Foreword: Goethe and No End

Abstract

The original versions of the studies contained in this volume were presented as papers at a colloquium entitled "Goethe, Chaos, and Complexity. A Symposium," which was held at Purdue University on April 9 th _10 th , 1999. The papers and subsequent discussions were felt to be so productive and stimulating that plans were made immediately to collect revised and expanded versions in an independent volume. l The present publication is the result of those plans. At this point I would like to thank Editions Rodopi, in the persons of Fred van der See and John A. McCarthy, for providing a forum for the studies in the series Internationale Forschungen zur allgemeinen und vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft.A similar volume appeared in the same series in the spring of 2000 under the title Disrupted Patterns. On Chaos and Order in the Enlightenment? In their foreword, the editors, Theodore E. D. Braun and John A. McCarthy, responded to a number of recent studies which raise doubts about the validity of the enterprise represented by that volume and the present one as well, most significantly, the fundamental question of applying a paradigm originating in the natural sciences to humanistic concerns such as literature. Given the cogency of their response, the editor of the present volume proceeds on the -almost -tacit assumption that such an undertaking is indeed valid. In any event, doubts cast upon the transfer of chaos and complexity to the study of literature are not likely to be dispelled by any number of words, however compelling, least of all those of the ''transgressors'' themselves. C. P. Snow's "two cultures" prevail at the present time just as when he coined the expression in the 1950s. 3 During the preparations for the Purdue symposium, which included general announcements to professional organizations on both sides of the "Great Divide," for example, certain scientists responded by conducting a conversation among themselves bye-mail, coyly copying the editor, that ranged in tone from dismissive to snide. When he asked advice of an individual on the other side of the Divide at his own university, he met with