the ramble dump

[Note: this was majorly revised 19/08/08. Before that, it was very unclear and underdeveloped and made quite a few leaps in logic that didn't entirely make sense. I'm kind of hoping that nobody ever saw it, and that this new version is a bit more acceptable.]

I am an English student. English has always been my favourite subject. When my brother trotted off to Manchester to do Physics, we used to butt heads over it all the time. My main argument was that Physics was boring; his was that English, and later Philosophy, were wishy-washy subjects, and that Physics encompassed everything, and that Physics was therefore the most important. I continued to argue that Physics was boring. And it was, back in school.

I know that this was a pretty immature view for me to take of Physics, but I still object to the kind of claims that my brother made. Here at the University of Nottingham, I've been faced with attitudes along similar lines. Certain physicists have declared the study of literature pointless. Clans of scientifically-minded people have tittered and guffawed when they have realised they were in the midst of a Philosophy class. It is massively uncalled for.

The main argument around science-the-subjects versus, specifically, English-the-subject seems to be one of usefulness, and how students of the former are dismissing the latter on the basis of, say, a novel being subjective and fictional and therefore a complete waste of time in spending a degree on. On the other hand, science is supposedly much more sensible and worthwhile because it strives to be objective. Much of physics, for example, is grounded in mathematics and supported by empirical evidence, which gives it the apparent prestige of being pure, solid facts about the universe. Right, so. As it's mostly the physicists I know who seem so rested on their pedestals, I'm going to use them as my main example while I attempt to call such individuals out for being close-minded.

Let's first address the objectivity versus subjectivity deal. Maths, as a form of logic, is extremely useful. Empirical evidence is also valuable, and when this logic is applied to it, we can attempt to construct some pretty coherent theories about the universe. Yes, these theories try to be based on objectivity, but however much they may be supported by validating evidence, how many of these theories contain speculation, educated guesses and offered interpretations of the universe? How far could science get if they didn't? And, pause for thought: how is this so different from literature? By this I mean that both fundamentally require the construction of a narrative based on human observation, whatever logic or specific methodology you may use to support it. The same is true of philosophy, of history, of many other subjects. Both science and literature involve the construction of such narratives from the human perspective: they are, in their different ways, based on human experience--so to begin with, it's worth bearing in mind that science will never be completely objective because we're essentially working from a subjective starting point: our own minds. The evidence may be actually out there, but the whole concept of empirical evidence is that we're verifying its existence based on our own experiences with it--our own observations.

The pursuit of scientific truth, physical truth, is a noble endeavour and has proved to be incredibly useful, but any scientist who really understands his or her subject has to acknowledge the part that subjectivity and storytelling play in the construction of theories, and that establishing 'facts' is always contingent on the reliability of such empirical evidence. I know that rigorous checks can be made to ensure that such evidence is reliable as possible, but science is an ongoing thing and in the meantime, as has been demonstrated countless times, theories of the world can be very coherent and seemingly much supported, but all it takes is the tiniest bit of new evidence to show that what was previously considered fact was actually a not-quite-accurate fiction based on the limits of human perspective up until that point.

This does not, of course, validate the practice of literary analysis in any way. Literature employs no such rigorous scientific methodology, and for whatever part temporary fictions might play in the scientific process, it would be ridiculous to claim that literature is valuable or useful in the same ways as science. But they're different subjects for a reason. Science, as mentioned, strives for objectivity, whereas literature and literary theory do to much less of an extent, if at all--but this is because they're searching for different kinds of meaning. When we come to analyse literature, the entire methodology is different because we're looking for something different--applying to a novel the scientific method, or the quantitative logic of mathematics, may indeed get you nowhere, but makes no sense to require from literature, or any of the arts, scientific meaning. Science can, to an ever-increasing extent, explain the how and the why of the universe. It may explain its origins, our origins, why we act the way we act -- but it can't explain what any of this means to us. That's the realm of the arts and humanities.* This isn't to say that a scientific approach towards literature is always going to be useless--a science fiction novel that speculates the possibility of a future world could be evaluated for likelihood based on our current scientific knowledge. But to insist on a solely scientific approach to literature is...well, missing the point. In Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, for example, it's not the fact that magic corrupts to which we can attribute much meaning, in relation to our own world--it's the suggestion that power does. The meaning in a world of fiction, or a work of art, will always be figurative. It is representative, rather than physical.

And again, the lack of scientifically verifiable truth in these representations does not mean they are academically worthless--even though it's still an illustration rather than anything physically real. To claim that is like dismissing an illustration or a diagram in a physics textbook. It might be a simplified or distorted or exaggerated representation of the universe, but that doesn't mean it's useless. And that's what literary criticism is all about: deciding whether something that the book or poem represents is oversimplified, biased or distorted, or if it does offer us a useful way of looking at something, maybe even encouraging us to look at this thing in a way that we haven't done before. None of it can establish fact, but it can make important suggestions, ones that we can still apply to our own lives in a way that might apply to our view of humanity in general or our own feelings specifically. Science is the discipline for determining the 'truth' of a physical universe--but if you're going to insist on looking for physical truth in a novel or a painting, it's your own fault if you get nothing out of it.

As for my brother's claim (made a couple of years ago now, whether he still believes this or not) that the 'humanities' are, by definition, too limited for focusing only on humanity--can it really be argued anyway that the aims of science don't ultimately come back to ourselves? Even if science, say, sketches out an aim of preserving an animal species, it comes back to issues of our responsibility. It makes no sense to sever the human aspect from the aims of science. If you're going to argue for the 'usefulness' or 'importance' of science, surely you can't be referring to the construction of some abstract realm of knowledge that just sits there. In this case, therefore, the argument against the focus on humanity doesn't really apply.

I do think it's also worth pursuing knowledge for the sake of itself, purely because we find the world around us interesting. That's part of life too, and the arts do it by the moundful. But it remains true that some questions of science -- for example, facts about distant galaxies -- might be considered academically interesting while arguably having no bearing whatsoever on how we live our lives. Not everything has to be about the direct utilitarianism of something, and there are loads of different functions and purposes to all the different subjects that this rant won't have covered -- more than anything else, I do the subject 'English' because I enjoy it -- but my point is that in terms of this direct 'usefulness' or 'importance' that some of my sciency friends seem to argue for, science can't always claim the highground. Literature, the arts, philosophy...they're all about human interpretion of the universe, which makes them, as already argued, in a way not so different from science. But in often being more focused on what is important to us, they are not only, as a whole, just as relevant as the sciences, but I would argue sometimes even more so. Having everything explained in purely technical terms isn't necessarily meaningful or useful, and it definitely isn't all-encompassing.*

And for all those people who think that literary criticism is just about making stuff up: yes, literature and literary theory can be self-indulgent waffle. Art can be pretentious; but science can be quack. The fact that meaning can be subjective in art, and derived from a novel, say, even if it wasn't explicitly intended by the author (and a lot of literary theory examines precisely this idea), does not mean that it can't be meaningful at all. If, however, someone writes an essay and they are consciously making the whole thing up, or trying to be overly academic or obtuse, and if there really is nothing to it, then the practise of literary theory will, or at least should, reject it as the pretentious crap it is.

I'm hoping it's clear enough that I'm not trying to put science down. I mean, I love science. Some of my best friends are scientists. But those of them who seek to dismiss the arts have so far not been able to do so on valid or non-hypocritical grounds. Science isn't more important than the arts and the arts aren't more important than the sciences. They are complementary, and the distinction between them is overexaggerated anyway.* The arts have often been lampooned for their multitude of pretentious twats, and probably with good reason. But I think the snobs among the scientists need to get over themselves too.


* This fat footnote exists just to bring together those three statements that have been asterisk'd. For the first asterisk, in relation to 'what it means to us', here's an example: the study of biology and evolutionary psychology may go a long way to explaining how and why we came to feel an emotion like sympathy, but as soon as you start talking about the implications of this technical explanation on how we are now forced to view ourselves, we're into the area of philosophy. At this point, to reinforce asterisk two, it has then gone beyond a purely technical account. Literature might then come in as somebody's chosen form of expression for such an idea.

As for asterisk three, I would argue that the division between the subjects is partially arbitrary anyway: even between the sciences themselves, physics can only explain so far before it becomes a matter of chemistry, and in turn, biology. In this vast spectrum of human endeavour, the sciences would gradually become social studies, which would in turn become the humanities. The arts can operate as media of expression for all of the above. In any case, each offer very specific areas of study. Even if you argue that chemistry and biology could be counted as subcategories of physics, as an area of academic study -- as 'Physics' -- this is just not true. It stops short or has limited overlap before it becomes something that you are not studying, while the Chemists and Biologists are. Likewise, Literature could not exist without Linguistics, but the study of Linguistics does not encompass Literature. No subject has dominion.

Labels: i am the ramblemaster, literature, science, tolkien

# posted by Chris @ 6:37 PM