This subject focuses on the interaction between literary texts and scientific cultures that surround them. Ranging over time and place, we will try each week to pair a literary work with other short texts representative of the scientific discourse of the period being discussed. Authors studied may include: Plato and Aristotle, Shakespeare, Francis Bacon, Margaret Cavendish, Pascal, Leibniz, Daniel Defoe, Lewis Carroll, H.G. Wells, Stoppard and Pynchon.