Chaos and Order

Chaos and Order Complex Dynamics in Literature and Science

edited by N. Katherine Hayles

University of Chicago Press, 1991
Cloth: 978-0-226-32143-1 | Paper: 978-0-226-32144-8 | Electronic: 978-0-226-23004-7
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226230047.001.0001

AVAILABLE FROM

University of Chicago Press (paper, ebook)
Amazon Kindle
Apple Books
Barnes & Noble Nook
Brytewave (CafeScribe-Follett Higher Ed)
Chegg Inc
Copia Interactive
ebrary
EBSCO eBooks (formerly NetLibrary)
Google Play
Kno
Kobo

ABOUT THIS BOOKTABLE OF CONTENTS

ABOUT THIS BOOK

The scientific discovery that chaotic systems embody deep structures of order is one of such wide-ranging implications that it has attracted attention across a spectrum of disciplines, including the humanities. In this volume, fourteen theorists explore the significance for literary and cultural studies of the new paradigm of chaotics, forging connections between contemporary literature and the science of chaos. They examine how changing ideas of order and disorder enable new readings of scientific and literary texts, from Newton's Principia to Ruskin's autobiography, from Victorian serial fiction to Borges's short stories.

N. Katherine Hayles traces shifts in meaning that chaos has undergone within the Western tradition, suggesting that the science of chaos articulates categories that cannot be assimilated into the traditional dichotomy of order and disorder. She and her contributors take the relation between order and disorder as a theme and develop its implications for understanding texts, metaphors, metafiction, audience response, and the process of interpretation itself. Their innovative and diverse work opens the interdisciplinary field of chaotics to literary inquiry.

Acknowledgments

1. Introduction: Complex Dynamics in Literature and Science - N. Katherine Hayles

I. Chaos: More than Metaphor

2. Literature, Complexity, Interdisciplinarity - William Paulson

3. Fictions as Dissipative Structures: Prigogine’s Theory and Postmodernism’s Roadshow - David Porush

4. The Chaos of Metafiction - Peter Stoicheff

5. The Emplotment of Chaos: Instability and Narrative Order - Kenneth J. Knoespel

II. Order: Revisioning Form

6. Representing Order: Natural Philosophy, Mathematics, and Theology in the Newtonian Revolution - Robert Markley

7. The Authorization of Form: Ruskin and the Science of Chaos - Sheila Emerson

8. Linear Stories and Circular Visions: The Decline of the Victorian Serial - Linda K. Hughes and Michael Lund

9. Science and the Mythopoeic Mind: The Case of H.D. - Adalaide Morris

III. Chaos and Order: Probing the Limits

10. Representation and Bifurcation: Borges’s Garden of Chaos Dynamics - Thomas P. Weissert

11. Modeling the Chaosphere: Stanislaw Lem’s Alien Communications - Istvan Cscsery-Ronay, Jr.

12. Negentropy, Noise, and Emancipatory Thought - Eric Charles White

13. Michel Serres: In Search of a Tropography - Maria L. Assad

Contributors

Index