At the same time that the “new scie

At the same time that the “new science” of chaos was generating a buzz, an interest in establishing connections between literature and science pervaded the academy.The Society for Literature and Science (SLS—now the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts) was founded in 1985, and it has grown rapidly since then. Its annual meeting and journal Configurations testify to the significance, applicability, and popularity of making connections between the humanities and the sciences, including applications of chaos theory to literary studies. The SLS annual meeting, in fact, provided the forum for my early work in this area, and the panel presentations and subsequent discussions supplied a fertile ground for helping me develop my ideas. The interest in literary applications of chaos theory has gone beyond what might appear to be the specialized focus of SLS members. Annual meetings of such organizations as the Modern Language Association, the Society for the Study of Narrative Literature, and the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies have offered sessions that deal with the implications of chaos theory for literary studies. The 1995 meeting of the interdisciplinary International Society for the Study of Time was devoted to the subject of deterministic chaos, including its applications for literature. The Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology and Life Sciences features literary topics at its annual conference, further testimony to the interdisciplinary attraction of chaos theory. Major literary journals, including New Literary Theory, PMLA, and Poetics Today, feature essays on the subject, and significant full-length studies have explored literary applications of chaos theory.In the approximately twenty years since chaos theory seized the public imagination, it has demonstrated real staying power, not only in the sciences but also in cultural studies.