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Metaphorical Circuit argues that the division of knowledge between literature and science in the modern university produced a necessity to choose that became a central, animating tension for Japanese intellectuals in the early 20th century. Each chapter begins with a point in an author's work where mathematical representation becomes an issue in negotiating the boundary, and follows the analysis to a wall, or a point of indeterminacy, that leaves the author again with a heterogeneous field. The book offers substantial, original readings of a series of major figures such as Natsume Soseki, Mori Ogai, and Edogawa Ranpo, the physicist Terada Torahiko, and the critics Maeda Ai and Karatani Kojin as they write about this period. It follows its subject in introducing the styles of reasoning and inquiry of the sciences into the field of culture, where it can offend.