The 12^th International Conference of
	ISSEI	In cooperation With
	International Society for the Study of European Ideas

Section IV: Literature, Art, Music, Theatre, Culture

and

Section V: Religion, Philosophy, Anthropology, Psychology, Language

Workshop: The Multidimensional Thought: Science, Fiction and Reality

Chair: Yolanda Espina

As proposed for this Conference, the challenge is to elucidate the interdependence between science and literature through an approach to the significance of language in its pivotal character. It is Interesting to analyze the real meaning of this pivotal character. Because we are talking about language as a sort of “interface”, and an interface has always a relational quality. An interface is the meeting point between one world and another and precisely the one point in which both are and are not. Which one of them is what we call “reality”? Is reality anything else than just that meeting point, meaning with it that nothing but language really exists? Or, on the contrary, we can ask: could we think of this or any other possibility of correspondence between worlds without thinking of their real existence, even under the form of a mere possibility? Therefore, could Science merely be defined as a description of reality that defies any other possibility of being told? Could Fiction be defined as a narrative of reality conceived as pure possibility? Could we then still talk about Knowledge? Therefore, shouldn’t knowledge confirm the existence between those worlds and the existence of what makes them interdependent?

These and other questions arise from the multiplicity of a reality that fiercely emerges from the senses but quietly hides behind language. Still, it tells us about itself in its reality and therefore its precedence. And in doing so, it tells us about ourselves. This proposal aims to analyze the relational quality of the different levels of reality, by approaching it in its multidimensional character.

Please submit proposals by email to:

Yolanda Espiña

School of Arts

Catholic University of Portugal

Email: yespina@porto.ucp.pt

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