Literature, Science, and a New Humanities

Author	Gottschall, Jonathan
Year	2008
Publisher	New York: Palgrave Macmillan
Number of pages	240
ISBN	9780230609037
Keywords

Review in Comparative Literature by John Holmes 2010:
“Over the last ten years, Edward O. Wilson's project of achieving a "consilience" between the sciences and the arts—or rather the study of the arts—has been gathering momentum. Evolutionary literary studies in particular has been striving vigorously to establish itself as a discipline through symposia and collections of essays, studies of individual authors, and full-length expositions of the theory of "literary Darwinism" (in Joseph Carroll's formulation) or "biopoetics" (in Brett Cooke's). Jonathan Gottschall has been at the forefront of this campaign, coediting the collection The Literary Animal, contributing a monograph on Homer, and, in Literature, Science, and a New Humanities, putting forward his own case for and approach to scientific literary scholarship.

Gottschall begins his book by painting a picture of a discipline in crisis. "People agree that the academic field of literary studies is in [End Page 239] trouble" (1). There is "a sickening sense that the whole enterprise [of the humanities] is in slow, sure, and perhaps inexorable decline" (xi). These prophecies of collapse serve a clear rhetorical purpose. Gottschall's claim that the humanities are in crisis is necessary to justify what he himself calls his "call for upheaval; for new theory, method, and ethos; for paradigm shift" (xii). The study of literature is desperately in need of correction, and the "scientific turn," he insists, is "the only correction with the potential to lift the field from its morass" (3). This rhetoric is at once alarmist and self-aggrandizing. It is misleading too, not only about the state of the discipline—although Gottschall is clearly entitled to his opinions—but also about Gottschall's own position. Running alongside the revolutionary rhetoric is a strand of moderate reformist argument that makes a much more persuasive and sustainable case for the introduction of scientific methods into literary scholarship.

Gottschall's book is divided into two parts. The first section, "On Theory, Method, and Attitude," falls into three chapters. In the first chapter Gottschall seeks to address two key anxieties over the acceptance of biopoetics as a critical approach: doubts over the scientific legitimacy of evolutionary psychology and distaste for the supposed political ramifications of Darwinism. He then goes on to make a more positive case for consilience. In the second chapter he proposes his own quantitative, that is, statistical, method of literary analysis. In the third chapter he argues that we need to "rehabilitate and revamp the concept of disinterestedness" if we are to limit "the space of possible explanation" (71) for literary phenomena and so reach a better approximation to an objective understanding of our own subject. A good working knowledge of current science and of statistical method, Gottschall suggests, are important checks in helping to guarantee that disinterestedness.

Many of Gottschall's individual arguments are sound. His understanding of evolutionary psychology is sophisticated and balanced. He accepts that it "has not yet reached a stable, mature form" (26) as a science and that it cannot ignore "the importance of physical and sociocultural environments" (33). He understands too that "when biologists look at a given species or variety, they see not essences but continuously variable populations" (124). Consequently we need to distinguish human universals that characterize all people from cultural universals that appear in all cultures and absolute universals from merely statistical universals (a paradoxical piece of terminology used to describe recurrent trends and patterns rather than fixed rules) (161). Gottschall may not realize the extent to which the rhetoric of evolutionary psychology tends to reinforce essentialism even when the fine print rejects [End Page 240] it. His own language is a case in point, as when he remarks that "humans act and think as they do" because "these patterns of thought and action … enhanced survival and reproduction in the band and tribal communities of our ancestors" (23). Rhetoric aside, in his use of evolutionary psychology in his critical practice Gottschall correctly interprets it as a statistical rather than an absolute science.

Looking again at the fine print, the case Gottschall makes for consilience is restrained, sensible, and convincing. As he sees it, consilience is "a catholic philosophy" that "encourages and endorses historical, biographical, linguistic, economic, philosophical, psychological, anthropological, biological, and sociological approaches to literary study" (38). He makes a distinction too between "weak and strong forms" of consilience. The former "consists of gaining freedom from obvious and readily avoidable error" (37). Literary theorists and critics should be careful to ensure that their arguments are not premised on uncorroborated assertions, particularly when these conflict with well-substantiated scientific findings. For example, they should not presuppose that the human subject is the product of culture and language to the exclusion of biology. Crucially, they should work too to eliminate the element of "confirmation bias" (46) in their own findings, whereby critics tend to prioritize evidence and readings that appear to confirm their own expectations.

These are sensible and reasonable demands that should have a tonic effect on critical practice across the discipline. Gottschall's case for his own stronger form of consilience is reasonable too. When not proclaiming a paradigm shift, he is happy to accept that "there are large areas of literary investigation that will probably never yield to the scientific method" (47). All he asks is that literary scholars "make limited and judicious use of quantitative methodology." In return, he promises that they "will discover important things about literature that were previously unknown or unsuspected" and that "some of our most comfortable assumptions will be proven illusory or in need of significant revision" (50).

The second half of his book is a series of four case studies supporting these claims. All four studies are statistical experiments designed to test how far folktales drawn from across the world corroborate the expectations of evolutionary psychology on the one hand and the constructivist claims of feminist criticism on the other. The first seeks to identify statistical universals in the characterization of female protagonists. The second tests a number of claims Gottschall identifies as recurrent within feminist criticism, such as that a disproportionate number of female protagonists in Western fairy tales are subservient, that there is an undue emphasis on [End Page 241] their beauty, that marriage is presented as their sole route to fulfilment, and that older women are stigmatized. Gottschall's third and fourth case studies develop one of these lines of argument in particular by using word searches to test to what extent female beauty and romantic love are universal topoi within fairy tales.

Given Gottschall's enthusiasm for evolutionary psychology and his despair at the current state of literary criticism one might expect a degree of confirmation bias in his own experimental method and analysis. Yet Gottschall rises above any such bias. He is frank about the limitations of his experiments and does his honest best to minimize them. He is open too to results that corroborate the views of his opponents, at least in part. For example, he observes that, according to his data, references to beauty are indeed more skewed toward female characters in European tales than in those from elsewhere, for all that there is a disproportionate focus on female as opposed to male attractiveness across the board. In other regards, however, European folk tales, rather than embodying a particularly oppressive culture, appear to be either typical or moderately less constricting of women's roles than those from elsewhere. Marriage is as much a goal for male characters as for female ones, and the prejudice against old women is only one indicator of a wider prejudice against old people in general.

As Gottschall himself admits, his statistical analyses are not watertight, but they are broadly convincing, bearing out his claim that such analyses have a place within the humanities and that they can help both to confirm and to dispel previous assumptions. What they do not do, however, is demonstrate that a statistical approach can play a major role in advancing our understanding of individual literary texts in their own right. By definition, a statistical method needs samples. The bigger the sample, the more comprehensive the data but, by the same token, the further one gets from a precise understanding of any of the units that comprise the sample. Gottschall's statistical approach works with folktales because he is concerned with broad narrative structures and patterns, not with the intricacy of narration itself. Gottschall makes a strong case for his weaker form of consilience and argues persuasively that statistical analyses have an important role to play in cultural studies. But if the proper object of literary studies is the ever fuller and richer understanding of texts, then Gottschall's ambition to provide a model for a rejuvenated discipline remains unfulfilled.” [End Page 242]

Abstract

Amazon (2013): Literary studies are at a tipping point. ." There is broad agreement that the discipline is in "crisis"--that it is aimless, that its intellectual energy is spent, that all of the trends are bad, and that fundamental change will be required to set things right. But there is little agreement on what those changes should be, and no one can predict which way things will ultimately tip. Literature, Science, and a New Humanities represents a bold new response to the crisis in academic literary studies. This book presents a total challenge to dominant paradigms of literary analysis and offers a sweeping critique of those paradigms, and sketches outlines of a new paradigm inspired by scientific theories, methods, and attitudes.

Review in Comparative Literature by John Holmes 2010:
“Over the last ten years, Edward O. Wilson's project of achieving a "consilience" between the sciences and the arts—or rather the study of the arts—has been gathering momentum. Evolutionary literary studies in particular has been striving vigorously to establish itself as a discipline through symposia and collections of essays, studies of individual authors, and full-length expositions of the theory of "literary Darwinism" (in Joseph Carroll's formulation) or "biopoetics" (in Brett Cooke's). Jonathan Gottschall has been at the forefront of this campaign, coediting the collection The Literary Animal, contributing a monograph on Homer, and, in Literature, Science, and a New Humanities, putting forward his own case for and approach to scientific literary scholarship.

Gottschall begins his book by painting a picture of a discipline in crisis. "People agree that the academic field of literary studies is in [End Page 239] trouble" (1). There is "a sickening sense that the whole enterprise [of the humanities] is in slow, sure, and perhaps inexorable decline" (xi). These prophecies of collapse serve a clear rhetorical purpose. Gottschall's claim that the humanities are in crisis is necessary to justify what he himself calls his "call for upheaval; for new theory, method, and ethos; for paradigm shift" (xii). The study of literature is desperately in need of correction, and the "scientific turn," he insists, is "the only correction with the potential to lift the field from its morass" (3). This rhetoric is at once alarmist and self-aggrandizing. It is misleading too, not only about the state of the discipline—although Gottschall is clearly entitled to his opinions—but also about Gottschall's own position. Running alongside the revolutionary rhetoric is a strand of moderate reformist argument that makes a much more persuasive and sustainable case for the introduction of scientific methods into literary scholarship.

Gottschall's book is divided into two parts. The first section, "On Theory, Method, and Attitude," falls into three chapters. In the first chapter Gottschall seeks to address two key anxieties over the acceptance of biopoetics as a critical approach: doubts over the scientific legitimacy of evolutionary psychology and distaste for the supposed political ramifications of Darwinism. He then goes on to make a more positive case for consilience. In the second chapter he proposes his own quantitative, that is, statistical, method of literary analysis. In the third chapter he argues that we need to "rehabilitate and revamp the concept of disinterestedness" if we are to limit "the space of possible explanation" (71) for literary phenomena and so reach a better approximation to an objective understanding of our own subject. A good working knowledge of current science and of statistical method, Gottschall suggests, are important checks in helping to guarantee that disinterestedness.

Many of Gottschall's individual arguments are sound. His understanding of evolutionary psychology is sophisticated and balanced. He accepts that it "has not yet reached a stable, mature form" (26) as a science and that it cannot ignore "the importance of physical and sociocultural environments" (33). He understands too that "when biologists look at a given species or variety, they see not essences but continuously variable populations" (124). Consequently we need to distinguish human universals that characterize all people from cultural universals that appear in all cultures and absolute universals from merely statistical universals (a paradoxical piece of terminology used to describe recurrent trends and patterns rather than fixed rules) (161). Gottschall may not realize the extent to which the rhetoric of evolutionary psychology tends to reinforce essentialism even when the fine print rejects [End Page 240] it. His own language is a case in point, as when he remarks that "humans act and think as they do" because "these patterns of thought and action … enhanced survival and reproduction in the band and tribal communities of our ancestors" (23). Rhetoric aside, in his use of evolutionary psychology in his critical practice Gottschall correctly interprets it as a statistical rather than an absolute science.

Looking again at the fine print, the case Gottschall makes for consilience is restrained, sensible, and convincing. As he sees it, consilience is "a catholic philosophy" that "encourages and endorses historical, biographical, linguistic, economic, philosophical, psychological, anthropological, biological, and sociological approaches to literary study" (38). He makes a distinction too between "weak and strong forms" of consilience. The former "consists of gaining freedom from obvious and readily avoidable error" (37). Literary theorists and critics should be careful to ensure that their arguments are not premised on uncorroborated assertions, particularly when these conflict with well-substantiated scientific findings. For example, they should not presuppose that the human subject is the product of culture and language to the exclusion of biology. Crucially, they should work too to eliminate the element of "confirmation bias" (46) in their own findings, whereby critics tend to prioritize evidence and readings that appear to confirm their own expectations.

These are sensible and reasonable demands that should have a tonic effect on critical practice across the discipline. Gottschall's case for his own stronger form of consilience is reasonable too. When not proclaiming a paradigm shift, he is happy to accept that "there are large areas of literary investigation that will probably never yield to the scientific method" (47). All he asks is that literary scholars "make limited and judicious use of quantitative methodology." In return, he promises that they "will discover important things about literature that were previously unknown or unsuspected" and that "some of our most comfortable assumptions will be proven illusory or in need of significant revision" (50).

The second half of his book is a series of four case studies supporting these claims. All four studies are statistical experiments designed to test how far folktales drawn from across the world corroborate the expectations of evolutionary psychology on the one hand and the constructivist claims of feminist criticism on the other. The first seeks to identify statistical universals in the characterization of female protagonists. The second tests a number of claims Gottschall identifies as recurrent within feminist criticism, such as that a disproportionate number of female protagonists in Western fairy tales are subservient, that there is an undue emphasis on [End Page 241] their beauty, that marriage is presented as their sole route to fulfilment, and that older women are stigmatized. Gottschall's third and fourth case studies develop one of these lines of argument in particular by using word searches to test to what extent female beauty and romantic love are universal topoi within fairy tales.

Given Gottschall's enthusiasm for evolutionary psychology and his despair at the current state of literary criticism one might expect a degree of confirmation bias in his own experimental method and analysis. Yet Gottschall rises above any such bias. He is frank about the limitations of his experiments and does his honest best to minimize them. He is open too to results that corroborate the views of his opponents, at least in part. For example, he observes that, according to his data, references to beauty are indeed more skewed toward female characters in European tales than in those from elsewhere, for all that there is a disproportionate focus on female as opposed to male attractiveness across the board. In other regards, however, European folk tales, rather than embodying a particularly oppressive culture, appear to be either typical or moderately less constricting of women's roles than those from elsewhere. Marriage is as much a goal for male characters as for female ones, and the prejudice against old women is only one indicator of a wider prejudice against old people in general.

As Gottschall himself admits, his statistical analyses are not watertight, but they are broadly convincing, bearing out his claim that such analyses have a place within the humanities and that they can help both to confirm and to dispel previous assumptions. What they do not do, however, is demonstrate that a statistical approach can play a major role in advancing our understanding of individual literary texts in their own right. By definition, a statistical method needs samples. The bigger the sample, the more comprehensive the data but, by the same token, the further one gets from a precise understanding of any of the units that comprise the sample. Gottschall's statistical approach works with folktales because he is concerned with broad narrative structures and patterns, not with the intricacy of narration itself. Gottschall makes a strong case for his weaker form of consilience and argues persuasively that statistical analyses have an important role to play in cultural studies. But if the proper object of literary studies is the ever fuller and richer understanding of texts, then Gottschall's ambition to provide a model for a rejuvenated discipline remains unfulfilled.” [End Page 242]

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