Rick de Villiers

The Structure of Scientific Recantations: Cormac McCarthy and the Literary Tradition of Scientific Regret

Abstract:This essay situates Cormac McCarthy’s twinned last novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris, alongside a literary tradition that treats the subject of scientific regret after 1945. At turns suspicious and sympathetic, this tradition weighs “pure science” in a moral calculus, often with didactic ends. The histori...