Chaos and Order

Chaos and Order

Author: N. Katherine Hayles

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2014-12-10

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 022623004X

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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.


Gilles Deleuze: Travels in Literature

Gilles Deleuze: Travels in Literature

Author: M. Bryden

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2006-11-28

Total Pages: 195

ISBN-13: 0230800793

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Deleuze's writing is permeated with references to literature. Despite asserting that he was not a literary critic, Deleuze provides exhilarating and original interactions with texts. This study offers in-depth encounters between Deleuze's thought and the writers who fascinated him, demonstrating the productivity of a Deleuzian frame of reference.


Mediating Order and Chaos

Mediating Order and Chaos

Author: Rodney Farnsworth

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2021-11-08

Total Pages: 355

ISBN-13: 9004490132

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This literature-centered study offers an interdisciplinary approach to Romantic culture. If is pioneering in that it employs the complexity method of anthropology. Recent literary studies employ the complexity/chaos theory adapted from the natural sciences; however, here is presented for the first time a complexity method taken from the social/human sciences. This complexity method is useful in mediating not only contradictions within Romanticism, but the chaos of contemporary theories concerning it. One of the intensifying literary debates is that between the so-called “Greens” and “Reds,” naturalists and humanists. Mediating Order and Chaos not only traces the split between nature and man to Romantic Culture but finds there, too, a Spinozian vision of man and nature in unity – thereby denying any naturalist/humanist split. This volume is of interest for those who wish to see essays in the holistic approach to culture. Centering on hydraulics, hydrology, and meteorology, this study examines literature, painting, music, economics, and the rhetoric of science, philosophy, and politics, it therewith demonstrates how the water cycle was transformed into a cosmic metaphor that mediated, in the form of several complex adaptive systems, between the chaos of too much change and that of not enough.


Historical Dictionary of Fantasy Literature

Historical Dictionary of Fantasy Literature

Author: Allen Stroud

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2023-06-12

Total Pages: 579

ISBN-13: 1538166070

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Fantasy is a genre in motion, gradually expanding its reach and historical sources to embrace a global identity Historical Dictionary of Fantasy Literature, Second Edition is a snapshot of the genre in this moment, identifying new themes and sources that are emerging to inspire, enhance and invigorate the published works of fantasy writers.


Order Out of Chaos

Order Out of Chaos

Author: Ilya Prigogine

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2018-01-23

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 1786631024

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A pioneering book that shows how the two great themes of classic science, order and chaos, are being reconciled in a new and unexpected synthesis Order Out of Chaos is a sweeping critique of the discordant landscape of modern scientific knowledge. In this landmark book, Nobel Laureate Ilya Prigogine and acclaimed philosopher Isabelle Stengers offer an exciting and accessible account of the philosophical implications of thermodynamics. Prigogine and Stengers bring contradictory philosophies of time and chance into a novel and ambitious synthesis. Since its first publication in France in 1978, this book has sparked debate among physicists, philosophers, literary critics and historians.


Encyclopedia of Literature and Science

Encyclopedia of Literature and Science

Author: Pamela Gossin

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2002-08-30

Total Pages: 600

ISBN-13: 0313011060

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Science and literature have always been strange bedfellows. Like puzzle pieces, they fit because they're different. Some of the greatest works of world literature have been inspired by the marvels of the scientific world. Scientists have written works of the imagination. Even formal scientific writings have been known to employ rhetoric. There is a tendency to think of literature—and the humanities in general—as having little to do with science. Yet scholars have conducted fruitful studies of the history and philosophy of science. With the rise of technology, scholars have also applied scientific analysis to the study of literature and the creative process. The intersection of scientific and humanistic inquiry is finally being mapped. This volume includes more than 650 A-Z entries on topics and themes in science and literature, significant writers, key scientists, seminal works, and important theories and methodologies. This reference defines the rapidly emerging interdisciplinary field of literature and science. An introductory essay traces the history of the field, its growing reputation, and the current state of research. Broad in scope, the volume covers world literature from its beginnings to the present day and illuminates the role of science in literature and literary studies. A wide range of experts contributed entries to this volume, each of which concludes with a brief bibliography. The entire volume closes with a list of works for further reading.


Agent of Chaos

Agent of Chaos

Author: Norman Spinrad

Publisher: Norman Spinrad

Published: 1972

Total Pages: 219

ISBN-13:

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The Hegemonic Council has scanner eyes everywhere. If anyone is caught doing a forbidden act by the scanner eyes, they are vaporized. Scanner eyes are in every public place, and soon to be in private residences. The populace doesn't seem to mind too much, as their government has gotten rid of disease, hunger, unemployment, war, and other problems. Boris Johnson is part of an underground rebellion, the rather unorganized Democratic League. Plot after plot to unseat or assassinate the Hegmonic leader is squashed by a secretive group called the Brotherhood of Assassins, who has spies everywhere. The Hegemonic government is on the side of control and order, the Democratic League is on the side of personal freedoms, and the Brotherhood of Assassins are on the side of Chaos.


Kurt Vonnegut and the American Novel

Kurt Vonnegut and the American Novel

Author: Robert T. Tally Jr.

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2011-08-11

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 1441130349

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The novels of Kurt Vonnegut depict a profoundly absurd and distinctly postmodern world. But in this critical study, Robert Tally argues that Vonnegut himself is actually a modernist, who is less interested in indulging in the free play of signifiers than in attempting to construct a model that could encompass the American experience at the end of the twentieth century. As a modernist wrestling with a postmodern condition, Vonnegut makes use of diverse and sometimes eccentric narrative techniques (such as metafiction, collage, and temporal slippages) to project a comprehensive vision of life in the United States. Vonnegut's novels thus become experiments in making sense of the radical transformations of self and society during that curious, unstable period called, perhaps ironically, the 'American Century.' An untimely figure, Vonnegut develops a postmodern iconography of American civilization while simultaneously acknowledging the impossibility of a truly comprehensive representation.


Deleuze and the Schizoanalysis of Literature

Deleuze and the Schizoanalysis of Literature

Author: Ian Buchanan

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2015-02-26

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1472523547

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In 1972, the French theorists Deleuze and Guattari unleashed their collaborative project-which they termed schizoanalysis-upon the world. Today, few disciplines in the humanities and social sciences have been left untouched by its influence. Through a series of groundbreaking applications of Deleuze and Guattari's work to a diverse range of literary contexts, from Shakespeare to science fiction, this collection demonstrates how schizoanalysis has transformed and is transforming literary scholarship. Intended for upper-level undergraduates, postgraduates and scholars with an interest in continental philosophy, literary theory and critical and cultural theory, Deleuze and the Schizoanalysis of Literature is a cutting edge volume, featuring some of the most original voices in the field, setting the agenda for future research.