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Re: Boyd on Lolita, science, pattern
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Stan Kelly-Bootle and others interested in the general topic of the relation of science to literature may want to read Raymond Tallis's essay in the new TLS. Although Tallis does not refer to Nabokov, much of what he says about A.S. Byatt's attempt to give a "scientific" reading of Donne is, I think, pertinent to Boyd's essay on Lolita in the American Scholar.
Here's the link to Tallis's essay:
Times Literary Supplement
THE NEUROSCIENCE DELUSION
Neuroaesthetics is wrong about our experience of literarure--and it is wrong about humanity
by Raymond Tallis
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article3712980.ece
==========
----- Original Message ----
From: Stan Kelly-Bootle <skb@BOOTLE.BIZ>
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Saturday, April 12, 2008 1:56:15 PM
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Boyd on Lolita, science, pattern
On 28/03/2008 23:00, "b.boyd@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ" <b.boyd@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ> wrote:
Dear All, or Some anyway:
You may be interested in this article in the latest American Scholar which links my interests in Nabokov and in evolutionary approaches to literature less unsuccessfully than I have managed previously:
http://www.theamericanscholar.org/sp08/literature-boyd.html
Brian Boyd
---
I relish this thought-provoking essay as one more attempt to bring together the two 'rival' (but each 'unrivalled!') components in Nabokov's life and achievements. What we loosely call Science and the Humanities. Beyond C P Snow's Two Cultures, we have E O Wilson's plea for CONSILIENCE -- the Unity of Knowledge (Knopf, New York, 1998). Wilson urges us to
" ... view the boundary between scientific and literary cultures not as a territorial line but as a broad and mostly unexplored terrain awaiting cooperative entry from both sides."
But (the ever-present disconjunctive), as Jay Labinger* notes
"It would be hard to disagree with that sentiment, but Wilson's claim that 'the only way either to establish or to refute consilience is by methods developed in the natural sciences' seems to have more to do with COLONIZATION than ALLIANCE!" [my CAPS]
* Science (AAAS), 28 March, 2008, reviewing "Proust Was a Neuroscientist," Jonah Lehrer; and "Artscience -- Creativity in the Post-Google Generation."
As I've oft complained on NABOKOV-L, the Science/LitCrit 'dichotomy' is huge and skewed. We mathematicians, semanticists and scorpionologists really 'dig' VN's corpus as much as the non-scientific 'literary' reader. Yet there's little reciprocal understanding or sheer enjoyment by the latter for the vast achievements of science and mathematics. The 'patterns' and 'symmetries' gleefully discovered in VN's narratives are quite trivial compared with the recently published Lie Group E8!
Stan Kelly-Bootle
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Here's the link to Tallis's essay:
Times Literary Supplement
THE NEUROSCIENCE DELUSION
Neuroaesthetics is wrong about our experience of literarure--and it is wrong about humanity
by Raymond Tallis
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article3712980.ece
==========
----- Original Message ----
From: Stan Kelly-Bootle <skb@BOOTLE.BIZ>
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Saturday, April 12, 2008 1:56:15 PM
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Boyd on Lolita, science, pattern
On 28/03/2008 23:00, "b.boyd@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ" <b.boyd@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ> wrote:
Dear All, or Some anyway:
You may be interested in this article in the latest American Scholar which links my interests in Nabokov and in evolutionary approaches to literature less unsuccessfully than I have managed previously:
http://www.theamericanscholar.org/sp08/literature-boyd.html
Brian Boyd
---
I relish this thought-provoking essay as one more attempt to bring together the two 'rival' (but each 'unrivalled!') components in Nabokov's life and achievements. What we loosely call Science and the Humanities. Beyond C P Snow's Two Cultures, we have E O Wilson's plea for CONSILIENCE -- the Unity of Knowledge (Knopf, New York, 1998). Wilson urges us to
" ... view the boundary between scientific and literary cultures not as a territorial line but as a broad and mostly unexplored terrain awaiting cooperative entry from both sides."
But (the ever-present disconjunctive), as Jay Labinger* notes
"It would be hard to disagree with that sentiment, but Wilson's claim that 'the only way either to establish or to refute consilience is by methods developed in the natural sciences' seems to have more to do with COLONIZATION than ALLIANCE!" [my CAPS]
* Science (AAAS), 28 March, 2008, reviewing "Proust Was a Neuroscientist," Jonah Lehrer; and "Artscience -- Creativity in the Post-Google Generation."
As I've oft complained on NABOKOV-L, the Science/LitCrit 'dichotomy' is huge and skewed. We mathematicians, semanticists and scorpionologists really 'dig' VN's corpus as much as the non-scientific 'literary' reader. Yet there's little reciprocal understanding or sheer enjoyment by the latter for the vast achievements of science and mathematics. The 'patterns' and 'symmetries' gleefully discovered in VN's narratives are quite trivial compared with the recently published Lie Group E8!
Stan Kelly-Bootle
Searchthe Nabokv-L archive with Google
Contact
the Editors
All private editorial communications, without
exception, are
read by both co-editors.
Visit Zembla
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__________________________________________________
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Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
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