In Grammars of Creation, his 1990 Gifford Lectures, George Steiner discusses the relationship between our creation stories and the process of human creation in literature, the sciences, mathematics and music. Exhibiting his profound grasp of languages and the history of thought, Steiner examines the ways in which technological advances alter communication and, ultimately, meaning itself. He also attends to the relationship between creation and death, noting that medical technology, on the one hand, and the proliferation of systematised violence, on the other, has created in the contemporary world a complex and still-evolving understanding of life and death.