This monograph investigates the relationship between literature and science against the background of the functional differentiation of modern society. Using examples from different linguistic areas? French (Diderot, Rousseau, Balzac, Flaubert, Zola, Proust, Houellebecq), German (Goethe, Freud, Musil), Italian (Vico, Manzoni, Pirandello, Svevo, Calvino, Del Giudice) and Spanish (Pío Baroja, Borges, Cortázar, Volpi)? the book shows that despite the widening gap between literature and science, interferences occur which are poetologically and epistemologically revealing.