Review by Choice Review
In this provocative and original book, Adams (who is researching popular science writing at London School of Economics) explores the shifting tensions and interrelations between the sciences and the humanities, "interference patterns" typically characterized as the conflict between "scientific realists" and "cultural relativists." The author focuses on how structuralists and various linguists attempt to import a scientific methodology into literary studies. Chapter 6, the last, is the most distinctive part of the book; here Adams uses Stanley Fish's work on disciplinarity to explore how selected fiction writers (his examples are Kurt Vonnegut and Kingsley Amis) critique science. This allows Adams to reject any mandate that literary studies must emulate science. Ultimately Adams concludes that one can accept scientific materialism without jeopardizing the autonomy or significance of literary studies. Despite the complexity of this project, and despite the fact that the book is steeped in both literary and scientific theory, the prose remains superbly clear. Summing Up: Recommended. Determined upper-division undergraduates through faculty. R. D. Morrison Morehead State University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review