but also the whole social environment surrounding it. Writers, conscious of their livelihood, discovered in the appropriation of science a form of art that was certain to captivate readers, whose interest in scientific and technological proposals had already been aroused by the powerful information channels that characterise our current environment.
The articles comprising this monographic issue provide examples of the union between science and literature as an artistic expression, and as a conceptual and intellectual assemblage that turns these disciplines into a new expression with a richer and more complex approximation to reality. The reader will find historical, sociological, psychological and epistemological approaches, among others, but they all share the same purpose: to show that the paths of science and literature meet at a clearly defined and wholly inescapable crossroads.