The cosmic web : scientific field models and literary strategies in the twentieth century

From the central concept of the field—which depicts the world as a mutually interactive whole, with each part connected to every other part by an underlying field— have come models as diverse as quantum mathematics and Saussure’s theory of language. In __The Cosmic Web__, N. Katherine Hayles seeks to establish the scope of the field concept and to assess its importance for contemporary thought. She then explores the literary strategies that are attributable directly or indirectly to the new paradigm; among the texts at which she looks closely are Robert Pirsig’s __Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance__, Nabokov’s Ada, D. H. Lawrence’s early novels and essays, Borges’s fiction, and Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY has seen a profound transformation in the ground of its thought, a change catalyzed and validated by relativity theory, quantum mechanics, and particle physics.