Picture of the firmament for kids3/28/2024 Natural science and children's literature have always enjoyed a collaborative relationship, beginning with their dual development in the eighteenth century. Peter Pan embodies the cyclicality of Barrie's narrative, which resists closure, as he refuses to grow up, to die, to be forgotten. I argue that Neverland, with its seemingly boundless energy that defies the laws of thermodynamics, hoards and reuses the byproducts of reality's storytelling activity. Although readers familiar with thermodynamics might skip section two, where Peter and Wendy briefly occupies the background, the concepts outlined in this section inform my subsequent reading of Barrie's novel. This essay's sections rehearse the early relationship between science and children's literature summarize the laws of thermodynamics and introduce the key players in their formation establish Barrie's interest in and connections to Victorian science and analyze Peter and Wendy through the lens of thermodynamics. That Peter "hates lethargy" (112) establishes him as a figure of perpetual energy-a sort of fusion reactor who entrances the Darling siblings with promises of relentless adventure. Peter Pan, the "troublesome boy" ( Barrie, Collected 75), and Tinker Bell, an "abandoned little creature" (162), function as monstrosities of energy, pure power with few limitations beyond ignorance and jealousy. Energy can be harnessed through both matter and mind, the latter best evidenced through the overarching theme of belief. The Neverland of Peter and Wendy is a world of exotic energies that denies the thermodynamic laws of reality. " Peter Pan has shown that uncanny ability," Jacqueline Rose observes, "to absorb or take on board exactly what it needs in order to reproduce itself" (xiv). This essay argues that Barrie's Peter Pan stories, in no small part the result of his obsessive-and sometimes reluctant-revisions, reinterpretations, and remembrances, defy cultural entropy by recycling their original energy through generations of consumers. "Science," Barrie asserts in 1922, "is the surest means of teaching you how to know what you mean when you say" ( Courage 22). Yet Peter Pan and Tinker Bell maintain their energy, symbolizing the power of narrative, constantly recharged through storytelling, to defy entropy. The domestic return at the end of the novel entails reorientation to a world defined by physical rules, where time moves inexorably forward and energy dissipates unavoidably toward death. Neverland, the novel's fantasy world, unfolds as a disturbing domain of alternative energy, where characters harness powers that transcend the thermodynamic limits of reality. In Peter and Wendy, Barrie introduces two dynamic figures-Peter Pan and Tinker Bell-who symbolize and negotiate diverse forms and functions of energy. Tait's most creative and controversial work involved the speculative existence of an "unseen universe," a sort of fantasy space of thermodynamics. 3 The most significant evidence of Barrie's interaction with science emerges through his affectionate reminiscence of Peter Guthrie Tait, his former teacher at the University of Edinburgh and one of the leading figures in Victorian physics. Whereas Lewis Carroll's interactions with Victorian science have been well documented, Barrie's scientific interests-less conspicuous, but no less serious-warrant further examination. Neverland-and the "reality" that frames it-is a veritable coursebook on fin-de-siècle physics, especially the cataclysmic models of thermodynamics. 1 This essay seeks to locate a particularly dynamic relationship between science and children's literature, one exemplified in Peter and Wendy (1911), Barrie's novelization of the 1904 play. Since fantasy worlds both reflected and encouraged scientific innovation, children's literature stood at the forefront of forging and nurturing this bond. Tyndall thereafter declares the imagination "the mightiest instrument of the physical discoverer" (6), demonstrating the close connection, in the late nineteenth century, between science and fiction. Indeed, the majority of the lecture concerns the "cohesion between thought and Light" (5), which might also describe J. The imagination, Tyndall maintains, "can lighten the darkness which surrounds the world of the senses" (6). In 1870, John Tyndall delivered a lecture titled "The Scientific Use of the Imagination," in which he described the "composite and creative unity" formed from imagination and reason (10).
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