literature vs psychology

[sarah23]

I'm working on a theory of knowledge paper and i was just curious about your opinion on my subject..

".. we will always learn more abou the human life and human personality from novels than from scientific psychology" (Noam Chomsky) To what extent would you agree?

[Kristie]

I don't know how much we really learn about human life in novels. Novels are fiction, and are therefore a fantasy world that people have created. However real a story seems, it's not (unless it's nonfiction like memoirs or biographies). I suppose we learn about the sorts of worlds people wish they could have or the ones we definitely don't want. But I don't really think we get very much reality from novels, just what someone has created. As much as I love reading, I admit that reading and watching movies takes me away from my own mundane life into a world of characters. I know that sometimes I can get attached to characters or get so angry at them (Darcy & Elizabeth haha) for being stupid, but I always know that deep down they're not real.

I don't really know how much we learn about human life in novels and if it's more than in a psychology course. I would say we learn more about human life and personality from memoirs and autobiographies more than either psychology or fiction--psychologists can analyze them and readers can enjoy someone else's life.

[Wess]

I think he's right, but you have to understand Chomsky's statement.
What he said was that people will learn more about human beings in novels than in published science. This is because in novels people get to see other people in their "natural habitat" instead of a paper with lots of information about human beings.
People can relate more to the story than the facts, reading novels will make you understand human beings better than reading a bunch of facts. People can imagine the novel but they practically can't "imagine" the conclusion. It's similar to the education versus experience discussion. Published science being education and novels being experience.

[Isa]

I too agree with Chomsky's statement. I have to admit that I don't know that much about psychology but to me, scientific psychology is a more or less a rational analysis of facts, and whenever you strip real life to bare facts, you miss out on the human context (or experience as Wess said). Novels do the exact opposite by creating characters and describing their environment, feelings, and so on. They might be fiction, but they are still a reflection of real life and if you analyze their content, you might get a clearer picture of human psychology than you ever would reading massive amounts of psychology books and essays.

[oureternity]

I agree with all of you, and with Chomsky's statement. Although to an extent, like you said. I feel like I'm learning a lot about human life from reading novels, even though people tend to think of those who do that often not very much related to reality. It depends really on the content, but then again learning of different behaviors of different people, from the living examples (I guess you could call it that) sometimes is much more effective than learning a bunch of facts like Wes said.

[Dominique]

I agree with the statement too and everyone else's reasons for agreeing with it (I'm lazy and can't be bothered putting them in my own words). I'll prob expand on this more later when I've had a bit of a think.