Do you think we can understand human life and personality from Novels rather than from Scientific Psychology?
Novels are really the thoughts and voices of the writer, but writers do not always represent humans as a whole.
Scientific psychology aims to explore how humans work, but it does not consider emotions.
So from which one can we understand human life and personality better – Novels, or Scientific Psychology?
simon c said,
Wrote on April 27, 2010 @ 1:05 pm
Writers may not represent humans as a whole, but the thing that makes a novel special is its ability to tap in to certain areas of the human psyche and to describe human emotions, desires and beliefs in a way that a two-dimensional scientific paper never could. A scientific study is the proper way to demonstrate HOW the human mind works, but a novel can explain WHY it works as it does. i don’t believe that an accurate understanding of the human mind can obtained from either a scientific study or a novel alone, as it is the overlapping of both that creates the full picture.
Craig D said,
Wrote on April 27, 2010 @ 1:08 pm
Nice question, nice answer.
Star and thumb..
I think science is secondary, and should only be learned if one desires to. There’s no point in filling people’s heads with ideas about how things are on a basic physical level. Because this hinders full aliveness and experience.
People should definitely be taught how to read more, and by how to read, of course I mean how to ‘understand-decode’ a novel.
Science should be there as an encyclopedia, not an institution.
garwy said,
Wrote on April 27, 2010 @ 1:24 pm
the aim of civil engineering (at least its humanist aim) is to give people cleaner water, better sanitation, and shorter journey times.
compared with even fifty years ago the water is cleaner and safer, the toilets flush better and smell less, and it is far easier to travel to the next city than it used to be.
psychologists on the other hand (when they aren’t trying to make us smoke more cigarettes) want people to be calmer, happier, and more content with their lives.
compared with fifty years ago people are far less optimistic, satisfied, or even sane.
psychology has had local successes (linguistic analysis) but as a general venture it has failed spectacularly.
novels will tell you how other people’s minds work – because a novel actually shows you someone else’ mind working.
psychology will help you to smoke more cigarettes.
louise t said,
Wrote on April 27, 2010 @ 1:55 pm
Psychology has the capacity to embrace a less numerical approach to explaining life, in qualitative research methods, alongside it’s traditional numeric, non-emotional background.
Literature (for the reader anyway) is the hard and fast introductory chapter (lives, eras, and nation’s stories told and concluded in less than a couple of hundred small pages), while psychology/science is the thesis. So perhaps one benefits the other as a starting point, and to provide a potential framework on which to base ideas to test.
On the flip side a Reductionist might argue that fiction is merely a truism, which can recount but not account for the happenings in the World, and so it’s all about science.
Science gives us answers in line with the current, commonly accepted (Western) view of the World. But I’d be reluctant to dismiss all sources of human creation that weren’t scientific, as they were created by humans we’re seeking to understand.