ABSTRACT
Malcolm Bowie puts these by now heavily institutionalized figures together for their quality of ‘as if’ thinking, that very quality which manages somehow to elude final capture by the institution. This is the term used by the German philosopher Hans Vaihinger in the wake of Kant and Nietzsche to designate the necessity of hypothesis. What he warned against was the turning of hypothesis into dogma, for the wishful constructions fabricated by mind out of reality have to be tested out according to the ends in view, namely the desires of the subject. It is Bowie’s particular interest to relate theory and desire, his specific brief being the relations between passions and hypotheses. To support his case he turns to Freud, Proust, and Lacan, all of whom are centrally concerned with the use of fictions in pursuit of goals. Bowie sets out to investigate this process by relating those who thought of themselves as scientists to one who thought of himself as a maker of fiction. The fruitfulness of this comparison resides in the argument that there is fiction in science and science in fiction.
