An interview with Steven Johnson.

I came out of college in the late ’80s amid the science wars. Literary theorists were deconstructing the scientists, and scientists were making fun of the literary theorists. There was no realm where you’d come into a classroom and say, “This complexity theory might be useful in thinking about the kind of urban system Dickens is describing.” If you talked about science, it was entirely to show how it was Eurocentric or something.

I always felt like that was a total waste of time. There were obviously insights that both domains could productively share. A lot of what I’ve been trying to do since then is figure out what those connections could be, and figure out a way to work them into the books.

[via… Steven Johnson]