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Julia Smith's picture

Stories vs. Science

If we assume that scientific theories are always "getting it less wrong", then there is a definite relationship between what we normally refer to as 'stories' and what scientists refer to as 'theories'. The writer, as Zadie Smith says in "Failing Better", is constantly trying to "tell the truth of experience perfectly", that is, they are constantly revising trying to reach some form of their own truth. Similarly, scientists are also trying to do the same thing, only with "fact". Scientists, as Mayr describes, have been searching for the answer to evolution, and the idea is still being constantly changed. After all, it wasn't until the 1940s that scientists generally accepted "a far-reaching consensus" of evolution (72). Therefore, perhaps fiction too is "getting is less wrong", at least in the eyes of an author. Zadie Smith argues that writers never create the work that they yearn for, they only get as close as possible to their ideal. Writing itself is getting it less wrong.

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