Another literary critic, Harriett H

Another literary critic, Harriett Hawkins, in a work that frankly builds upon Hayles’s efforts, expands the application of chaos and complexity. Hawkins moves deftly between the seventeenth and the twentieth centuries, drawing parallels between the works of Shakespeare, Milton, and selected contemporary writers. Like Havles, Hawkins realizes that the mathematical equations underlying chaos and complexity theories will prove daunting to most readers, and so she offers a useful introduction to the fundamental concepts of science and a good transition to the application of these views to literature, without going to extremes like trying to impose mathematical correspondences that probably do not exist. What truly distinguishes Hawkins’ work, however, is her ability' to go beyond the relatively narrow limits of contemporary writing and discipline-bound thinking to move easily back and forth between the sciences and the humanities. With a refreshing openness she points out the rich metaphoric potential within the discoveries of post-Einsteinian science and offers judicious examples of the useful application of nonlinear dynamic thinking in this broad fashion.