List of illustrations; List of contributors; Acknowledgements; Frontispiece; Editor's introduction: The Sphinx and the Muses: the third culture; Part I. Literature and Science: 1. Literary Chinese as a scientific language. A selection from the concluding volume of Science and Civilisation in China. With illustrations Joseph Needham and Kenneth Robinson; 2. 'The names of things not generally known …': scientists, translators and terminology in the age of Newton L. G. Kelly; 3. The poet's senses: G. B. Marino's epic poem L'Adone and the new science Maurice Slawinski; 4. Science and supernaturalism: Sir David Brewster and Sir Walter Scott. With illustrations Frederick Burwick; 5. Helmholtz, Tyndall, Gerard Manley Hopkins: leaps of the prepared imagination Gillian Beer; 6. The hermeneutics of extinction: denial and discovery in scientific literature Joel Black; 7. Beckett and science: Watt and the quantum universe Angela Montgomery; Part II. Literature and Translation: 8. L'Expérience de traduire: Verlaine's Femmes/Hombres Alistair Elliot; 9. Notes on the Theory of Literary History Translated with an introduction by Ian Fairley György Lukács; Part III. Essay Reviews: 10. Bacon among the literati: science and language Brian Vickers; 11. A new discipline? Essays in 'literature and science' Roy Porter; Bibliographies: Books and periodicals received Andrew Milne; Bibliography of Comparative Literature in Britain and Ireland 1988 Joseph Th. Leerssen; Special bibliography: Technical translation in England, 1640–1800 L. G. Kelly.