SOURCE: "The Dilemma of Literature in an Age of Science," in the Sewanee Review, Vol. LXXXVI, No. 2, Spring, 1978, pp. 245-60.

In the following essay, Gordon examines tensions between modern literature and science.

The French scientist Jacques Monod, using the evidence of modern biology, has brought up to date the hypothesis formulated by Democritus—that all natural processes are governed by the impersonal forces of chance and necessity. Monod thus questions, as science, animistic or idealistic positions which sanction the projection of will, reason, or feeling onto nature in order to establish a humanly significant conception of natural power and destiny. But he respects an independent realm of values and the experience of freedom from which values are derived. Acknowledging a world of mind separate from a world of matter or brain, he aligns himself with a tradition of philosophic dualism extending from Descartes to Chomsky.

Where does his...