Aims. The "Writers in Residence" Project aims to explore the possibilities of hybridisation between Literature and Science based on taking a cross-disciplinary approach to concepts that are found on the borderline between both disciplines. This initiative has emerged precisely from the need to take a cross-disciplinary approach to question the increasing hyper-specialisation of knowledge; and from the need to explore new forms of knowledge and find new cognitive tools.

Literature and Science. There is a deep-rooted idea in our contemporary social imaginary that science and literature form part of different worlds, that have no point of contact with each other and form separate irreconcilable disciplines. However, thorough, in-depth analysis of the question shows us the opposite. Whenever significant paradigm shifts have occurred during the history of knowledge, these have become apparent at the same time in both literature and science. Science and literature have never each gone their separate ways and proof of this is the important reciprocal influence that each one has received from the other.
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Development of the research work. For six months, Eduardo Berti has got together periodically with the physicist Gustavo Ariel Schwartz (and other researchers from the CFM, DIPC and the BCBL) to debate the links between Literature and science in intensive endless conversations. In this context, they have been mapping the links between Literature and Science throughout the 20th century (and around it) and they have been exploring various aspects of the relationship between literature and science. The exploration of the relations between Literature and Science has only just begun. “We are fumbling around to explore a terra incognita without a map, compass or established methods; however this has never been a problem for great explorers… we hope that it won’t be for us either.”

Results. During these six months of intensive work, Eduardo Berti has begun to work on a new novel in which he will be depicting his experience in the DIPC Writers in Residence programme and in which many of the aspects of the links between Literature and Science will appear in literary form. Gustavo Ariel Schwartz and Eduardo Berti are also jointly writing an essay for a monographic issue of the CSIC magazine, ARBOR on Literature and Science. Finally, the map of the relations between Literature and Science that Schwartz and Berti have drawn up based on this collaboration will provide a reference for successfully approaching future projects.

Conclusions. Although there are concepts and problems in Literature and Science that are specific to each field, there is a series of subjects that form part of this diffuse area where the boundaries between disciplines are not clearly defined (nor can they be). How should we tackle, for example, the study of metaphors? Can literature ignore what happens in our brains when we read? Can neuroscience really study the neural patterns of metaphors while ignoring their literary aspects? Something similar occurs when we want to understand memory, consciousness or language itself. These are complex problems that are unsuited to a simplistic or reductionist approach. As a result we need to find new resources and tools that will enable us to have a more complete and more holistic understanding of the problem; a way to understand things in a general sense without leaving aside particular aspects.
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