Includes bibliographical references and index

A Brief History of L&S -- The Science Wars -- Models of Engagement -- Encoding an Infinite Message: Richard Powers's The Gold Bug Variations -- Is That a Coded Message? It May Not Be So Simple! -- Found in Translation -- Entropy as Time's (Double-Headed) Arrow in Tom Stoppard's Arcadia -- Chirality and Life -- Making New Life -- The End of Irony and/or the End of Science?

"This work presents a case for engagement between the sciences and the humanities - focusing particularly on literature- and an empirical, non-theory-based approach thereto. Written from the perspective of a professional chemist, it seeks to demonstrate that the connections between those fields of intellectual activity are far more significant than anything that separates them"--