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Geology is undergoing changes that could influence its knowledge claims, reportedly becoming more laboratory-based, technology-driven, quantitative, and physics- and chemistry-rich over time. This dissertation uses techniques from information science and linguistics to examine the geologic literature of 1945-2005. It consists of two studies: an examination of the geological literature as an expanding network of related subdisciplines, and an investigation of the linguistic and graphical argumentation strategies within geological journal articles. The first investigation is a large-scale study of topics within articles from 67 geologic journals. Clustering of subdiscipline journals based on titles and keywords reveals six major areas of geology: sedimentology/stratigraphy, oceans/climate, solid-earth, earth-surface, hard-rock, and paleontology. Citation maps reveal similar relationships. Text classification of titles and keywords from general-geology journals reveals that geological research has shifted away from economic geology towards physics- and chemistry-based topics. Geological literature has grown and fragmented ("twigged") over time, sustained in its extreme specialization by the scientific collaborations characteristic of "big science." The second investigation is a survey of linguistic and graphic features within geological journal articles that signal certain types of scientific activity and reasoning. Longitudinal studies show that "classical geology" articles within Geological Society of America Bulletin have become shorter and more graphically dense from 1945-2005. Maps and graphs replace less-efficient text, photographs, and sketches. Linguistic markers reveal increases in formal scientific discourse, specialized vocabulary, and reading difficulty. Studies comparing GSA Bulletin to five subdiscipline journals reveals that, in 2005, GSA Bulletin, AAPG Bulletin, and Journal of Sedimentary Research had similar graphic profiles and presented both field and laboratory data. Ground Water, Journal of Geophysical Research - Solid Earth, and Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta had more equations, graphs, and numerical-modeling results than the other journals. The dissertation concludes that geology evolves by spawning physics- and chemistry-rich subdisciplines with distinct methodologies. Publishing geologists accommodate increased theoretical rigor, not using classic hallmarks of hard science (e.g., equations), but by mobilizing spatial arguments within an increasingly dense web of linguistic and graphical signs. Substantial differences in topic, methodology, and argumentation between subdisciplines manifest the multifaceted and complex consistution of geology and geologic philosophy

Hard Science-fiction shares a close relationship with the element of spectacle. This is especially apparent in Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014), a film based in realistic science and emotional appeal. Nolan makes use of creating a team comprised of creative minds with different backgrounds. This includes theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, co-writer Jonathan Nolan, and composer Hans Zimmer. Together, the four develop a film that focuses on three main facets of science: time dilation, black holes, and dimensions. Incorporating these elements based in the historical world gives Interstellar its classification as hard science-fiction, a genre based more solidly in realistic science than classical science-fiction. Thorne serves as an executive producer and advisor to all matters scientific, Zimmer composes the score to accompany and intensify the moments of spectacle, and the Nolan brothers serve to create the plot behind Interstellar. The film’s spectacle can be seen throughout, notably in the “Miller’s Planet” and “Gargantua” scenes. Nolan also incorporates Welsh Poet Dylan Thomas’s “Do not go gentle into that good night” to exemplify the film’s theme of perseverance against increasing odds. It is through these elements that Interstellar serves itself as an exemplary film for showcasing the relationship between the nature of hard science-fiction and spectacle.

<p>The dissertation brings together approaches across the fields of physics, critical theory, literary studies, philosophy of physics, sociology of science, and history of science to synthesize a hybrid approach for instigating more rigorous and intense cross-disciplinary interrogations between the sciences and the humanities. I explore the concept of speculation in particle physics and science fiction to examine emergent critical approaches for working in the two areas of literature and physics (the latter through critical science studies), but with the expectation of contributing new insights to media theory, critical code studies, and also the science studies of science fiction. </p><p>There are two levels of conversations going on in the dissertation; at the first level, the discussion is centered on a critical historiography and philosophical implications of the discovery Higgs boson in relation to its position at the intersection of old (current) and the potential for new possibilities in quantum physics; I then position my findings on the Higgs boson in connection to the double-slit experiment that represents foundational inquiries into quantum physics, to demonstrate the bridge between fundamental physics and high energy particle physics. The conceptualization of the variants of the double-slit experiment informs the aforementioned critical comparisons. At the second level of the conversation, theories are produced from a close study of the physics objects as speculative engine for new knowledge generation that are then reconceptualized and re-articulated for extrapolation into the speculative ontology of hard science fiction, particularly the hard science fiction written with the double intent of speaking to the science while producing imaginative and socially conscious science through the literary affordances of science fiction. The works of science fiction examined here demonstrate the tension between the internal values of physics in the practice of theory and experiment and questions on ethics, culture, and morality.</p><p>Nevertheless, the dissertation hopes to show the beginnings of a possibility, through the contentious but generative space provided by speculative physics, to produce more cross-collaborative thinking between physics as represented by the hard sciences, and science fiction representing the objects of literary enterprise and creative evolution.</p> / Dissertation

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