Each of the following samples provides just one way of looking at the connections between literature and science.  (Indeed, each of these samples operates on many levels).  Exploring the myriad connections between literature and science will be the focus of the seminar.

Some literature attempts to capture the spirit of the scientific enterprise:
	"The pieces of ice make a grinding noise as they crash against each other and the bridge . . . . the floating ice greatly meances the thousands of ships waiting to be unoladed into the Pool . . . . Meanwhile Juliet chatters and Sarah Anne is silent, scanning the sky for birds." --Andrea Barrett, "Rare Bird"

Some scientific literature makes powerful use of language:
"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one." --Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

Some literature uses scientific language as a setting for its narrative:

"Our character lies for hundreds of millions of years, bound to three atoms of oxygen and one of calcium, in the form of limestone: it already has a very long cosmic history behind it, but we shall ignore it . . . . for the good fortune of the narrator, whose story could otherwise have come to an end, the limestone rock ledge of which the atom forms a part lies on the surface." --Primo Levi, The Periodic Table

Some literature explores the relationship between scientific discovery and personal discovery:
"I'd been an idiot. Two seconds of reflection should have told me that C couldn't have commanded even a fraction of the material it spewed out. A babe in the woods would have seen through this. Trish Plower would have been, like, really. I myself would never have bitten, had I still been a child. Yet I'd believed. I'd wanted to." --Richard Powers, Galatea 2.2