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READING THE TEXTURE OF REALITY:INTERPRETATIONS OF CHAOS THEORY IN

LITERATURE AND LITERARY STUDIES

Merja Polvinen

During the past few decades, chaos theory, a collection of scientific ideasthat explore the unpredictable, dynamic and complex systems in theuniverse, has entered the public imagination. It has also been used inliterature as a theme or symbol, and in literary research as a topic ormethodological aid. Since the 1980s, more than a dozen novels, plays andshort stories have been published in English, explicitly discussing chaoticphenomena and using the specialist terminology of chaos theory. The MLAbibliography, during the same period, lists nearly 150 books, articles anddissertations discussing chaos either in relation to particular texts or as ageneral methodological topic.

In literary works chaos is used to explore such themes as therelationship between humanity and nature, fate and free will, reductionand holism, and the trustworthiness of human perception. The criticsand theorists concentrate on how chaos relates to the nature of literarytexts and the issues of interpretation. They connect chaos to linguisticindeterminacy, the organisation of textual elements, critical methodologyand - like the authors of fiction - to the relationship between mind andreality. What has remained unclear is, firstly, why so many authors havechosen to explore such issues through chaos theory, and secondly, whythe theoretical texts in particular have interpreted the implications ofchaos in two very different ways.

During the twentieth century, two scient ific theories have beenacknowledged as revolutionising the way we understand reality: the theoryof relativity and quantum mechanics. Many commentators have suggestedchaos theory to be a third such revolution. During the 1960s and 1970smany scientists from different fields were working on both naturalphenomena and mathematical abstractions which were relatively simplesystems, but yet did not behave as predicted in the calculations. Scientistseventual ly defined new mathematical formulas to deal with suchdiscrepancies, and collectively these methods became known as chaos theory.Examples of chaotic behaviour have now been found in weather patterns,stock-market price fluctuations, dripping taps, the motion of asteroids andthe erratic eye-movements of schizophrenics. In such systems discrepanciesdo not just appear briefly before settling down into an equilibrium, butinstead one minute change sparks another, and another, until the overall

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behaviour of the system shows enormous variation in a remarkably shorttime. But it is also important to note that by embracing the unpredictabilityof natural phenomena, chaos theory by no means accepts completeindeterminacy. Chaos does not, despite the ordinary sense of the word,mean randomness, but non-linearity; it does not lack discernible form, onlythe predictability of that form.

As a model, chaos is perhaps more intriguing for literary artists andscholars than many other theories presented by that other culture, the naturalsciences. First of all, it deals with phenomena on a scale that we recognisefrom our everyday lives. It describes clouds and coastlines, not quantumsingularities or the formation of galaxies. In its visual forms - strangeattractors and fractal pictures - it also manages to create something instantlyaesthetically pleasing. Chaos produces pretty pictures which carry deepmeaning about the nature of our existence; therefore its adoption intoliterature should come as no surprise.

A more complex question is why chaos is most persistently used to explorethe nature of human perception and cognition. Why should a mathematicaltheory that describes the behaviour of turbulence be able to explain the waywe experience and gather knowledge about the world? The answer lies inthe inherently ambiguous nature of both the laws of chaos and our experienceof the world. On the one hand, we see ourselves as coherent selves, livingour lives in a fairly straightforward linear fashion. On the other, we aresimultaneously aware of a bombardment of an infinite variety of senseimpressions, memories, feelings and concepts from which that coherentexperience is selected and formed. Similarly, chaos theory describes a realitywhich is too fragmented, too variable and too unpredictable to calculate,but which nevertheless displays startling coherence and harmony.

Both of these aspects of chaos have been taken up in the literaryinterpretations of it. The themes presented in the fictions cover both thefragmentariness and the harmony in chaos, often within the same work.But if ambiguity is present in the literary interpretations of chaos, in thetheoretical texts it develops into a full-blown methodological debate. Someauthors use chaos as proof of the infinite regression and dissemination oflinguistic meaning, whereas for others it provides a way of rejecting exactlysuch a regression and of situating meaning in the larger context of physicalreality.

The two contrasting interpretations of chaos present in the theoreticaltexts can be connected to a debate between two very different approachesto literature. The first of these attitudes could broadly be calledpoststructuralist; it is based on the idea of the indeterminacy of linguisticmeaning and it sees the text as something created by the reader in theprocess of reading, rather than as a pre-existing artefact created by theauthor. Thus it assumes that no information can pass from the text to thereader. The second attitude is more difficult to label, since it is displayed byauthors and critics from many different backgrounds, and has not become

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a defined theoretical movement. But generally speaking it involves strongcriticism of poststructuralist theory, a renewed interest in shape, patternand harmony, and an emphasis on the context of cultural production - acontext more encompassing than that of language, class, or race. Thisattitude assumes that the physical context of humanity - including universalphysical laws and the effect of the immediate environment on the evolutionof human beings - is a major factor in understanding the conscious mindand, by extension, cultural products. In the interest of brevity, I shall belabelling this attitude externalism. Since the term is already in use in thefields of epistemology and cognitive theory, this definition will be anextension of the term into a field it has not previously covered, but it doesfollow the grain of such previous uses.1 Unlike poststructuralism, externalismsees literature and language first and foremost as tools of communication,and thus believes that the cognitive value of literature - what it can tell usabout the world and ourselves - can be very high indeed.

In analysing the various interpretations of chaos theory in literarystudies, the influence of these two attitudes can be seen clearly. Thoseadhering to the poststructuralist view emphasise the fragmentation,unpredictability and marginality of chaotic systems. These authors oftenbase their view of chaos on previous philosophical commentators such asJean-François Lyotard, Michel Serres, and Gilles Deleuze and FélixGuattari, all of whom see chaos more or less in the light of virtuality,undefinability and infinite regression.2 These interpretations also drawattention to the way both fractal mathematics and deconstruction examinemargins, infinite regression and limitless variability, and suggest that fractalmathematics, like poststructuralist theories of language and textuality,shows that the universe is ultimately unknowable.

The authors representing the externalist view, on the other hand,reject such implications and, instead, draw attention to the presence ofpattern, harmony and underlying determinism in chaotic systems. Theseauthors argue that scientific chaos offers, firstly, an explanation of howhuman consciousness can be seen as a part of the physical universe butnot reducible to it. Secondly, they see in it ways of describing some ofthe dynamic patterns that appear in human imaginative products. Forthe externalists, therefore, the value of chaos lies in its ability to explainthe basic workings of the mind and to provide metaphors that help inthe understanding of some general characteristics of literature. Thisposition, though a speculative extension of the scientific theories intothe field of literature, is at least faithful to the known details of chaoticcalculations. On the other hand, in equating chaos with the overthrowof rational inquiry and with disseminat ion of meaning, thepoststructuralists are ignoring many elements in the scientific theorieswhich explicitly speak about pattern, organisation and harmony, andthus they draw from chaos unsupportable implications of cognitivepessimism.

1. See SimonBlackburn, TheOxford Dictionary ofPhilosophy, Oxford,Oxford UniversityPress, 1996, p113;Mark Rowlands, TheBody in Mind:UnderstandingCognitive Processes,Cambridge,CambridgeUniversity Press,1999; MichaelLuntley,ContemporaryPhilosophy of Thought:Truth, World, Content,Oxford, Blackwell,1999, pp9-11.

2. Jean-FrançoisLyotard, ThePostmodern Condition:A Report onKnowledge, GeoffBennington andBrian Massumi(trans), Theory andHistory of Literature10, Manchester,ManchesterUniversity Press,1984; Michel Serres,Hermes: Literature,Science, Philosophy,Josué Harari andDavid F. Bell (edsand trans),Baltimore, JohnsHopkins UP, 1982;Gilles Deleuze andFélix Guattari, Whatis Philosophy?, HughTomlinson andGraham Burchill(trans), London,Verso, 1994.

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CHAOS IN LITERATURE

Since I am interested in the interpretations of chaos theory in literary works,rather than interpreting all literary works through chaos theory, the fictionsincluded in this study all include obvious use of the specialist terminologyof chaos. They also incorporate chaos as a thematic element, rather thanan incidental cultural detail or plot device. In these texts chaos is usedmainly to highlight the complex and unpredictable, yet structured realitythat humanity interacts with. The behaviour of chaotic systems is equatedwith the ebb and flow of popular culture, the organisation of societies oreven the search for God. Roughly, the themes discussed can be divided intofive main groups. The first, the relationship between humanity and nature,is examined through the self-similarity and interconnectedness displayedin chaotic systems. In Bellwether, Connie Willis uses the idea of self-similarityto suggest that we can use our knowledge of natural systems to help usunderstand both the processes of individual human minds and the forms ofhuman culture. In the novel the behaviour of sheep is graphed and plottedto explain both the accidental circumstances of falling in love and the spreadof fads through popular culture.3 William Gibson and Bruce Sterling also,in their alternative history of a computerised Victorian era in The DifferenceEngine, have chaotic behaviour occurring not just in mathematicalcalculations but in various real-life systems, including biological evolution,the development and organisation of societies, and the events in the life oftheir protagonist.4 In a very similar way Lewis Shiner presents chaoticdynamics as the reason for the fall of South-American high cultures in DesertedCities of the Heart.5 In such texts there is clearly a will to see the human beingnot as a mind separate from the world, but as part and parcel with the restof reality. Robert Littell presents in The Visiting Professor a slightly differentpoint of view to the issue of underlying order. Rather than using chaos tolink humanity to nature, he sends his protagonist on a search for God inthe form of true randomness. In this novel all that seems random is only sobecause it has been designed to be so by somebody. Thus chaos, the deeporder within seeming randomness which exists on a scale larger than itwould be possible for a human to contrive, must originate from a consciousact of God.6 These texts share a view that chaos theory offers tools fordescribing universal laws that apply at various levels of reality, and that byexamining those laws one can achieve a deep understanding of the placeand purpose of human life.

If chaos makes it possible to see the underlying rules behind the behaviourof complex systems, it also raises the issue of control. In Michael Crichton’sJurassic Park the question about the possibility or impossibility of controllingan island full of dinosaurs becomes an adventure-story - peppered withexplanations of chaos theory by the fictional mathematician Ian Malcolm.Basing his calculations on the infinite sensitivity to initial conditionsdisplayed by chaotic systems, Malcolm predicts the park to be a dangerous

3. Connie Willis,Bellwether, New York,Bantam, 1997.

4. William Gibsonand Bruce Sterling,The Difference Engine,London, VictorGollancz, 1996.

5. Lewis Shiner,Deserted Cities of theHeart, London,Abacus, 1988.

6. Robert Littell, TheVisiting Professor,London, Faber andFaber, 1993.

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failure. No system as complex as nature will stay within human control forlong - and he is, of course, proven right as the genetic manipulations madeon the dinosaurs have unexpected results and the park destroys its creators.7

The opposite view is presented in Jeffrey A. Carver’s Neptune Crossing.This time the implication of chaotic mathematics is that the future of asystem can be changed at will by a very small input at the right moment andin the right place. The novel is part of an ongoing series in which mysteriousalien powers choose individuals from various civilisations to take up tasksthat have an enormous impact on their respective planets. And the toolwhich enables the aliens to calculate exactly which act will produce the rightkind of change is chaos mathematics.8 Where Crichton uses chaos to showthat humanity will never be able to control nature and, by extension, ourown future, Carver uses exactly the same body of knowledge to entertainthe thought that perhaps one day it will be possible. In both cases the abilityof chaos theory to describe unpredictable systems is used to crystallise thetheme of human control over our future - be it possible or impossible.

Since chaos is useful in examining the issues of our ability to controlthings, it is also natural to find it used in discussion about the possibilitythat we are, in fact, controlled by something else. The debate over fate andfree will is an integral part of most of these texts, and it is connected withthe fractal images and strange attractors formed from chaotic activity. BharatiMukherjee’s short story ‘Buried Lives’ underlines the similarity betweenfate and the controlling pattern of chaos. His protagonist finds that evenseemingly disastrous events in his life seem all to have led him to unexpectedhappiness. The shapes found in chaos reveal to him that nothing is finallyrandom.9 Shiner presents the pattern in chaos in slightly different terms.For him the shape is not one that controls, but one that helps us to controlourselves. His characters, embroiled in the upheavals of South Americanpolitics and Mayan mysticism, learn to see the strange attractor as a vitalaid in comprehending the purpose and the pattern in their own lives, andtherefore are in a position to freely make informed choices. Again, theimplications of chaos on a human theme are seen in slightly differing ways,but common to both texts is the assumption that the presence of pattern inthe chaos is a useful metaphor for the human experience of life having ashape or a purpose.

These texts also share the belief that neither the pattern in the chaosnor the purpose of a life can be understood without holistic thinking.Reduction is necessary to find out exactly which kinds of elements the systemincludes, but the real character of the system will remain invisible until theobserver takes a step back and allows all the details to interact. This appliesto Shiner’s novel as well as to Willis’s Bellwether, in which an avalanche ofmishaps results in events incomprehensible to its characters until one ofthem constructs a computer model of all the details, from non-smokingrules to sheep to research-grants, and the various, seemingly insignificantthings combine to make everything clear. In its insistence on the infinite

7. Michael Crichton,Jurassic Park,London, RandomCentury/Arrow,1991.

8. Jeffrey A. Carver,Neptune Crossing:Volume I of the ChaosChronicles, New York,Tor, 1994.

9. BharatiMukherjee, ‘BuriedLives’, Middlemanand Other Stories,1988, London,Virago, 1989,pp153-176.

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sensitivity to initial conditions in chaotic systems, chaos theory has shownthe universe to be an interconnected whole, in which there are noinsignificant parts. In these texts that idea is extended from a purely physicaltheory into a metaphysical one.

Chaos is also connected with the way the human mind forms perceptionsabout the world. On the one hand, the characters of these stories are shakenout of their preconceptions by the realisation that it is impossible to beaware of all the relevant details in something as complex as a chaotic system- or, indeed, human life. On the other hand, the presence of comprehensiblepatterns in chaos is set up as a symbol of the characters’ ability to see shapeand purpose in their own lives. In Tom Stoppard’s play Arcadia in particular,such themes dominate the plot. Seeing the big picture, the holistic patternof our lives, is not simple, since it is impossible to keep track of all thevariables involved. ‘Real data is messy’, one of Stoppard’s characters laments.‘It’s all very, very noisy out there. Very hard to spot the tune. Like a piano inthe next room, it’s playing our song, but unfortunately it’s out of whack,some of the strings are missing, and the pianist is tone deaf and drunk - Imean, the noise!’10 The massive amount of information every human has todeal with nearly every moment of our waking lives forms the noise we attemptto sift for the elusive tune. And very often we, like some of the characters inStoppard’s play, get things very wrong. Kate Wilhelm also presents chaos asfree data unadulterated by human filters. In Death Qualified a computerprogramme of fractal patterns is used to disconnect neural pathways in thebrain, giving people a child-like ability to perceive without preconceptions.11

Stoppard, however, presents chaos not only as a destroyer of rigidstructures of perception, but also as the creator of comprehensible, fluidform. In doing so he denies the idea that human perception would, bynature, be too selective to be able to grasp the true nature of the universe.For, despite being occasionally misled by their perceptions, his charactersalso make true mathematical, historical and emotional discoveries. ThusArcadia also grapples with the related question of the possibility of absolutedefinitions and unproblematic knowledge. The conclusion of the play isfinally an optimistic interpretation of the implications of strange attractorsto such issues; that if even chaotic systems display such deep andcomprehensible order within them, perhaps it is possible to gain trueknowledge even when one is not in possession of either absolute definitionsor every minute relevant fact.

Greg Egan also connects chaos theory with the idea of undecidability inhis short-story ‘Luminous’. In the story two students of mathematics discovera contradiction in the axioms of number theory, a defect which turns out tobe a fractal border between our mathematics and a kind of parallel universeof incompatible mathematical theorems. In order to stop an unscrupulousfinancial company from exploiting the discovery, they attempt to erase theincompatible mathematics by calculating proofs for the theorems occupyingthe fractal border until the cascade of theorems would all support each

10. Tom Stoppard,Arcadia, London,Faber and Faber,1993, I. iv.

11. Kate Wilhelm,Death Qualified: AMystery of Chaos, NewYork, Fawcett Crest,1991.

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other and collapse the defect. What they discover instead is that the borderdefends itself and the undecidability between the two systems of mathematicsis both necessary and robust. The students’ attempt boils down to trying todefine mathematics as a system completely free of self-contradiction, onethat covers all of reality and is infallible in its ability to tell the differencebetween truth and falsehood. The story ends with the fractal borderreinstated and the world facing the learning process of letting go of absolutedefinition and embracing the new contradictions.12 For both Stoppard andEgan chaos theory offers alternatives to the binary opposition betweenknowing nothing and knowing everything, between complete relativity andabsolute definition. In these texts it is used to remind us that not all thethings that are true can be proven, and not all the things that have regularitycan be controlled.

What all these texts share is an ambiguity about the roles of order andrandomness. In chaos theory the authors have found a way of approachingthat ambiguity through a scientific model - a metaphor for the complexityof human experience that is simultaneously true about the physical world.That same ambiguity is present in the theoretical and critical interpretationsof chaos, but in a much more confrontational form. Where the authors ofthe fictions seem willing and able to entertain the contradictorycharacteristics of chaos theory, most of the theorists acknowledge only certainfacets of it. This has lead to two almost opposite views of what chaos theorymight mean to literary studies.

CHAOS IN THEORY

Of the themes discussed in conjunction with the fictional texts, the literarytheorists are interested mainly in the nature of perception and the definitionof knowledge, and how these relate to the process of interpreting texts. Thebest way to bring out the very different views presented concerning thesethemes is to examine the ways in which some of the most importantcharacteristics of chaotic systems have been adapted in these texts.

The unpredictability of chaotic systems - arising from the fact that thechanges that can affect the future behaviour of the system can be infinitelysmall - has been recognised as a traditional narrative device. Seeminglyinsignificant coincidences in the lives of the characters may have significantlong-term effects in the story.13 But, more importantly, the unpredictabilityof chaotic systems has also been seen as an indication of the universe settingabsolute limits to what can be known, and that these limits also apply toliterary texts. David Porush, for example, understands chaos theory to share‘the antideterministic values of postmodern literature’, and defines thosevalues as ‘a rejection and ironic demolition of all systems including its own’and ‘a deep doubt as to whether the author can communicate anything at allto the reader through systematic discourse’.14 Similarly, Mary A. Doll, inher essay on Tom Stoppard’s plays, equates chaos theory with ‘the

12. Greg Egan,‘Luminous’,Luminous, London,Victor Gollancz/Millenium, 1998,pp52-88.

13. For example,David Porush,‘Prigogine, Chaos,and ContemporaryScience Fiction’,Science-Fiction Studies18 (1991), 381;Patrick Brady, ‘TheRococo ButterflyMeets the ButterflyEffect: A ChaosTheory Approach toArt and Literature’,Studies on Voltaire 305(1992), 1537.

14. David Porush,‘Fictions asDissipativeStructures:Prigogine’s TheoryandPostmodernism’sRoadshow’, in N.Katherine Hayles(ed), Chaos andOrder: ComplexDynamics in Literatureand Science, Chicago,Chicago UP, 1991,pp62-63, 68.

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indeterminacies of what it is “to know”’, and with ‘[g]aps, punctures andbreaks in sequence’ which ‘sabotage every logical attempt to formulate ahypothesis’.15 The unpredictability of chaotic systems has in suchpoststructuralist texts been taken as scientific proof of the impossibility ofmeaningfully discussing the origins of various literary interpretations.

But such a view ignores the presence of shapes - strange attractors andfractal curves - within the behaviour of chaos. A graph plotted from theseemingly random activity of a chaotic system forms an infinite series ofinterlocking loops which are not only definable but regular in relation toeach other. Since the graph does have an infinite number of possibletrajectories, it could never be used to predict the exact behaviour of a systemin the future, but since it is also limited to a finite area, it does give thescientists an idea of the kind of behaviour that the system will exhibit. Thesystem therefore has infinite freedom within particular parameters, andour understanding of its behaviour can be helped by finding out what thoseparameters are. It is also important to remember that a massive area ofpossible behaviour is left outside the graph, depicting the kinds of thingsthe scientists know the system will not do.

Strange attractors are seen by some literary interpreters of chaos asindications of a more optimistic view of literary epistemology. For thesecritics the intricate patterns revealed in the analysis of an artwork compareto the way a strange attractor makes visible the shape within the seemingrandomness of chaos. Harriet Hawkins, for example, sees a work of art, beit literary or visual, as an object which ‘ordains, contains, and orders chaosinto intricate, unfolding patterns’,16 and N. Katherine Hayles argues thatone of the most interesting questions in the field of literature and chaoswould be to examine the implications to narrative theory of the discoverythat the behaviour of complex systems can be visualised in such a manner.17

Joy Alyson Parker has also presented the strange attractor as a model forboth the structure of narrative and as a way of containing the ‘infinite playof signification’.18 The suggestion in these interpretations is that strangeattractors imply the possibility of forming a reasonable literary interpretation(and conveying that interpretation in language), even though it is impossibleto define the sources of every single association that the text creates in thereader. All the elements of the text are open to infinite nuances ofinterpretation, but all those endless choices reside within certain parameters.

By ignoring the finite bounds set by textual features, the poststructuralistinterpretations have been able to equate the capacity for endless variationswith the infinite regression of meaning. This attitude is present, for example,in Peter Stoicheff ’s analysis of metafiction, where he suggests that the textexists as ‘an infinite number of possible meanings’ which are ‘free todisseminate in ever-burgeoning patterns’.19 Unlike the externalists, thepoststructuralists are not interested in the larger limiting parameters of theattractor, but concentrate instead on the infinitely regressing fractal lineswithin it. Joseph M. Conte, in his essay on John Hawkes’s Travesty, equates

15. Mary A. Doll,‘Stoppard’s Theatreof Unknowing’, inJames Acheson (ed),British and IrishDrama since 1960,Houndmills,Macmillan, 1993,p118.

16. Harriet Hawkins,Strange Attractors:Literature, Culture,and Chaos Theory,New York, Prentice/HarvesterWheatsheaf, 1995,px.

17. N. KatherineHayles,‘Introduction’, Chaosand Order, op. cit,p27.

18. Joy AlysonParker, ‘StrangeAttractors in Absalom,Absalom!’ in JosephTabbi and MichaelWutz (eds), ReadingMatters: Narrative inthe New MediaEcology, Ithaca,Cornell UP, 1997,p102.

19. Peter Stoicheff,‘The Chaos ofMetafiction’, inHayles (ed), op. cit,p88.

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the narrator’s view of destruction as a form of artistic creativity with theshattered lines of a fractal,20 and Patrick Brady suggests rococo art andliterature might be visualisations of the ‘amorphous’ social and psychologicaldynamics of their time in the same way that fractals are visualisations ofchaotic mathematics.21 Many authors have compared fractal mathematicsto deconstruction, noting how both examine margins, infinite regressionand limitless variability. Michael Patrick Gillespie, for example, suggeststhat literary scholars should not attempt to transform the original, non-linear, chaotic experience of the text into a linear interpretation. Instead,he argues they should attempt to maintain, in the manner of deconstructivereadings, the complexity of the original mental event.22

Despite the impossibility of final definition, however, the infiniteregression of detail should not be seen as devoid of meaningful information.Fractals and strange attractors are in fact self-similar; they keep on repeatingsimilar shapes on different levels, so that, when examined more closely, thepicture does not degenerate into meaningless irregularity, but instead showsa high degree of organisation which extends from level to level throughoutthe graph. This kind of organisation is obviously very similar to thetraditional idea of a well-wrought work of art, where symbols and plotelements recur to create the overall effect. However, the suggestion of chaostheory is that such self-similarity is an important governing rule in thefunction of the entire universe.

Some literary philosophers, for example Alexander J. Argyros, suggestthat the idea of self-similarity could end the solipsism in which literarystudies has found itself in the last thirty years. ‘ ... [T]he only nonmetaphysicalway around the impasse generated by the apotheosis of textuality’, Argyroswrites, ‘is through a kind of foundationalism based on a view of the universeas a communicative, dynamical, and evolving system’ whose dynamicsdepend on a complex network of self-similar hierarchies.23 In such a universethe human mind would not be a mirror of nature, but part and parcel withit. ‘The mind simply does the work of nature at a higher pitch, that is, it ismore active, spontaneous, generative, hierarchical, and creative than thelower evolutionary levels of which it is composed’.24 Such a connection,Argyros suggests, between our minds and the physical processes of theuniverse would give us new tools to try and understand why our minds workthe way they do - even while accepting that predicting exactly what anyparticular mind might do lies outside the realms of possibility. Argyros’argument is largely in agreement with one view of the function of the mindnow widely accepted in the field of consciousness studies. For much recentresearch in neurology and cognitive theory argues that consciousness shouldbe seen neither in dualist nor materialist terms, but instead as an emergentphenomenon arising from the functions of the physical brain through thesame rules of dynamics which create complex forms in nature.25 Argyros’argument boils down to the idea that once the patterns formed by chaoticprocesses have been recognised in nature, we can start looking for similar

20. Joseph M.Conte, ‘“Design andDebris”: JohnHawkes’s Travesty,Chaos Theory, andthe Swerve’, Critique37 (1996), 123, 130.

21. Patrick Brady,‘From TransactionalAnalysis to ChaosTheory: New CriticalPerspectives’,Australian Journal ofFrench Studies 26.2(1989), 187.

22. Michael PatrickGillespie, ‘Readingon the Edge ofChaos: Finnegan’sWake and theBurden onLinearity’, Journal ofModern Literature 22(1998-9), 361.

23. Alexander J.Argyros, A BlessedRage for Order:Deconstruction,Evolution and Chaos,Ann Arbor,University ofMichigan Press,1991, p6.

24. Ibid., p187.

25. Peter Coveneyand RogerHighfield, Frontiersof Complexity: TheSearch for Order in aChaotic World,London, Faber &Faber, 1995, pp279-327.

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patterns in literature and see whether such a method would help us bettercomprehend the underlying rules of imagination, without losing sight ofthe endless variety of fictional creation.

The four characteristic elements of chaotic systems discussed above -unpredictability, strange attractors, fractals and self-similarity - bring intofocus the difference in background assumptions displayed by the literaryinterpreters of chaos theory. Interestingly, that split also mirrors a changeof direction in the scientific study of chaos. Where the original chaos theorywas interested in how complexity and unpredictability could arise in whatshould have been simple and predictable systems, a later trend, known ascomplexity theory, concentrates on the seemingly opposite question of whysimplicity and pattern should exist at all. Thus the poststructuralistinterpretations seem to share much with the original explorers of chaos,whereas the externalists have more in common with the later discoveries ofcomplexity theory.

An examination of one final characteristic of chaotic systems makes thisdivision clear. One of the most interesting consequences of chaos theoryhas been the discovery of how complex, unexpected behaviour can arisefrom well-known components. An example of such emergent complexitywould be Langton’s Ant - a cellular automaton created by ChristopherLangton. It involves a black-and-white grid and a cursor moving accordingto three simple rules:

1. If the ‘ant’ is in a white square, it turns right and moves into the nextsquare.2. If it is in a black square, it turns left and moves into the next square.3. The square just vacated by the ant changes colour.

The ant’s behaviour is determined by the rules of the game and the originallayout of black and white squares, but its route is, nevertheless, impossible topredict with any kind of a short-cut calculation. The only way to find out thefuture behaviour of the ant is just to observe the game. Thus the ant’s behaviourdisplays emergent complexity which arises from its three simple rules.

Much of the aversion towards rational analysis displayed in literary studiesin the last thirty years has stemmed from a fear of losing the endless varietyof creativity, of art becoming just another algorithm. Thus thepoststructuralist attitude welcomes chaos theory’s view of the universe as asystem much too complex ever to be precisely calculated. And not onlydoes chaos deny the possibility of exact description, but through the discoveryof emergent self-organisation it also offers an explanation of how creativityexists in the first place. One of the most frequently cited scientific sourcesin poststructuralist interpretations of chaos is Ilya Prigogine’s work on self-organisation. In Prigogine’s model a chaotic system, or, in his terminology,dissipative structure, develops from one level of organisation to a higherone through a period of increasing chaos.26 This view has been picked up

26. Ilya Prigogineand IsabelleStengers, Order out ofChaos: Man’s NewDialogue with Nature,New York, Bantam,1984.

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by David Porush, who describes how ‘literature generally may act as a self-organising system, growing willy nilly through bifurcation points’,27 and byPeter Stoicheff, who equates the creativity and play - the jouissance - ofmetafiction with the capacity for emergence displayed by chaotic systems.28

These authors see in the Prigoginian theory - in its emphasis of emergentcomplexity - a scientific model that explains and defines creativity, and atthe same time provides a justification for the poststructuralist view of anendless variety of readings, each of which counts as a singular, irreducibleevent, and is thus beyond the powers of rational analysis.

But emergent behaviour is not limited to the infinitely complex. Forwithout fail, after a lengthy period (around 10,000 moves) of seeminglyrandom wandering, Langton’s Ant gets locked in a pattern of repetitivemoves which take it on a straight diagonal course away from its starting-point. Suddenly the most surprising characteristic of the Ant is no longerthe creative randomness of its initial route, but the fact that, with all theinfinite variety of behaviour to choose from, it would settle on a regulatedpattern. This emergent simplicity is the main interest of the (again)incongruously named complexity theory. It argues that due to universalrules of information processing, the various chaotic systems of the worldend up in states of stable, coherent behaviour, such as the ‘highway’ built byLangton’s Ant, the evolution of stable ecologies, or even consciousness itself.

But why should emergent behaviour settle into coherent patterns? Themost intelligible explanation so far suggests that emergent simplicity resultsfrom an interaction between the chaotic system and its context. Theinteraction places certain restrictions onto the way the system can develop,however varied its potential happens to be. As reproductive biologist JackCohen and mathematician Ian Stewart argue, ‘the real cause of large-scalesimplicities is not internal complexity at all, but external constraints, whichcollapse chaos and render systems independent of much of their own internalcomplexity’.29 In a way, this is an inverted view of what has been taken as agiven in most sciences; we have known for a long time that variety of contextcan increase variety of form, but it must also be taken into account that aparticular context can be the cause of particular recurring forms.

These theories have encouraged a few literary philosophers, such asArgyros, Robert Storey, and Nancy Easterlin to search for a way to describeliterary activity through what Easterlin calls ‘bioepistemology’. At the rootof this approach is the suggestion that literary theory should take into accountthe larger, biological context of human culture. Easterlin argues that ‘thehuman mind as a result of natural selection is predisposed in ways that haveproven adaptively advantageous,’ and that ‘the conceptual tendencies whichenabled the primitive man to overcome complexity and act in the interestsof survival have direct bearing on the construction of knowledge withinhuman culture’.30 Argyros’s alternative to the deconstructive worldviewconsists of identifying literature as one of humanity’s problem-solvingmechanisms in a universe ruled by the interaction of complex, evolving

27. Porush, ‘Fictionsas DissipativeStructures’, op. cit.,p76.

28. Stoicheff, op.cit., p87.

29. Jack Cohen andIan Stewart, TheCollapse of Chaos:Discovering Simplicityin a Complex World,London, Viking,1994, p399.

30. Nancy Easterlin,‘Making Knowledge:Bioepistemologyand the Foundationsof Literary Theory’,Mosaic 32.1 (1999),136.

READING THE TEXTURE OF REALITY 59

systems.31 Storey concentrates in his book on the particulars of narrativeand metaphor, but he also takes as his starting-point a view of the developinghuman mind as an emergent and self-organising being.32 These authorsargue that the study of human cultural products must take into account thephysical and biological conditions which rule our lives as human beings. Byno means do they suggest that we are completely biologically determined,but that the parameters of our physical context should not be ignored inthe way recent theory has done.

Few people have looked at the problem of literary interpretationspecifically from the point of view of complexity theory. But many others,also representing the externalist point of view, have approached the samequestions. For example Wendell V. Harris, Christopher Norris, John Searleand Raymond Tallis33 have asked why poststructuralism should be so boggeddown in the impossibilities of communicating meaning through language,when our everyday lives so blatantly show that mostly we do manage tosuccessfully convey meaning to one another. These critics and theorists areno longer interested in the question of how a single text can give rise tomany individual readings. If looked at from the point of view of emergencethe answer is, by now, obvious: emergent complexity and variety ofinterpretation arise from the interaction of many simple details in both thetext and the reader’s experience. Instead, the externalists are intrigued bythe opposite side of the problem, that is, why should different readings ofthe same text, despite all the possibilities of variation, still tend to be fairlysimilar?

To answer these questions from the externalist point of view, literaryinterpretation should not only be seen as an interaction between complexsystems - the reader and the text - but, as Argyros, Easterlin and Storeyargue, the larger context of those systems should also be taken into account,since it places certain restrictions on the way the interpretation is formed.The reader, first of all, is a biological and social being with certain cognitiveand aesthetic predispositions. These predispositions can be said to beemergent qualities of the biological being, and thus cannot be reduced to,for example, the physical components of the brain, but neither are theycompletely divorced from their physical context. Thus the discoveries ofcognitive theory and neuroscience should not be dismissed from literarytheory, but should be seen as important sources of information about thelimiting context of human imagination in general and literary interpretationin particular.

The other complex system in the interaction - the text - is seen by theexternalists as a product crafted by another human being to arouse certainreactions in the reader, and therefore the context described above is relevantto the text as well. Since the text is seen essentially as a message, there is arenewed interest in the intention of the author and how that intention hasbeen crafted into the text. Externalists by no means deny that the possibilitiesfor nuances of interpretation are infinite, but they are no longer interested

31. Argyros, op. cit.,pp193-207.

32. Robert Storey,Mimesis and theHuman Animal: Onthe BiogeneticFoundations of LiteraryRepresentation ,Evanston,Northwestern UP,1996, p64.

33. Wendell V.Harris, LiteraryMeaning: Reclaimingthe Study of Literature,Houndmills,Macmillan, 1996:Christopher Norris,Reclaiming Truth:Contribution to aCritique of CulturalRelativism , Durham,Duke UP, 1996; JohnSearle, ‘LiteraryTheory and ItsDiscontents’ inWendell V. Harris(ed), BeyondPoststructuralism: TheSpeculations of Theoryand the Experience ofLiterature, UniversityPark, PennsylvaniaState UP, 1996;Raymond Tallis, NotSaussure: A Critique ofPost-SaussureanTheory, secondedition, Houndmills,Macmillan, 1995.

60 NEW FORMATIONS

in staring down into the abyss of endless regression. Rather, we see a returnto the idea that literary texts do have characteristics of their own that limitthe extent of relevant readings - and that the identification of thosecharacteristics makes the discussion about literary meaning possible.

The issues of cognition and epistemology brought out in the analysis ofliterary uses of chaos shed light on a larger rift in literary theory. Thepoststructuralist attitude seems to be an extreme reaction to reductionism;by rejecting complete predictability from component parts, it has seen nochoice but to deny all effects of physical reality on human thought.Externalism, on the other hand, can be said to comprise of arguments thatdo deny reductionism, but still recognise the recurring physical patternsthat actually make culture, thought and life itself possible.

Certainly, chaos theory is not the first scientific theory to be adopted bythe literary world - in fictional writing it is not even a particularly influentialone. Most of the fictions included in this study are not knocking on thedoors of canonicity, nor have they inspired many others to take advantageof the metaphors offered by the mathematical descriptions of complexsystems. But if chaos theory does not appear to have received great attentionin literary works, in literary theory it is referred to perhaps more often thanany other scientific model. This popularity seems to be due to, firstly, itsresonance in the imagination, and, secondly, the image of chaos mathematicsas a renegade science, which makes it seem sympathetic to thepoststructuralist revolution in literary studies. Chaos is seen by many toerode the institution of the natural sciences from the inside, and thereforeit represents an unexpected ally for those wanting to derail theEnlightenment project. Recently externalist re-interpretations of chaostheory have appeared to counter such a view of both the position of chaostheory in the natural sciences and its implications to literature.

The usefulness of such a continuing desire of literary scholars to grapplewith the natural sciences is a constant source of debate and a subject foranother study. But perhaps it could already be said that unless the applicationof a theory of physics into textual interpretation is purely metaphorical, suchan attempt is likely to be either fanciful, trivial or both. It would seem to bemuch more profitable to make use of such areas of the natural sciences thatare a few steps closer to the level of reality which culture occupies. Chaostheory is certainly useful in that it describes the basic mechanics of mind as acomplex system, but it is only likely to have real explanatory power in literarystudies when it is used in combination with other knowledge gathered byscientists concerning consciousness and imagination. In the particular instanceof this study, it is clear that chaos theory has not been able to solve the age-old problems of literary interpretation, but its popularity within literarycriticism and theory made it a useful case study which brings into stark reliefthe polarity in literary studies over cognitive and epistemological issues.