The ID Report

Post details: Evolutionary psychology promises to rescue English literature

05/01/10

by Denyse O'Leary 06:21:21 am, Categories: Commentary - OpEd, 423 words

Evolutionary psychology promises to rescue English literature

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Hey, lucky taxpayer, you will soon get a chance to fund "evolutionary psychology" in English literature departments too:

At a time when university literature departments are confronting painful budget cuts, a moribund job market and pointed scrutiny about the purpose and value of an education in the humanities, the cross-pollination of English and psychology is providing a revitalizing lift.

Jonathan Gottschall, who has written extensively about using evolutionary theory to explain fiction, said "it's a new moment of hope" in an era when everyone is talking about "the death of the humanities." To Mr. Gottschall a scientific approach can rescue literature departments from the malaise that has embraced them over the last decade and a half. Zealous enthusiasm for the politically charged and frequently arcane theories that energized departments in the 1970s, '80s and early â€™90s â€” Marxism, structuralism, psychoanalysis â€” has faded. Since then a new generation of scholars have been casting about for The Next Big Thing. (Patricia Cohen, "The Next Big Thing: Knowing They Know That You Know", New York Times, March 31, 2010)

You guessed it, the "Next Big Thing" is the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology, which promises to explain "the root of people's fascination with fiction and fantasy."

How about: We like to be entertained and instructed after a hard day's work, and there is nothing better at the fireside than a hot beverage and someone else's story, provided it is well told and interesting. It will be a pity if English literature is derailed by yet another invasion of publicly funded quacks.

Now, here, I must disillusion some readers: Most good storytelling depends on technique. Homer knew this three thousand years ago, and doubtless many knew it before him, before stories came to be committed to writing.

If one must be a storyteller, the alternative to good technique is morphing into target practice for public insults, if not rotten tomatoes. The proper knowledge base of the literature department is the analysis of the techniques actually used in written and oral literature. As to how they ultimately originated, well, let's just say that anyone can make up stuff and insist that it is "science".

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

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Evolution has become a favorite topic of the news media recently, but for some reason, they never seem to get the story straight. The staff at Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture started this Blog to set the record straight and make sure you knew "the rest of the story".
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A blogger from New England offers his intelligent reasoning.
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We are a group of individuals, coming from diverse backgrounds and not speaking for any organization, who have found common ground around teleological concepts, including intelligent design. We think these concepts have real potential to generate insights about our reality that are being drowned out by political advocacy from both sides. We hope this blog will provide a small voice that helps rectify this situation.
The Design Inference - The Writings of William A. Dembski
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Website dedicated to comparing scenes from the "Inherit the Wind" movie with factual information from actual Scopes Trial. View 37 clips from the movie and decide for yourself if this movie is more fact or fiction.

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Darwinian Fairytales by David Stove
Complete zipped downloadable pdf copy of David Stove's devastating, and yet hard-to-find, critique of neo-Darwinism entitled "Darwinian Fairytales"
ID The Future
Intelligent Design The Future is a multiple contributor weblog whose participants include the nation's leading design scientists and theorists: biochemist Michael Behe, mathematician William Dembski, astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, philosophers of science Stephen Meyer, and Jay Richards, philosopher of biology Paul Nelson, molecular biologist Jonathan Wells, and science writer Jonathan Witt. Posts will focus primarily on the intellectual issues at stake in the debate over intelligent design, rather than its implications for education or public policy.
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