In the Telugu literary environment, the question of whether science has any place—or none at all—keeps returning to me time and again. Do serious writers, storytellers, novelists, and poets actually read science? Do they even care about it? Do scientific essays, popular science books, new theories, new discoveries have any influence on their imagination? This doubt resurfaced recently when a film writer asked me a question. He wanted to know whether there exists some “appropriate illness” that might fit a character in his story.
Meaning: he was unsure if the illness he imagined actually exists medically. In our Telugu stories, writers often invent illnesses that merely seem like they should exist, technologies that should work, chemicals that should be possible—most of which fall outside scientific or medical credibility. They drift into the mythical. Like oil floating on water, the relationship between Telugu literature and science has remained distant, refusing to mix. Before looking at Telugu or Indian literature, let us briefly examine Western literature.
Science influences literature in two ways:
1.Content (Subject Matter)
2.Form (Narrative Logic, Epistemic Frame)
If a writer happens to read science—new theories, new discoveries, biomedical methods—they influence the content. Characters may be doctors or scientists; the story might involve gene therapy; the plot may include a conversation about some quantum paradox between two characters. All this is possible, and it depends entirely on the writer’s reading interests.
But form is different. Moving from content to form is rare in our context. In my view, it has hardly happened in Telugu literature (with a few exceptions). Because for literary form—character construction, point of view, pace, and narrative logic—to transform, the society itself must experience a paradigm shift in how it understands science.
In Western countries, scientific discoveries on one side and scientific theories on the other profoundly altered narrative structures. Thomas Kuhn, in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, says that only those discoveries or theories that can overturn long-held understandings of human life and worldview deserve to be called scientific revolutions. Only such revolutions have the power to transform literary structures; not every invention or theory can do this.
Instruments:
Mechanical Clock → Changed the understanding of time, introduced time-discipline, pushed literature from a mythic worldview filled with omens and natural catastrophes toward realism. (Balzac, Tolstoy)
Compass → Led to a decentered worldview; sea travel expanded human spatial imagination.
Microscope → Awareness of invisible, microscopic worlds → rise of detailed realism. (Dickens’ Bleak House and the Fog)
Gunpowder → Political-social power structures shifted, leading to new narrative structures.
Theories:
Copernican Theory → Humans are not the center of the universe; decline of ego-centered character constructions.
Darwin’s Theory → Change, struggle, and adaptation became fundamental narrative principles.
Freudian Theory → Birth of psychological novels, unconscious-driven narratives.
These three theories dismantled the very foundation of human supremacy.
In this essay, let us focus on how Darwin’s theory of evolution reshaped Western literature.
George Levine and Gillian Beer argue that Darwinian evolution did not merely influence the plot mechanics of nineteenth-century Victorian fiction; it shook the very worldview of that era. Before Darwin, Victorian fiction assumed a morally ordered universe governed by divine will. Characters moved within fate-driven narrative structures. Closed-ended plots, morally balanced resolutions, and the value of linear order anchored fiction.
But after On the Origin of Species, writers like George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, George Meredith, and H.G. Wells began crafting stories that followed a wholly different logic. Narrative progression ceased to be fate-bound and instead became a process that evolved on its own. Stories no longer assumed predetermined moral orders; chance events and unexpected outcomes entered the narrative space. Nothing was predetermined. Characters appeared as beings shaped by their environments—developing or perishing depending on how well they adapted. Non-linear structures emerged, and endings grew unstable, unresolved, and open-ended.
Thus Darwinism did not merely influence literature; literature itself became a cultural vehicle for Darwinian thought, easing its entry into the psychological and social layers of society. This is one of literature’s greatest social achievements: evolution ceased to be just a scientific theory and became part of the cultural imagination. This cultural shift is what we call modernity.
Now turning to India—colonialism brought administrative modernity, but not intellectual modernity. Darwin’s theory did not trigger any philosophical or metaphysical crisis here. As a result, it never entered the imaginative life of the people; it remained confined to a chapter in school science textbooks. Which is why, in modern Telugu literature, Darwin is not merely absent—the narrative structure itself is fundamentally anti-Darwinian.
Our social-philosophical life is deeply grounded in ancient Hindu cultural roots. Thus our narrative tradition is saturated with karma theory, fate, moral–immoral conflict, the protection of the virtuous and punishment of the wicked, the four purusharthas, the four ashramas, control of the arishadvargas, divine will, and the philosophy of Kali Yuga. Modernity has introduced some progressive changes in ethical life, but it has not transformed our epistemology. Hence characters in modern Telugu fiction may live in America, use gadgets, but still begin their day with Sandhya Vandanam, praise traditional festivals, and celebrate jasmine flowers in a woman’s braid—these become markers of greatness.
We have somewhat modernized literature at the content level, addressing social reform, progressive ideals, caste-gender-existential struggles, and humanistic concerns. But form has not changed.
As a result, Telugu fiction still clings to ideas like “good things happen to good people,” “evil is punished,” and “stories must contain a clear moral lesson or message.” Characters remain fixed, static, unaffected by their environments. Stories, whether ending happily or tragically, always arrive neatly at the shore, never departing from structural conventions.
Another problem is that our writers view science not as a form of knowledge but as a profession. Scientific reading is rare in society. Writers fear that accepting science may diminish their ‘sensitivity.’ Science and modernity are often mistaken for colonial or capitalist constructs. Add to this the political-economic systems emerging from the wounds of colonialism—systems too large to confront—and philosophical modernity has found no firm foundation in our literature.
Given all this, unless the worldview created by science enters our narrative structures, neither our literature nor our society can take a genuine step toward modernity. Science and literature must move together, as mutually supporting forces; only then can society modernize. Only when this awareness emerges will future writers forge new literary paths.
If not—no matter how contemporary the themes or how many new-generation writers emerge—modernity will remain nothing more than a surface decoration.
Image by: srujan raj
