The Utah Symposium on Science and Literature will bring together major figures in science, poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, literary theory, philosophy, and other pertinent branches of the humanities such as theology and history to examine topics in science. Possible topics over the five years of the program include chaos theory, the environment, evolution and natural selection, genetics, science and religion, medicine and ethics, and theories of higher dimensions, as well as specific scientific schools or figures. For both participants and observers, the symposium will underscore the ways in which ideas are both generated and enriched by communication across disciplines. The foundational idea is that there is an important reciprocal influence between the sciences and the arts and humanities, though the ways in which current ideas are expressed and manifested, especially in our age of specialization, may be so different that the connections between them--as well as the ability to trace precedence--may not always be clear. Historically, for example, it is almost impossible for anyone who has even a basic understanding of Einstein to read much of Virginia Woolf's work without considering the impact of his ideas on her thinking. Symposium participants will discuss not only the scientific ideas embodied in literary works but why--or whether--it is useful or necessary to communicate these ideas in works that are primarily literary rather than pedagogical or informational.

The purpose of the symposium will be twofold:
1. To open lines of communication among thinkers in various fields around scientific issues influencing all the fields, in order that the participants will be able to return to their own work renewed and with unexpected insights into what they are doing and how it fits within the larger intellectual community; and
2. To help both our student community and the interested public, through observing these connections, to understand intellectual inquiry as being of whole cloth, in order that all fields might be more open to them--in other words, to expand the idea of literacy beyond disciplinary boundaries.