Mind Reads; April 2005; Scientific American Mind; by Jonathan Beard, Aimee Cunningham, Richard Lipkin; 2 Page(s)

Did you forget to take :Quantum Physics and the Murder Novel" your senior year? If so, Kern's book on causality will guide you through a daunting yet enlightening survey of how science has affected literature.

By "murder novels," Kern does not mean whodunits. His focus is on the "whydunits" written by Victorian and modern writers: books that revolve around murder but dwell on their characters' motives, not crime solving. Science comes into play because of the revolution in thought and knowledge between the period 1830 to 1900 and the 20th century. Over these years, Charles Darwin and Gregor Mendel revolutionized biology, Sigmund Freud revolutionized psychology, and physicists changed our view of the universe.