Abstract

BARRY VACKER views The Fountainhead as unique in utopian literature, since it rejects the traditional vision of total planning for total order, in favor of a utopian vision expressed through the aesthetics of egoism and chaos. In particular, Howard Roark's buildings embrace the fractal forms being uncovered in the post-Newtonian sciences of chaos and complexity. As such, this suggests that the insights of chaos theory be integrated with Rand's theory of art and epistemology. Vacker argues that chaotic forms and processes should be placed at the center of a utopian cultural aesthetic that embraces strange attractors