Library of Babel Fish

Literary studies and STEM are considered to be different star systems, when in fact they are complementary and intertwined. In higher education the misconception becomes ingrained, and students in one sphere only briefly glimpse the other in a solitary gen ed course required for graduation. FIU’s Science & Fiction Lab has launched an ambitious program to unify the cosmic view. The Lab aims to propagate humanistic material and methods across the undergraduate curriculum by creating, storing, and disseminating “plug-and-play,” portable course content (PCC). PCC is a ready-to-go cluster of lessons that can be interpolated into pre-existing courses in any discipline. The subject matter of the Lab’s PCC derives from the myriad connections between science and fiction. Bundled in adaptable, self-contained units, these intersections of science and fiction form a starship that conveys humanities throughout the curriculum, transforming the undergraduate classroom experience.

The Lab’s PCC are collected in the Library of Babel Fish, an open-access database of PCC co-developed faculty duos working across disciplines. Jorge Luis Borges’ short story “The Library of Babel” describes the universe as a library where all possible combinations of letters and therefore all information—including misinformation—are bewilderingly available. Douglas Adams’ novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy features the Babel Fish, “probably the oddest thing in the universe” (Adams 60), which gives its host the ability to “instantly understand anything said…in any form of language” (61). The dual reference evokes both translation and a nearly infinite rearrangement of information. The library’s purpose is to offer dozens of recombinations of course material with the capacity to “translate” comprehension across disciplines.

Take me to the course.

scienceandfiction.fiu.edu