Chaos in the Humanities

The deconstructionist, postmodernist era is over & the 1990s are alive with an exciting new, uniquely interdisciplinary avant-garde based on chaos & complexity theory which, in its relationism, holism, & constructionism, is very different from what preceded it. This volume provides the educated reader with a clear, general introduction to this new avant-garde. The criteria for chaos theory are extrapolated from mathematics & physics: firstly, concealed order, self-similarity, nonlinearity, constrained randomness & entropy; secondly, feedback mechanisms & holism; those for complexity theory are emergence & negentropy. The practical application of these criteria to the humanities & social sciences, notably literary theory & criticism & the analysis of culture, is then illustrated by a series of essays on literary works by Robert Frost, Tennessee Williams, & Jean Giono & on the philosophical & anthropological theories of Rene Girard, Michel Serres & others, & a review article on works by N. Katherine Hayles (CHAOS & ORDER), M. Mitchell Waldrop (COMPLEXITY), & Roger Lewin (COMPLEXITY). If you ever wanted to grasp quickly & painlessly the essence of this theory, this is the volume for you. It tells you "everything you ever wanted to know about chaos & complexity theory & were afraid to ask".Brady, Patrick is the author of 'Chaos in the Humanities' with ISBN 9781886935068 and ISBN 1886935068.