ABSTRACT
If recent developments in theoretical physics, popularized for nonspecialists under the rather vague term of chaos theory, have taught us anything, they have shown us that the more local, or particular, our observations become, the more varied and complex objects appear to be, whereas more global observations, although more hazy and indistinct, reveal form and order. We begin with this local-global dichotomy in order to make an analogy, albeit somewhat crude, to the recent concern in writing center literature about the apparent inconsistencies between writing center theory and practice. The local-global model tries to account for the disparities between two otherwise valid perspectives: what seems ordered and predictable on closer inspection appears in disarray-unpredictable, unmeasurable, or chaotic. Such a model relates to the discrepancies between writing center theory and practice: However ordered and complete our theories are, the more closely we look at our practice, the more we find that theory cannot account for-that is, cannot order and make sense of-the particularities of what we do locally.
