Science and Literature
In his article May 11 article for the Boston Globe titled Measure for Measure, Johnathan Gottschall writes:
We literary scholars have mostly failed to generate surer and firmer knowledge about the things we study. While most other fields gradually accumulate new and durable understanding about the world, the great minds of literary studies have, over the past few decades, chiefly produced theories and speculation with little relevance to anyone but the scholars themselves. So instead of steadily building a body of solid knowledge about literature, culture, and the human condition, the field wanders in continuous circles, bending with fashions and the pronouncements of its charismatic leaders.
Something that frustrates me no end about literary theory is its lack of understanding of the sciences, particularly when it purports to draw from them. Witness theorists who present their musings as meaningless mathematical formulae or draw on an at best limited understanding of physics. Nevertheless, these theorists manage to impress, because they most often happen to be addressing people who have no interest in either mathematics or physics (or biology or chemistry) and who are therefore happy to take their word for it because the theories in question are interesting and seem to make sense in context.
The other frustrating thing about literary theory is precisely its irrelevance to anything outside literary theory. Certainly it enhances the reading of literature and provides new and startling ways to conceive of the world created by literature and, given that literature is often seen as a reflection of real life, the world itself. But while it contains ideas and philosophies and suggestions that are a joy and a challenge to explore, it ultimately doubles back on itself without actually providing answers and students are left right where they started.
At the same time, it irritates me when the science bloggers I read make offhand, dismissive comments about the humanities and those who study them, saying things like “Even the arts students understand that intelligent design is bogus.”* No we’re not scientists, but why does that automatically make us the morons of academia? ID is a shoddily presented argument. You need only basic reason to see that, not deep scientific knowledge.
And while we’re on common misconceptions, why are scientists so often cast as drones lacking all imagination? The rigors of method notwithstanding, I can’t see a scientist as anything but imaginative. What is the development of a hypothesis if not a creative act?
We seem to be stuck in this very high-school perception that the arts=flaky vs. science=nerdy. Gottschall argues that this is simply unnecessary:
Above all, these changes would require looking with fresh eyes on the landscape of academic disciplines, and noticing something surprising: The great wall dividing the two cultures of the sciences and humanities has no substance. We can walk right through it.
I think he’s absolutely right. If we all actually bothered to get to know each other, I think we would all realize that we are, at heart, all knowledge-obsessed geeks.
Aunty Helpful Dictator wrote,
As someone who was a arts student and now works in a field that purports to being a psuedo-science (political “science”) I think you are right. It’s all a tapestry with interlinks and we need people working on all bits of it.
One thing I wonder, though, about people who do PhD on things like English literature: how do they keep going? What I mean is that the whole task is hard enough, and its really difficult to keep yourself motivated. What keeps me going is that I’m dealing with a problem that affects the lives of millions of people, and that I hope to be able to add to a field that is looking at coming up with solutions to pressing world problems. I understand that a lot of science related phds are looking a cures, or understanding mechanisms, or trying to figure out how the world works. I get the motivation for PhDs on social justice, sociology, geography and philosophy and so on, but if you’re working on a thesis on a book or set of books most people have never read and never will read, and you have one of those “this is pointless” slumps.. how do you talk yourself back to believing what your doing is worth the mental torture and poverty you’re putting yourself through.
I just wonder sometimes.
Link | May 15th, 2008 at 8:45 pm
Aunty Helpful Dictator wrote,
to clarify:
I don’t mean to be remotely derogatory about people who study literature. I think it is valuable and that we never know where inspiration for important developments come from… and I can see plenty of merit in studying certain things about literature.
I suppose its the motivation for the study of obscure texts that intrigues me. My thinking is that there is a motivation and I just don’t know it.
I’ll stop now
Link | May 15th, 2008 at 10:44 pm
Christopher Waldrop wrote,
In his essay Gottschall does suggest means for treating literature as science, such as the study of the reactions of 500 readers to 19th Century novels. But, Aunty, I think you’ve made a good point that for a lot of literary scholars, the feeling of “this is pointless” must be an easy pit to fall into and a hard one to get out of. I think this could apply not just to literary scholarship but music and art as well. The hard part for these critics is that, instead of spinning theories out of thin air, which is what Post-structuralism seems to not only allow but encourage, they should try coming up with testable ideas that could become hypotheses and maybe even theories.
I know that would mean a big shift in arts criticism, and I know no book is going to cure cancer or even build a bridge. Heck, I’m not even sure how scholars in the humanities would begin to make this change. I think it would be more worthwhile than sitting around debating how Baudrillard would interpret The Aeneid, though.
Link | May 16th, 2008 at 6:22 am