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Rica Dela Cruz's picture

I am still a little

I am still a little confused about the bridge between evolution/science and literature. The parallel we made in class was from the articles by Feyerabend and Sontag. Feyerabend says that we should do science without method and Sontag says that we should read literature and see art without interpretation. Are we creating this bridge from evolution to literature using this parallel as a guide? For me, I feel that a bridge would be to talk about how biological evolution is not the only type of evolution and that there are many other things in this world that have also evolved. In our discussion on Thursday, we talked about representational and non-representational (or abstract) art. Talking about the differences in the pictures Professor Grobstein drew on the board, I realized that what we were seeing was an evolution of art. Abstract art is a more modern form of art and representational art (although still exists today) have been the main (maybe even only) art pieces of the past. It seems because of the invention of the camera, humans can now capture images (or represent them) directly so creating paintings of things around us is not useful anymore. Therefore, people have created this new kind of art more recently, non-representational art.

Besides this bridge, I have been having troubling accepting Feyerabend's proposition of doing science without method. As a biology major, I feel that you cannot really do science without a method. One needs some form of method to answer the questions she wants to answer. I think that without method, one would not be able to learn as much and our world would not advance.

For literature and art, however, I feel that one would be able to do these things without interpretation. Looking at a painting or reading a poem, I usually take them as they are. For example, when reading "Captain, Oh Captain", I did not try to interpret it. I accepted it as a person morning for his captain. I did not think to see it as a metaphor. For me, at least, I am able to read literature without interpretation. Maybe, I am bias because I am majoring in the sciences and have learned to question aspects of science and social science more than aspects of the humanities.

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