GOTTSCHALL, BOYD,
FLESCH
THOUGHTS ABOUT
DARWINIAN LITERARY CRITICISM
ENGLISH 404
OCTOBER 29, 2009
“Narration is as much a part of human
nature as breath and the circulation of
blood. ”
- A.S. Byatt
“One might have expected natural selection
to have weeded out any inclination to
engage in imaginary worlds rather than
the real one.”
-- Steven Pinker
Literary studies should move
closer to the sciences in theory,
method, and governing ethos.
JONATHAN GOTTSCHALL
Literature, Science, and a New Humanities
(2008)
What is the “liberationist
paradigm”?

Active commitment to achieving radical or
progressive political ends through
scholarly means.
What is the “liberationist
paradigm”?

Active commitment to achieving radical or
progressive political ends through
scholarly means.

“Nurturist” commitment; rejection of
biological “essentialisms.”
What is the “liberationist
paradigm”?

Active commitment to achieving radical or
progressive political ends through
scholarly means.

“Nurturist” commitment; rejection of
biological “essentialisms.”

Pessimism about ability of humans to
really know anything.
What is the “liberationist
paradigm”?
“We were natural for eons before we were
cultural—before we were human, even—
but so what? We are cultural now, and
culture is the domain of the humanities.”
Robert Scholes, former president
of the Modern Language
Association
But . . .
The human brain is an evolved biological
organ shaped by natural selection to
enhance chances of survival.
 The human brain produces the human
mind.
 Therefore, the mind exhibits the results of
natural selection.

A syllogism that Gottschall says
we likely embrace. Yes?
How did a particular psychological or
behavioral trait facilitate survival and
reproduction?
(In our case, we ask this question about the fact of
storytelling: why did we evolve into narrators?)
The kind of question that
evolutionary psychologists ask
P. 26: “Those who know evolutionary
psychology only through racy journalistic
accounts, glib popular books, or the
polemics of its most rhetorically gifted and
indefatigable antagonists are not likely to
appreciate the broad diversity of views
[within the field itself].”
Note Gottschall’s caution about
perceptions of evolutionary
psychology…
“Darwin was a
committed
evolutionary
psychologist…”
“Darwin daringly contended
that all of our higher powers
. . . are end products of a
strictly blind and purposeless
churning of natural laws.”
Daniel Dennett,
philosopher
Richard Dawkins
(The Selfish Gene)
“Darwin’s dangerous idea,” from
Edward Slingerland:


“…the human mind is not a refuge of freedom
and autonomy in an otherwise deterministic
world, but rather ‘a huge, semi-designed,
self-redesigning amalgam of smaller
machines, each with its own design history,
each playing its own role in the economy of
the soul’” (256).
“If you are not disturbed and somewhat
repelled, then I have not done an adequate
job of explaining this material…” (257).
Slingerland (quoting Dennett)
Gottschall: “An evolutionary biology that
ignores or de-emphasizes the importance
of physical and sociocultural environments
is, in fact, profoundly un-biological” (33).
But biology is not the whole
story…
Consilient literary theory =
“a new form of pluralism”
On Method
Gottschall’s Second Chapter
“Interpretation in literature is of the nature
of a scientific hypothesis, the truth of
which is tested by the degree of
completeness with which it explains the
details of the literary work as they
actually stand.”
Richard Moulton, 1888
Gottschall, J., et al. “Are the Beautiful
Good in Western Literature? A Simple
Illustration of the Necessity of Literary
Quantification.” Journal of Literary
Studies 23 (2007): 41-62.
Is there a “physical attractiveness
stereotype” in literature?
“The human understanding when it has
once adopted an opinion . . . draws all
things else to support and agree with it.
And though there be a greater number
and weight of instances to be found on
the other side, yet these it either neglects
or despises . . . in order that by this great
and pernicious predetermination the
authority of its former conclusions may
remain inviolate.”
“Confirmation bias” (from Francis
Bacon, 1620)
50: judicious use of quantitative
methodology
53: addition of quantitative improves
qualitative
54: literary study does deal in
unquantifiable questions, but so do other
human-related fields
59: graphing Jane Austen
Gottschall

The ancient Poets animated all
sensible objects with Gods or
Geniuses, calling them by the names
and adorning them with the
properties of woods, rivers,
mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and
whatever their enlarged & numerous
senses could percieve.
And particularly they studied the
genius of each city & country, placing
it under its mental deity;
Till a system was formed, which
some took advantage of & enslav'd
the vulgar by attempting to realize or
abstract the mental deities from their
objects: thus began Priesthood;
Choosing forms of worship from
poetic tales.
And at length they pronounc'd that
the Gods had order'd such things.
Thus men forgot that All deities
reside in the human breast.
Fighting the anti-scientific
(Romantic) sensibility
WHEN I heard the learn’d
astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures,
were ranged in columns before
me;
When I was shown the charts
and the diagrams, to add,
divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the
astronomer, where he lectured
with much applause in the
lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I
became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I
wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air,
and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at
the stars.
Miall, David. Literary Reading: Empirical
and Theoretical Studies. New York: Peter
Lang, 2006.
(Gottschall, 63)
“Literary hypotheses that make testable
predictions about empirical reality.”
Current state of the art…
Brian Boyd, “Literature and
Evolution: A Bio-Cultural
Approach.” Philosophy and
Literature 29 (2005): 1-23.
“A bio-cultural view offers a richer model of
human nature, tested cross-culturally from
hunter-gatherers to modern industrialized
societies; tested comparatively, across species,
within and beyond the primate and the
mammalian lines; tested in real historical depth,
rather than shallowly, over the millions of years
that shaped the human mind and that account
for the similarities between people of very
different cultures; and tested in the
neurophysiological terms that are now becoming
available through brain imaging technology” (3).
“Looking at aspects of human nature as we move
through the play, we will notice in the next
scene, for instance, the stark contrast between
Hamlet and the other courtiers, in dress and
demeanor. This reflects something with long
evolutionary roots: the ability to compare one
member of one’s species with another has been
demonstrated, and shown to have major
behavioral implications, in creatures as
neurologically primitive as guppies, and in much
subtler ways in the interactions of chimpanzees
with one another” (15-16).
“There is much more that an evolutionary
approach to Hamlet could say. Of course
much of it overlaps with a common-sense
approach to the play, but it would hardly
be to the advantage of an evolutionary
approach if it flatly contradicted what has
made the play so popular since its first
performance” (18).
William Flesch, Comeuppance:
Costly Signaling, Altruistic
Punishment, and Other Biological
Components of Fiction.
Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2007.
Preface: “…narratives tend to contain or at least to
suggest the possibility of three basic figures: an
innocent, someone who exploits that innocent, and
someone else who seeks to punish the exploiter.
Humans are endowed by our evolutionary heritage
with a propensity to punish those who cheat the
innocent and with a propensity to cheer on other
punishers. The biological origin of this propensity is
part of what has come to be called the ‘evolution of
cooperation,’ which provides the insights that are
central to this book.”
Flesch
“Evolutionary psychologists have quite
reasonably said that being able to learn
through the experiences that others
narrate is essential to human adaptation
in a highly various and tricky world” (8).
Flesch

Are we satisfied with what’s been tried?

What might be some fruitful approachroutes?

Have these critics successfully challenged
the “liberationist paradigm?”
(Active commitment to achieving radical or progressive political
ends through scholarly means.
“Nurturist” commitment; rejection of biological “essentialisms.”
Pessimism about ability of humans to really know anything.)
QUESTIONS