An equally striking premise, the “edge of chaos” concept, disputes the validity of belief in movement solely by steady, regular increments from order to chaos. An icicle melting as it hangs from a gutter illustrates this concept. It does not dissolve at a regular rate hut drips erratically and then suddenly crashes to the ground. This movement exemplifies the more chaotic evolutions, occurring through repeated and abrupt disordered changes from one system to another—a series of volcanic eruptions that produce an island in the middle of the ocean. By questioning assumptions of periodic entropy-regularity in the rate of decline —this view raises doubts about conventional approaches to understanding changes in the world around us (the Ice Age, the depletion of the ozone layer, the extinction of a species).These ideas have far-reaching application to critiques of epistemologies employed by the humanities, for they supply vivid metaphors to support thinking in a nonlinear way. For centuries literary critics—like their counterparts in the sciences—have conformed to the expectations of a culture that has privileged linear, cause-and-effect logic as the most productive form of analysis. In consequence, the metaphors used to express critical concepts came out of this Cartesian orientation.
An equally striking premise, the “edge of chaos” concept, disputes the validity of belief in movement solely by steady, regular increments from order to chaos. An icicle melting as it hangs from a gutter illustrates this concept. It does not dissolve at a regular rate hut drips erratically and then suddenly crashes to the ground. This movement exemplifies the more chaotic evolutions, occurring through repeated and abrupt disordered changes from one system to another—a series of volcanic eruptions that produce an island in the middle of the ocean. By questioning assumptions of periodic entropy-regularity in the rate of decline —this view raises doubts about conventional approaches to understanding changes in the world around us (the Ice Age, the depletion of the ozone layer, the extinction of a species).<br>These ideas have far-reaching application to critiques of epistemologies employed by the humanities, for they supply vivid metaphors to support thinking in a nonlinear way. For centuries literary critics—like their counterparts in the sciences—have conformed to the expectations of a culture that has privileged linear, cause-and-effect logic as the most productive form of analysis. In consequence, the metaphors used to express critical concepts came out of this Cartesian orientation.
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