Nothing is more "made up" than pure math. That's why we love it so
much. ;-)
Grant
Grant Holland
VP, Product Development and Software Engineering
NuTech Solutions
404.427.4759
On 10/14/2010 10:23 AM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
Robert C. wrote:
What's curious is that he believes we get a better feel for reality and
human nature by reading novels ( = made up stuff). I definitely wouldn't
want to draw conclusions too strongly about life, the intellect or the mind
that is based on the fictional behavior of fictional characters.
Oh, Lordy, Lordy, do I ever agree!!!!!
However, as rights of privacy and control by research "participants" over
their own data have become more and more stringent in NSF and NIMH
guidelines, it has been increasingly difficult for psychologists to do
naturalistic research that anybody would respect on human beings. The plain
fact is that people behave differently when they know you are watching them,
and give different results when they know what your research hypothesis is.
They try to make you happy.
The American Psychological Association has become so infused with political
correctness that it would not surprise me to learn that the Gombe Stream
Chimpanzees had been asked to sign wavers of their "participant" rights.
In this context, I have proposed (for argument purposes, perhaps; with me, I
can never tell the difference) that my psychology department consider novels
as possible phd dissertations. The reasoning is that if we are forbidden
from telling the truth about real live human beings, we could at least tell
the truth about fictional ones. The problem is, of course, what it means to
tell the truth about a fictional character.
Now, I don't want to hear from the non realists on this one. If the idea of
truth doesn't have any grip on your imagination, then you aren't part of my
target audience here. I don't want to hear that truth belongs to the guy
with the biggest gun. It may be true, but I don't want to hear it. You
Deconstructionists just .... Just ..... bugger off.
The closest I have ever come to shading the truth in my writing is in a
series of essays under a pseudonym in which I included examples of events
that - blush - never quite actually happened. I rearranged "extraneous"
details to make a sharper, shorter, clearer examples. As a writer, I felt
fine about it; as a scientist, it gnaws at me to this day. Who am I to say
what is "extraneous"? As Robert says, so persuasively, "I definitely
wouldn't want to draw conclusions too strongly about life, the intellect or
the mind that is based on the fictional behavior of fictional characters."
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/nthompson
http://www.cusf.org
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf
Of Robert J. Cordingley
Sent: Thursday, October 14, 2010 8:22 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: [FRIAM] The Case for a Literary Education (re 10 Best...)
Joseph Epstein makes the case for a Literary Education in this 2008 lecture
(approx 40 min):
http://www.isi.org/lectures/lectures.aspx?SBy=search&SSub=title&SFor=A%20Lit
erary%20Education
He believes a Literary Education teaches a number of things including 'how
astonishing reality' is and also 'the limits of the intellect'. Given the
number of literary refererences in his argument you may get the best out of
this if you already have a Literary Education which makes it a little
self-serving IMHO. I guess it works for novelists.
Bio from the website:
Joseph Epstein was born in 1937 in Chicago, and attended the public schools
there and, later, the University of Chicago. He is the author of, among
other books, Fabulous Small Jews, Snobbery, Friendship, Narcissus Leaves the
Pool, and In a Cardboard Belt! His most recent book, Fred Astaire, will be
published in September by Yale University Press as part of its American
Icons series. Mr. Epstein taught in the Department of English at
Northwestern University for thirty years. He was the editor of The American
Scholar, the intellectual quarterly of Phi Beta Kappa, between 1974 and
1997. His essays and short stories have appeared in The New Yorker,
Commentary, The Atlantic, The Weekly Standard, The Hudson Review, and other
magazines. His work has been translated into French, Spanish, Italian,
Hebrew, Chinese, and Japanese. He is currently working on a book Houghton
Mifflin on the subject of Gossip.
It doesn't seem that a Ph.D was required, btw, and none of his works were
recommended for our 10 Best... However, that the intellect may be limited
is a good reason to want to make a selection in life, be it one's Bucket
List or one's reading list.
What's curious is that he believes we get a better feel for reality and
human nature by reading novels ( = made up stuff). I definitely wouldn't
want to draw conclusions too strongly about life, the intellect or the mind
that is based on the fictional behavior of fictional characters.
Thanks
Robert C
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
