SOURCE: Thiher, Allen. “Proust and the End of Epistemic Competition.” In Fiction Rivals Science: The French Novel from Balzac to Proust, pp. 167-215. Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press, 2001.

In the following essay, Thiher explores Proust's attempt to reconcile science and art in his fiction.

Chaque jour j'attache moins de prix à l'intelligence. [Each day I value intelligence less.] 

—Proust, Contre Sainte-Beuve.

Historical Overview

1826: Lobachevsky lectures on a non-Euclidian geometry in which more than one parallel to a given line goes through a given point.

1854: Riemann's essay Uber die Hypothesen, welche der Geometrie zu Grunde liegen develops non-Euclidian geometry with treatment of how distance and curvature can be defined generally in n-dimensional space.

1871: Proust born. Flemming uses dyes to study cellular division.

1874: Boutroux publishes his critique of determinism in De la Contingence des lois de la nature.

1887: Michelson and Morley report failure to measure relative velocity of earth and...