Literature Should Be Taught Like Science
In the past quarter century, enrollment in college English departments has sunk like the Pequod in Moby Dick. Meanwhile enrollment in science programs has skyrocketed. It’s understandable. Elon Musk, not Herman Melville, is the role model of the digital economy. But it doesn’t have to be that way, says Angus Fletcher, 44, an English professor at Ohio State University. Fletcher is part of “group of renegades,” he says, who are on a mission to plug literature back into the electric heart of contemporary life and culture. Fletcher has a plan—“apply science and engineering to literature”—and a syllabus, Wonderworks: The 25 Most Powerful Inventions in the History of Literature, his new book.
Before the England-born Fletcher got his Ph.D. in literature at Yale, he earned an undergraduate degree in neuroscience, followed by a four-year stint in a neurophysiology lab at the University of Michigan. He switched careers when he realized the biology of the brain wouldn’t take him far enough toward understanding our need for stories. “What’s special about the human brain is its power of storytelling,” Fletcher says. “Its power of narrative. Its power to invent futures and tell our past. So, I thought, ‘I’ll go to an English department and learn about narrative.’” Fletcher sees the human brain as mechanical, but insists it doesn’t operate like a computer. He spelled out his view for Nautilus readers in “Why Computers Will Never Write Good Novels.” (The essay generated a lot of discussion. See Fletcher’s response below.)
consists of 25 chapters that delve into works from the to , to , each representative of a particular “invention” to lighten sorrow or grief or create empathy or joy. “Each of these inventions had a unique purpose, engineered with its own intricate circuitry to click into our psyche in is captivating, as is Fletcher, who speaks with infectious enthusiasm and clarity. I began our conversation on Zoom with a question about the difference between the human brain and a computer, the subject of his article, and then turned to his provocative view that to save the humanities, literature must be taught as a science.
