Defensive Evolutionary Biologist goes ape on James Wood
This exchange between science and literature from Jerry Coyne’s Evolution is True site. (First Coyne quotes from James Wood’s How Fiction Works, then he responds):
We read fiction because it pleases us, moves us, is beautiful, and so on — because it is alive and we are alive. It is amusing to watch evolutionary biology tie itself up in circularities when trying to answer the question, ‘why do humans spend so much time reading fiction when this yields no obvious evolutionary benefits?’ The answer tend either to be utilitarian — we read in order to find out about our fellow citizens, and this has a Darwinian utility — or circular: we read because fiction pushes certain ‘pleasure buttons.’
Well, the first part is fine, but really, Professor Wood, we evolutionary biologists hardly tie ourselves up in knots about this question. Although I’m a professional in the field, I have never encountered a discussion of the adaptive significance of reading fiction, even from those evolutionary psychologists who love to masticate ideas like this. No respectable evolutionist would bother with the question, “What was the adaptive value of ‘novel-reading’ genes?” In contrast, Wood implies that this kind of story-telling is a major preoccupation of our field. Perhaps he’ll supply us with an extensive list of evolutionary studies of fiction-reading.
Reading is a recent innovation: it appeared about 5000 years ago, 0.07% of the time since we branched off from the lineage that lead to our closest living relatives. Fiction is even younger: many regard the first novel as The Tale of Genji, written about a millenium ago.
That’s not enough time for a “fiction-reading module” to evolve. (And would those who read novels really have more offspring than those who ignore the printed page in favor of seeking mates?) Further, diligent novel-reading is hardly a fixed trait in the human species. Even when novels are available, few people “spend so much time” reading them. The average American, for example, reads four books per year (not all fiction!), and one person in four reads none….
Why do I spend so much time on a footnote? Because Wood’s readers are not likely to know a lot about evolutionary biology, and so might very well conclude that we’re all a pack of morons who waste our time trying to explain the unexplainable. With this gratuitious swipe, Wood gives a bad — and false — impression of our field.
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Odd this exchange. On the one hand Wood seems to dismiss what I think is an interesting and valid contention – storytelling serves a useful evolutionary purpose; on the other Coyne first disingenuously suggests that "Reading" "Fiction" is a recent phenomena in the history of homo sapienianism: surely it’s nothing if not a continuation of the practice of storytelling by other means – a practice as old as language itself , if not older; second, there are stacks of entirely respectable books that have been written on the evolutionary significance of story telling, Here’s just a small sampling:
Joseph Carroll’s Evolution and Literary Theory (1995) and Literary Darwinism: Evolution, Human Nature, and Literature (2004).
Darwin’s Cathedral by David Sloan Wilson (2003)
Jonathan Gottschall The Literary Animal, co-edited with evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson (2005); and Literature, Science and the New Humanities (2008)
The Art Instinct, Dennis Dutton (2009)
On the Origin of Stories, Brian Boyd (2009)
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September 26th, 2009 at 9:06 PM
It is an interesting exchange, one which makes me respect Coyne a bit more as a thinker than his fixation with religion.
Keep in mind 1) Wood is a literary critic, he is far less concerned with where literature came from than how it works right now; 2) some of the books you cite, and which Wood no doubt has in mind are not only concerned with making observations about where storytelling might have come from, they are interested in using this biological origin story to more or less short circuit the discussion of the significance of literature (some of these are explicitly inspired by EO Wilson who made clear his impatience with inconclusive study in the social sciences and humanities); 3) some of these books badly neglect the power of human society and culture to mediate biological drives and impulses; and lastly, what use, really, is the observation that storytelling may have been selected for. How can we turn that into an approach to Moby Dick?
Wood’s real problem is not with the observation so much as it is with the insistence that it is a viable approach to literature.
September 26th, 2009 at 9:58 PM
Oran: You seem to contradict yourself: Wood is little concerned with where literature came from, as you say. He finds attempts by evolutionary biologists to determine this ‘amusing.’ Where does he insist that it is a viable ‘approach to literature’?
September 26th, 2009 at 10:04 PM
Meant to say: Wood has a problem with the insistence that this constitutes a viable approach to literature, which at least some of the books you cite do.
October 5th, 2009 at 6:52 PM
Well, interestingly and gratifyingly, Wood does seem to like Comeuppance, which he listed in his ten best books list on newyorker.com in December 2008.