[Nadeau is concerned with the linkage between revolutionary advances in physics in the twentieth century that have significantly altered the "scientific" view of the universe and themes, presentations, form, and content in the modern novel.]

Not only are metaphysical assumptions … just as important and primary in the creative work of scientists as we have long known them to be in humanistic endeavors, [but also] the implications of new scientific theories … have often had unexpected impact upon those assumptions. It is … conceivable, although there is no precedent for it, that a radically new scientific paradigm, like that of the new physics, could prove so inconsistent with received metaphysical assumptions as to occasion a massive revolution in thought, out of which an alternate metaphysic would emerge. This is, I am convinced, our present situation. Not long after the publication of Einstein's special theory of relativity in 1905, many of the architects...