| Abstrakt: |
Recent attempts to combine the life sciences with the practice and study of life writing rely on the common basis of a changed research environment about the constitution and conception of life. New fields of research, such as the Medical Humanities and Narrative Medicine, chart the way for a cross-disciplinary cooperation, which overcomes C. P. Snow's claim of two distinct cultures. Both scientists and writers experience and describe aspects of organic life to understand human nature, often in comparison to animal behavior, with an ecological concern for the preservation of the biosphere. In this endeavor they acquire new systems of knowledge and make use of the art of narrative self-presentation. The interaction of the life sciences and life writing in autobiographies and autobiographical fiction of the Canadian zoologist David Suzuki, the Harvard myrmecologist E. O. Wilson, and the New York novelist Siri Hustvedt ranges from the use of evolutionary biological models of life via environmental activism to the insights of neuroscience. In all instances, the science and life writers recognize the advantage of life writing for the presentation of scientific ideas to a larger audience in publications or on TV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
