Prometheus on Mars: Nineteenth-Century Science Fiction and the Language of Romanticism

The development of astrophysics in the nineteenth century drew mankind closer to the planets. For the first time, it was possible to give serious scientific consideration to the possibilities for life on other planets. The greatest leap, however, was in recognizing what was not known, and acknowledging the limits of human intuition. ‘Ideas,’ wrote Agnes M. Clerke, ‘have all at once become plastic’. As the scientific community tested the limits of scientific understanding, it became the role of science-fiction writers to imagine the universe beyond these limits. This paper will examine the ways in which nineteenth-century science fiction used the inheritance of the poetic language of Romanticism to reinstate the centrality of human being in the universe. I will explore the ways in which writers such as Edward Bulwer-Lytton (The Coming Race, 1871) and W. S. Lach-Szyrma (Aleriel, 1883) extended the Byronic hero to envisage extra-terrestrial utopias. The Hegelian systematic mythology described by Byron and Shelley had reimagined paradise and redemption on earth. Through science fiction, this mythology extended out towards the stars. A discourse on the possibilities of extra-terrestrial life became a Romantic discourse on the possibilities of being. The Byronic hero could now find a home not by escaping the shackles of religion, but as an angelic citizen of Venus or Mars. In this way, the paper will explore how science-fiction writers appropriated the language of Romantic poetry to build a bridge between the framework of scientific knowledge and the extent of human imagination.

When language of instruction and language of application differ: Cognitive costs of bilingual mathematics learning

Bilingual education programs implicitly assume that the acquired knowledge is represented in a language-independent way. This assumption, however, stands in strong contrast to research findings showing that information may be represented in a way closely tied to the specific language of instruction and learning. The present study aims to examine whether and to which extent cognitive costs appear during arithmetic learning when language of instruction and language of retrieving differ. Thirty-nine high school students participating in a bilingual education program underwent a four-day training on multiplication and subtraction problems in one language (German or French), followed by a test session in which they had to solve trained as well as untrained problems in both languages. We found that cognitive costs related to language switching appeared for both arithmetic operations. Implications of our findings are discussed with respect to bilingual education as well as to cognitive mechanisms underlying different arithmetic operations.

Acculturation and cultural identity of immigrant youth: The impact of courses in the language and culture of origin

Career choices in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are favoured by men and often avoided by women; on the other hand, women tend to choose fields such as the social sciences. This not only leads to a shortage of employees with STEM degrees, but also reinforces the prejudice that certain (personality) characteristics are ‘typically female’ or ‘typically male’. Career orientation motives of young women and men can have important implications for gender (a-)typical career choices. However, there is little empirical research on the correlates of career orientation motives in young women in the field of STEM. This study seeks to address this gap by outlining the components of career orientation motives and showing relationships among them. Therefore, our results provide insight into the circumstances and conditions that are associated with academic and career choices.

Lost in translation: the impact of publication language on citation frequency in the scientific dental literature

Citation metrics are commonly used as a proxy for scientific merit and relevance. Papers published in English, however, may exhibit a higher citation frequency than research articles published in other languages, though this issue has not yet been investigated from a Swiss perspective where English is not the native language.