Using as an analogy the seventeenth-century crisis of knowledge spurred by the development of the telescope and the microscope, this paper argues that a similar crisis in knowledge proper has occurred with the intellectual developments of the twentieth century. Two new infinite orders have opened up: the virtually inexhaustible possibilities suggested by segmenting texts into smaller and smaller units, and the equally inexhaustible possibilities offered by the relationship of texts to layer upon layer of context. The field of Translation Studies reflects the new shift in the debate between those who assert the pre-eminence of linguistic approaches to translation and those who advocate primarily cultural studies approaches to translation. This article argues in favour of research methods that combine both approaches, offering examples of how such research should proceed in translation studies.