The Utah Symposium on Science and Literature brings together major figures in the sciences; in poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and literary theory; and in the humanities and social sciences to examine topics of interest across disciplines. During the first symposium, roboticist Rodney Brooks, novelist Richard Powers, and theologian Anne Foerst considered how our technology has made us reconsider what it is to be human. During the second symposium (October 9-11, 2003), neurologist Antonio Damasio, poet Jorie Graham, and philosopher Thomas Metzinger will discuss emotion, cognition, and the construction of self. The foundational idea behind the symposium is that there is an important reciprocal influence between the sciences, the arts, and the 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, while chaos theory may have been predicted in the works of various 19th century writers. For both participants and observers, the symposium will underscore the ways in which ideas are both generated and enriched by communication across disciplines. 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, and whether such communication actually furthers scientific exploration

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.