The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Science. Ed. Steven Meyer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

• Robert Craig

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Hamlet’s musing comes to mind throughout this volume – perhaps not least because he features in Mary Baine Campbell’s insightful chapter as one who “wants to know, even more than he wants revenge or peace”. Among other things, his rejoinder exposes the inadequacies of human reason in the face of the teeming variety and ambiguity of worlds both natural and supernatural. It seems an oddly fitting description for the exciting, eclectic nature of ‘literature and science’ today; but it also encapsulates both the individual successes and the overall shortcomings of this companion to it.