What is the point of academic research in majors like English?

[ainster31]

So I looked at some of the research in a couple of literature journals. One of the several similar articles found was a 50 page analysis on a comic: Persepolis. What's the point though? You're putting in more work than the author did, to do an analysis of a comic book. The author doesn't care. Casual readers don't care. The only people that are going to read the paper are academic peers. The world doesn't care. Your analysis isn't going to make the general public more informed and encourage them to think critically. Your analysis is probably not even what the author intended. What is the point? It's almost as if the research is done for no reason other than to call it research. It's also irritating how the entire paper is written in a cryptic manner and with a colorful vocabulary that it becomes a struggle to get the point of the paper. It's as if they do this so that it can be deemed "academic" as laymen won't be able to understand it.

 

[WannabeNewton]

I can say the same exact thing about math and physics. What's your point? Academic research isn't PBS Nova, sorry to break it to ya.

 

[ainster31]

I can say the same exact thing about math and physics. What's your point? Academic research isn't PBS Nova, sorry to break it to ya.

Just a few things that resulted from research in science, engineering and math: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science#Practical_impacts_of_scientific_research

 

[Office_Shredder]

You're picking the most practical applications about scientific research and comparing it to the most pointless example you could find of literary analysis, of course science is going to come out ahead.

There could very well be thousands of papers on string theory which satisfy the following:

Casual readers don't care. The only people that are going to read the paper are academic peers. The world doesn't care. Your analysis isn't going to make the general public more informed and encourage them to think critically. Your analysis is probably not even how the universe works.

 

[jtbell]

The author doesn't care. Casual readers don't care. The only people that are going to read the paper are academic peers.

In particular, the people on the committee that evaluates you for tenure or promotion. "Publish or perish" is a fact of life for tenure-track faculty at most colleges and universities in the US, at least.

 

[WannabeNewton]

Just a few things that resulted from research in science, engineering and math: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science#Practical_impacts_of_scientific_research

I've read a fair number of papers in my most favorite area (general relativity) and I can tell you right now that I could easily replace mention of literature in your original post with general relativity and these papers would be directly supportive of post #2. Don't pick and choose like Office_Shredder said; furthermore, research papers aren't meant to be "accessible" to the public-such a statement is laughably ridiculous you must agree.

 

[ainster31]

You're picking the most practical applications about scientific research and comparing it to the most pointless example you could find of literary analysis, of course science is going to come out ahead.

There could very well be thousands of papers on string theory which satisfy the following:

Casual readers don't care. The only people that are going to read the paper are academic peers. The world doesn't care. Your analysis isn't going to make the general public more informed and encourage them to think critically. Your analysis is probably not even how the universe works.

You are right that string theory might be completely wrong and is not even close to how the universe works. That doesn't meant that there is no value in researching string theory. By doing research in string theory, you can come up with new concepts that while may not be useful in string theory, might advance other useful fields in physics.

Look at pure mathematics subjects that may seem useless at first such as "information theory, computational complexity, statistics, combinatorics, abstract algebra, number theory, and finite mathematics" and realize that cryptography engineering wouldn't have existed if a single one of them was not researched. Even if the research results in useless knowledge, the tools you develop to solve these problems probably have more useful applications elsewhere.

There is no inherent value in doing research on a comic or literature that is created by another human being. Humans are simple; you are not going to discover something incredibly useful by doing research because the author probably doesn't know anything incredibly useful to incorporate into their writing. It has been demonstrated that there is inherent value in doing research in a science. The point is you don't know if the research in science has any value until you have researched it; this does not apply to literature because it has never been demonstrated (feel free to provide a counterexample).

In particular, the people on the committee that evaluates you for tenure or promotion. "Publish or perish" is a fact of life for tenure-track faculty at most colleges and universities in the US, at least.

This seems like circular logic. You do the research for tenure-track faculty. The faculty exists because of the research.

I've read a fair number of papers in my most favorite area (general relativity) and I can tell you right now that I could easily replace mention of literature in your original post with general relativity and these papers would be directly supportive of post #2. Don't pick and choose like Office_Shredder said; furthermore, research papers aren't meant to be "accessible" to the public-such a statement is laughably ridiculous you must agree.

I will admit that general relativity doesn't have as many applications as something such as classical physics but I would bet more applications will be found in the future.

If you are arguing that a single paper doesn't have any application, then I agree with you. A single paper doesn't have to be useful. The collection of research over a large amount of time should be useful or else it is a waste of time.

 

[jtbell]

The faculty exists because of the research.

At many (probably even most) schools whose main function is teaching undergraduates, faculty must still publish some sort of research. This is true at low- to mid-level state universities (which are not "flagship" research universities in their states) and at many generic small liberal-arts colleges that offer only bachelor's degrees (and which are not elite colleges like Swarthmore or Williams or Middlebury).

A large part of this is because these schools feel they need to raise their prestige in order to compete for state funding (for the state schools) and good students. It looks good to be able to say their faculty have published x number of papers during the past year.

 

[WannabeNewton]

A single paper doesn't have to be useful. The collection of research over a large amount of time should be useful or else it is a waste of time.

The term "useful" carries with it a lot of complexities; furthermore, your definition of "value" is not a universal one. That being said, sure one could argue that a collection of research over a long period of time that amounts to nothing of "value" in your sense of the word is a waste of time. Why do you think this is unique to fields like literature however? Axiomatic set theory, algebraic topology, algebraic/topological/functorial quantum field theory, and the conventionality of simultaneity are all topics that arguably suffer more from this than does literature. I've read physically insightful and instructive papers on the foundations of GR (e.g. http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~dmalamen/bio/papers/RotationNoGo.pdf) but it's obvious that they don't have "value" within the utilitarian framework that you have established.

 

[epenguin]

We wouldn't get certain of the jokes a 2,000 years old comic made without a scholar to explain them to us.

The only one I remember offhand was when a King told Demosthenes he would grant any wish he expressed. He said he wished the King would stand out of the way of his sunlight.

Well I find that funny, I don't know if the King got the joke.

 

[SW VandeCarr]

Actually, comic books are a form of entertainment and therefore have economic value. So an academic study of English language comics may seem more "practical" for an English language scholar than studying ancient Anglo-Saxon noun declensions.

 

[epenguin]

My reply was flippant maybe.

You cannot necessarily equate a comic now with a comic then. Greek culture was a heroic and brilliant step of humanity, is our heritage - but we have so modified what we inherited it is good to have a perspective on what it was. 'Comedy' and the theatre in general, was not the sort of secondary entertainment it is for us, but a vital part of politics, involving all citizens. You can illustrate their politics and history with their theatre and vice versa. I don't know much more, but I would not mind knowing - i don't know much more because like you I do have to focus efforts somewhat, but this does not reach the point of me calling my ignorance a virtue, or decrying someone else's efforts to further his and others' knowledge. So your prejudice is making you miss something (which maybe you don't want to know either) and can make you narrow-minded, ready to mature in later life into a smug self-satisfied complacent philistine bore.

 

[George Jones]

Even if the research results in useless knowledge, the tools you develop to solve these problems probably have more useful applications elsewhere.

...

I will admit that general relativity doesn't have as many applications as something such as classical physics but I would bet more applications will be found in the future.

What do you mean by "useful applications" and "many applications", as these are subjective terms?

For example, right now, we are in a "golden age" of relativistic cosmology. As usual, on my way to work today I stopped at a coffee shop for tea and a cheese croissant. While I sipped my tea, I read some fascinating technical stuff about dimensional regularization in quantum field theory applied to the cosmological constant problem.

How is this going to help to save the world?

 

[Enigman]

So I looked at some of the research in a couple of literature journals. One of the several similar articles found was a 50 page analysis on a comic: Persepolis. What's the point though? You're putting in more work than the author did, to do an analysis of a comic book. The author doesn't care. Casual readers don't care. The only people that are going to read the paper are academic peers. The world doesn't care. Your analysis isn't going to make the general public more informed and encourage them to think critically. Your analysis is probably not even what the author intended. What is the point? It's almost as if the research is done for no reason other than to call it research. It's also irritating how the entire paper is written in a cryptic manner and with a colorful vocabulary that it becomes a struggle to get the point of the paper. It's as if they do this so that it can be deemed "academic" as laymen won't be able to understand it.

The only point I can make out of the entire post:
No one cares except those who care.
Okay... So?

 

[jgens]

There is no inherent value in doing research on a comic or literature that is created by another human being.

This is absurd. Literature has immense value for documenting societal views and certain aspects of history. It gives rare insight into the human condition and is one of the best mediums for conveying the great "philosophical" problems of our time. Research into literature has a role in distilling and fleshing out all of this information. While individual articles have essentially no impact on day-to-day life, collectively they can have an important role in shaping our common cultural paradigm.

Examples of this can be seen throughout history and for the sake of illustrating this point I will name two below:

1. Most of us have an understanding of consciousness and the subconscious. Yet these notions were first developed in "academic papers" in some sense or another, and furthermore, most people have never taken classes dealing with the subject matter nor read any source material on the subjects.
2. The way people understand infinity and nonconstructive proofs in mathematics has changed rather drastically in the last 100 years or so. There are results (like Cantor's Theorem) and proofs (like the Hilbert Basis Theorem) that for a time were rather divisive in the mathematical community. The problem was that these results clashed with how people at the time intuitively understood infinity and logic. Eventually this all got sorted out. The really interesting thing here is that nowadays the usual ways people intuitively understand infinity and logic are completely compatible with these results.

What happened in both of these cases is that paradigm shifts in academic fields gradually shaped the general public's conception of these ideas. There is no reason to think that modern literary research cannot do the same.

Humans are simple

It depends on what you mean. We can calculate with incredible precision the motions of interstellar bodies as well as the behavior of many elementary particles. Trying to model human interactions of ANY sort with that kind of precision is pretty much impossible.

you are not going to discover something incredibly useful by doing research because the author probably doesn't know anything incredibly useful to incorporate into their writing.

I disagree. Many authors have incredibly useful things to say in their writing. My advice is to read better books and literary criticisms if this has not been your experience.

 

[AlephZero]

How is this going to help to save the world?

If it keeps cosmologists away from playing with anything dangerous, that might help

But re the OP's question, the same is true of most papers in scientific journals. You read them, put in some effort to understand them, and eventually figure out they are either just plain wrong, or irrelevant to what you wanted to know about. That's my personal experience, anyway.

But that doesm't mean that looking for a prince among the frogs is a complete waste of time and effort!

 

[ainster31]

This is absurd. Literature has immense value for documenting societal views and certain aspects of history. It gives rare insight into the human condition and is one of the best mediums for conveying the great "philosophical" problems of our time.

If by giving insight to human condition and philosophy, you mean giving insight to how the brain/mind works, then there are better ways to do so i.e. the scientific method: neuroscience. Furthermore, some of what I've read from English research papers isn't even what the author intended so I fail to see how that would give one insight to the author's mind and thought process.

If by philosophy you mean general problems "connected with with reality, existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language," then I fail to see how it is not just speculation. I am ignorant on philosophy but has there ever been an application of philosophy to the real world?

Research into literature has a role in distilling and fleshing out all of this information. While individual articles have essentially no impact on day-to-day life, collectively they can have an important role in shaping our common cultural paradigm.

Examples of this can be seen throughout history and for the sake of illustrating this point I will name two below:
1. Most of us have an understanding of consciousness and the subconscious. Yet these notions were first developed in "academic papers" in some sense or another, and furthermore, most people have never taken classes dealing with the subject matter nor read any source material on the subjects.

So you're saying that the notion of consciousness was developed from academic papers in literature? Do you have a source? According to Wikipedia, the first peer-reviewed publication was in 1665 and Descartes (1596-1650) was toying with the notion of consciousness and he died before the first peer-reviewed publication.

2. The way people understand infinity and nonconstructive proofs in mathematics has changed rather drastically in the last 100 years or so. There are results (like Cantor's Theorem) and proofs (like the Hilbert Basis Theorem) that for a time were rather divisive in the mathematical community. The problem was that these results clashed with how people at the time intuitively understood infinity and logic. Eventually this all got sorted out. The really interesting thing here is that nowadays the usual ways people intuitively understand infinity and logic are completely compatible with these results.

This is just mathematical research.

What happened in both of these cases is that paradigm shifts in academic fields gradually shaped the general public's conception of these ideas. There is no reason to think that modern literary research cannot do the same.

Why not? Can you provide a counter-example?

I disagree. Many authors have incredibly useful things to say in their writing. My advice is to read better books and literary criticisms if this has not been your experience.

I have yet to see a demonstration of this that has resulted in a meaningful result for the world.

The only one that has managed to convince me why literature research should continue to exist is jtbell.

 

[WannabeNewton]

This thread is pointless now; you can't beat stubborn ignorance.

 

[jgens]

If by giving insight to human condition and philosophy, you mean giving insight to how the brain/mind works, then there are better ways to do so i.e. the scientific method: neuroscience.

This is a naive position. Neuroscience is absolutely fantastic for answering certain types of questions and no doubt it provides valuable insight into the workings of the mind. But where literature shines and neuroscience fails is to actually make you feel something. If you want to understand, say depression, then you can take a very clinical approach and look to science to explain what parts of your brain chemistry are responsible. This will be particularly conducive to creating medications and treatments, but it does not help you understand what that person is going through. It does not show how depression affects people on a human level. It does not show how long-term depression has a tendency to warp an individual's world-view and perception of self. This is the kind of stuff that literature is great at explaining.

Furthermore, some of what I've read from English research papers isn't even what the author intended so I fail to see how that would give one insight to the author's mind and thought process.

It is nearly impossible to write a serious work of literature without projecting aspects of your particular world-view in some way or another. Sometimes this is intentional but other times it is not.

If by philosophy you mean general problems "connected with with reality, existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language," then I fail to see how it is not just speculation.

To fully explain the following example would require too long a digression, so if you are not satisfied by what follows, then my apologies: In my opinion, one of the most pressing philosophical issues of modern times concerns the role of entertainment in our lives. Whether the issue is real or just perceived and what can be done about it is entirely speculative. That does not mean the question is not worth examining.

I am ignorant on philosophy but has there ever been an application of philosophy to the real world?

Depends on what you mean by application. Can you build an iPhone with it? Certainly not. But advances in philosophy are reflected in our common cultural paradigm.

So you're saying that the notion of consciousness was developed from academic papers in literature?

No not in literature technically but pretty close. The point was more that advances in any academic field tend to affect the way we understand the world.

This is just mathematical research.

I refer you to the paragraph above.

Why not? Can you provide a counter-example?

In the past literature has influenced our world-views and so, in the spirit of empiricism you so love, it would be reasonable to suppose that it will continue to do so in the future.

I have yet to see a demonstration of this that has resulted in a meaningful result for the world.

Because you are looking for meaningful results in all the wrong places. The fact is that literature (and this goes for literary criticism as well) is crucially important for understanding other people. The fact is that literature documents the paradigms and social attitudes and problems of the past. The fact is that literature influences how we as a society view things like love and heroism. All of this seems useful to me.

Edit: This is actually a great point another member made (they can claim credit if they want). I forgot to add this earlier, but aside from purely documenting societal issues, literature can also help effect social change. An example of this is provided pretty concretely by Uncle Tom's Cabin. So again lit has its own utility.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

+1 to everything jgens has said, especially towards the comment that neuroscience is a better way of studying the human condition than a humanity or even sociology academic field.

To the OP really the only way for this thread to continue is if you to define what you mean by "value" and propose a way to measure it. From the vague and arbitrary sense you have used it for so far one could argue that 99% of science has no value now. We might as well cut back to the bear necessities of medical research and little else by the logic used here.

 

[ainster31]

I will respond to jgens later but for now:

+1 to everything jgens has said, especially towards the comment that neuroscience is a better way of studying the human condition than a humanity or even sociology academic field.

To the OP really the only way for this thread to continue is if you to define what you mean by "value" and propose a way to measure it. From the vague and arbitrary sense you have used it for so far one could argue that 99% of science has no value now. We might as well cut back to the bear necessities of medical research and little else by the logic used here.

My explicit definition of value in the context of this thread: if a research has value, then it is benefits mankind either directly or indirectly.

 

[George Jones]

My explicit definition of value in the context of this thread: if a research has value, then it is benefits mankind either directly or indirectly.

Again, all of this is very subjective. Different people have very different opinions about what "benefits mankind either directly or indirectly" means.

 

[ainster31]

Again, all of this is very subjective. Different people have very different opinions about what "benefits mankind either directly or indirectly" means.

My explicit definition of value in the context of this thread: if a research has value, then the short-term or long-term results either save lives, ease human lives, provide tools to humans to enhance performance, or save human time.

 

[George Jones]

My explicit definition of value in the context of this thread: if a research has value, then the short-term or long-term results either save lives, ease human lives, provide tools to humans to enhance performance, or save human time.

And others in this thread thread think that this definition is narrow-minded and short-sighted. The things that you have listed are very important, but there is more to the human condition than this.

 

[-Dragoon-]

It adds to the body of human knowledge, and that in itself should be a good enough reason. Otherwise, one could essentially the same thing about general relativity (as mentioned earlier and other than GPS, which is more a correction than a direct application of GR), particle physics, cosmology, and physics beyond the standard model. None of these scientific fields will ever yield much "practical value", so are these fields of research equally as pointless to you?

 

[ainster31]

And others in this thread thread think that this definition is narrow-minded and short-sighted. The things that you have listed are very important, but there is more to the human condition than this.

What would your broad-minded definition be?

 

[Ryan_m_b]

My explicit definition of value in the context of this thread: if a research has value, then the short-term or long-term results either save lives, ease human lives, provide tools to humans to enhance performance, or save human time.

Aside from the fact that short and long term results can only really be known after the fact and that much of scientific research doesn't fulfil these criteria what about the very simple observation of enhancing the human experience? In the most simple sense literary criticism can provide observations on art and culture leading to the creation of more challenging, more inspiring and more intricate art, and by extension culture.

 

[arildno]

It satisfies customer demands, within one sector of the market.

 

[Bandersnatch]

Just think of it as research into entertainment.

 

[turbo]

Research into history can be quite valuable. It is not math or science, but such research can be useful. History can be quite "squishy" thanks to many years of revisionism, but there is still a lot of value there.

 

[Astrum]

It depends on what you mean. We can calculate with incredible precision the motions of interstellar bodies as well as the behavior of many elementary particles. Trying to model human interactions of ANY sort with that kind of precision is pretty much impossible.

I've been waiting patiently for years for someone to come out with a way to model the behavior of women. Unfortunately I think it's impossible to apply something logical such as math to the irrational world of human interactions.

Dammit! Why can't woman be more like math? Instead of guessing what they want, you could just plug it into a formula!

I can only dream.

 

[Choppy]

So I looked at some of the research in a couple of literature journals. One of the several similar articles found was a 50 page analysis on a comic: Persepolis. What's the point though? You're putting in more work than the author did, to do an analysis of a comic book. The author doesn't care. Casual readers don't care. The only people that are going to read the paper are academic peers. The world doesn't care. Your analysis isn't going to make the general public more informed and encourage them to think critically. Your analysis is probably not even what the author intended. What is the point? It's almost as if the research is done for no reason other than to call it research.

Have you tried stepping back from the immediate work and thought about this question from a bigger picture perspective?

I can think of a lot that can come out of the study of literature, or other media for that matter. The stories we tell and how we tell them define our culture, they define and reinforce social values, they illuminate the problems that our society is faced with and record how we grapple with them.

Earlier today I found myself thinking about the story "The Body" by Stephen King - the one that the movie "Stand By Me" was based on. Something about this story really connected with me as a kid, and still does as an adult. From an analytical point of view I could point out that the story is about death: the death of the body the boys are going to see, the death of Gordie's older brother and ultimately the death of childhood. The movie even opens with a narrative about the death of Chris Chambers if I remember. So from this one might ask, why the death of one's childhood would hold any importance at all?

We have evolved to process some problems metaphorically. Of course, we don't accept such processing in physics for example, because such methodology is prone to errors and difficult to quantify and can be extremely difficult to articulate in a consistent manner. But what about with personal problems... Dealing with the death of a loved one? Figuring out why you were teased so much in the sixth grade that you didn't want to go to school? Or why a girl in high school dumped you for your best friend?

There's value in living through such experiences in literature. And there is value in furthering our understanding of the literature itself because in this way we gain insight into our abstract problems, their causes and their solutions.

The general movie going audience doesn't care that the gun carried by Gordie, Chris, Teddy and Vern represents the ability to deliver death, and therefore an element of control over it. But they experience a sense of triumph in the movies when Keifer Sutherland asks, "Are you going to kill all of us?" and Will Wheaton replies... "No, Ace. Just you."

I would argue there is a lot of value in understanding why that is.

It's also irritating how the entire paper is written in a cryptic manner and with a colorful vocabulary that it becomes a struggle to get the point of the paper. It's as if they do this so that it can be deemed "academic" as laymen won't be able to understand it.

I won't disagree that showing off one's vocabulary to the exclusion of most potential readers is off-putting, but remember, you did chose to read an academic journal. Most people don't understand the jargon in most physics journal articles and dumbing those down to the point where they may be read by laypeople would make for gross extensions in their length. Why would a literature journal be any different?

 

[Student100]

I can't be the only here who's actually read the graphic novel, it is not really in any sense of the word a comic book. It's about the authors life in Iran during the revolution/Iraq invasion.

This basically undermines your entire point, OP.

 

[ainster31]

I don't have enough time to respond to everyone so I'll just respond to a couple. It seems like I'm outnumbered the entire PF forum to one.

And others in this thread thread think that this definition is narrow-minded and short-sighted. The things that you have listed are very important, but there is more to the human condition than this.

I have thought of a new definition.

If a research has value, then it has either a short-term (or expected to have a long-term) net positive impact on a noticeable amount of the World's population i.e. 5% or more. 5% is completely arbitrary, but I chose it as it is within the 5% scientific maximum acceptable error.

I can't be the only here who's actually read the graphic novel, it is not really in any sense of the word a comic book. It's about the authors life in Iran during the revolution/Iraq invasion.

This basically undermines your entire point, OP.

My English professor called it a comic book. Wikipedia calls it a comic. Semantics don't undermine arguments.

This is a naive position. Neuroscience is absolutely fantastic for answering certain types of questions and no doubt it provides valuable insight into the workings of the mind. But where literature shines and neuroscience fails is to actually make you feel something. If you want to understand, say depression, then you can take a very clinical approach and look to science to explain what parts of your brain chemistry are responsible. This will be particularly conducive to creating medications and treatments, but it does not help you understand what that person is going through. It does not show how depression affects people on a human level.

Another more scientific approach is through Psychology and it can be done via experiments with a control group (either by questionnaires or some sort of test so that the mind would have an effect on the result).

It does not show how long-term depression has a tendency to warp an individual's world-view and perception of self. This is the kind of stuff that literature is great at explaining.

Interesting but the vast majority of English research isn't done on literature written by depressed people. In addition, has this understanding helped us in any way? It seems like it is just speculation.

It is nearly impossible to write a serious work of literature without projecting aspects of your particular world-view in some way or another. Sometimes this is intentional but other times it is not.

Have you done a literary analysis on a work? The point of it isn't to find what the author intended. The point is to analyze symbols, make connections, think critically. It has nothing to do with the mind of the author.

Depends on what you mean by application. Can you build an iPhone with it? Certainly not. But advances in philosophy are reflected in our common cultural paradigm.

Can you provide an example?

No not in literature technically but pretty close. The point was more that advances in any academic field tend to affect the way we understand the world.

I refer you to the paragraph above.

I realize that research in other fields other than English can make contributions but I am specifically looking for contributions from research in English. What specific contribution did English research make to our understanding of consciousness? I've already made the point that the notion of consciousness was discovered before any English research (as per Wikipedia).

In the past literature has influenced our world-views and so, in the spirit of empiricism you so love, it would be reasonable to suppose that it will continue to do so in the future.

Literature? Yes. English research? I don't agree and feel free to provide a counter-example.

Because you are looking for meaningful results in all the wrong places. The fact is that literature (and this goes for literary criticism as well) is crucially important for understanding other people. The fact is that literature documents the paradigms and social attitudes and problems of the past. The fact is that literature influences how we as a society view things like love and heroism. All of this seems useful to me.

See my comment right above.

Edit: This is actually a great point another member made (they can claim credit if they want). I forgot to add this earlier, but aside from purely documenting societal issues, literature can also help effect social change. An example of this is provided pretty concretely by Uncle Tom's Cabin. So again lit has its own utility.

I will look into this later. I have to leave to commute for now.

 

[Office_Shredder]

I don't have enough time to respond to everyone so I'll just respond to a couple. It seems like I'm outnumbered the entire PF forum to one.

You might want to stop and think a bit about why this is the case

I have thought of a new definition.

If a research has value, then it has either a short-term (or expected to have a long-term) net positive impact on a noticeable amount of the World's population i.e. 5% or more. 5% is completely arbitrary, but I chose it as it is within the 5% scientific maximum acceptable error.

OK, so we're back to almost 0% of any research ever being useful. Not to mention you still haven't made clear what a net positive impact is. Do the people get to decide what a net positive impact is? Because if so then all you need is 5% of the population saying they think literary analysis is valuable to make this whole thread moot.

My English professor called it a comic book. Wikipedia calls it a comic. Semantics don't undermine arguments.

It's a comic book because comic book describes the format that the story contained within is given to the readers. However, you said

You're putting in more work than the author did, to do an analysis of a comic book

which gives an implication that comic book authors do not put work into making their books significant pieces of literature. This is true usually - the typical batman or superman story exists primarily for escapism - but in this specific case there is no reason to believe this is so, unless you actually read the book and do some literary analysis. Your whole argument in the original post is based on the implicit assumption that comic books cannot be worthy works of literature.

Have you done a literary analysis on a work? The point of it isn't to find what the author intended. The point is to analyze symbols, make connections, think critically. It has nothing to do with the mind of the author.

Who do you think is putting those symbols in?

ainster, the primary purpose of literary analysis is that it makes literature an effective tool for communicating with humans on an emotional level. This is a legitimately important function; you can tell people facts and point out logical arguments all they want, but they will very rarely internalize these things.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/29/opinion/29mon3.html?_r=0

Milgram ran an experiment 50 years ago to test whether Germans had a special weakness for authority, or whether everyone was willing to inflict pain and suffering merely on the basis that an authority figure told them to do it. This is a very well known study, and you would think over the past 50 years all our discussions about the horrors of fascism, etc. would have led people to think a bit more critically about these kinds of situations.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/01/07/racism.study/

Another example, where people are more racist than they think. You can tell people that racism is bad all you want, and talk about how great equality is, but it seems to be impossible for humans to internalize these lessons when all you do is tell them that overtly. Worse, people can't even tell they aren't internalizing these lessons. Here is an excellent quote from the end of the above article

What is responsible for these attitudes? Experts say one culprit is images in television, news and film that portray blacks in a negative light.

"I don't think what's in people's heads is going to change until the environment that places these things in their head has changed," Greenwald said.

The purpose of literature at a high level is to allow you to experience the story of another person, and the purpose of literary analysis is to hlep find out what the lessons we could have learned from that story are. We are apparently quite incapable of internalizing things we know are morally and ethically correct without going through the experience ourselves, which is quite often impossible or highly impractical, so literature can play a key role in shaping our moral and ethical viewpoint. Literary analysis is a tool which examines the kinds of lessons that are being taught by a story which is important if we need to rely on literature to deliver lessons that shape our society to be a better and more equitable one.

http://ucb-cluj.org/2013/02/22/why-reading-makes-you-less-racist/

Near the bottom are links to articles showing all the benefits of reading for increasing human empathy, just to give some additional examples of how reading literature is important for changing people.

To go back to the original comic book, Persepolis. A lot of Western society has a very poor understanding of the human situation in the middle east, and there is a general lack of empathy for Muslims and Arabs. Persepolis is a book which may or may not be an excellent tool for combating that, describing how an average person grows up in Iran during the overthrowing of the Shah. I say may or may not because without doing some kind of analysis to figure out what kind of symbolism the book contains, and what kind of lessons it can potentially teach its readers, it's impossible to say. Do you believe that doing research to figure out whether it could be an effective tool at combating this problem in society is not worthwhile?

 

[ChiralWaltz]

There are passions I don't understand. I try to though.

Superimposition of minds can wind you in a chiral position, you may not be the same in your reflection.

 

[ainster31]

What do you mean by "useful applications" and "many applications", as these are subjective terms?

For example, right now, we are in a "golden age" of relativistic cosmology. As usual, on my way to work today I stopped at a coffee shop for tea and a cheese croissant. While I sipped my tea, I read some fascinating technical stuff about dimensional regularization in quantum field theory applied to the cosmological constant problem.

How is this going to help to save the world?

I've already provided the example for cryptography engineering. If you want an example for physics: when the theory of relativity was developed, it had no practical application to the real world. Relativity now has some applications and humans will continue to find applications of relativity. Quantum mechanics is expected to have real world application in the long-term.

Have you tried stepping back from the immediate work and thought about this question from a bigger picture perspective?

I can think of a lot that can come out of the study of literature, or other media for that matter. The stories we tell and how we tell them define our culture, they define and reinforce social values, they illuminate the problems that our society is faced with and record how we grapple with them.

Earlier today I found myself thinking about the story "The Body" by Stephen King - the one that the movie "Stand By Me" was based on. Something about this story really connected with me as a kid, and still does as an adult. From an analytical point of view I could point out that the story is about death: the death of the body the boys are going to see, the death of Gordie's older brother and ultimately the death of childhood. The movie even opens with a narrative about the death of Chris Chambers if I remember. So from this one might ask, why the death of one's childhood would hold any importance at all?

We have evolved to process some problems metaphorically. Of course, we don't accept such processing in physics for example, because such methodology is prone to errors and difficult to quantify and can be extremely difficult to articulate in a consistent manner. But what about with personal problems... Dealing with the death of a loved one? Figuring out why you were teased so much in the sixth grade that you didn't want to go to school? Or why a girl in high school dumped you for your best friend?

There's value in living through such experiences in literature. And there is value in furthering our understanding of the literature itself because in this way we gain insight into our abstract problems, their causes and their solutions.

The general movie going audience doesn't care that the gun carried by Gordie, Chris, Teddy and Vern represents the ability to deliver death, and therefore an element of control over it. But they experience a sense of triumph in the movies when Keifer Sutherland asks, "Are you going to kill all of us?" and Will Wheaton replies... "No, Ace. Just you."

I would argue there is a lot of value in understanding why that is.

I agree that literature is important. Reading novels is a good way to think critically and anyone who reads (a good majority of people read) will benefit. My argument however, is that literature research specifically is pointless for anyone other than the researchers themselves. The researchers think critically but no one else cares other than the few academic peers they have.

OK, so we're back to almost 0% of any research ever being useful.

I disagree. I'd say that pretty much 100% of all research in mathematics, science, and engineering is useful because it fills the definition of valuable that I provided. The research either has a positive impact on >5% of the population (or is eventually expected to have a positive impact on >5% of the population) or in the case of Mathematics, it provides tools that allows further research to have a positive impact on >5% of the population. Actually, with Mathematics, it even has direct applications to the real world mainly via computer science.

Not to mention you still haven't made clear what a net positive impact is. Do the people get to decide what a net positive impact is?

Whether an impact is deemed positive, neutral, or negative is up to the discretion of myself. If you disagree with my discretion with a specific case, we can do a separate debate on such topic.

Because if so then all you need is 5% of the population saying they think literary analysis is valuable to make this whole thread moot.

I would agree that literary analysis is a positive thing. It isn't valuable research however, because it doesn't have a positive impact or any impact at all whether it be negative, neutral, or positive. No one is going to be impacted by a literary analysis because laymen don't read the research. The only people who read the research are other researchers (<5% of the population). Technology on the other hand has huge impacts. Technology impacts >5% of the population whether or not laymen read the research.

It's a comic book because comic book describes the format that the story contained within is given to the readers. However, you said... which gives an implication that comic book authors do not put work into making their books significant pieces of literature. This is true usually - the typical batman or superman story exists primarily for escapism - but in this specific case there is no reason to believe this is so, unless you actually read the book and do some literary analysis. Your whole argument in the original post is based on the implicit assumption that comic books cannot be worthy works of literature.

No, my original argument in the OP is not based on the assumption that comics are not good pieces of work. Comic books such as Persepolis are indeed good pieces of work. My point is that the literary analysis is so in-depth and well-done that the person doing the literary analysis did more work than the person that wrote Persepolis. This is debatable and honestly, this was supposed to be a funny observation that had nothing to do with my argument.

Who do you think is putting those symbols in?

Authors are not putting the symbols in intentionally. Check out this survey: http://mentalfloss.com/article/3093...ism-their-work-and-whether-it-was-intentional

ainster, the primary purpose of literary analysis is that it makes literature an effective tool for communicating with humans on an emotional level. This is a legitimately important function; you can tell people facts and point out logical arguments all they want, but they will very rarely internalize these things.

Yes, I agree.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/29/opinion/29mon3.html?_r=0

This is psychology - not literature. My argument is literature research is pointless - not psychology research.

Milgram ran an experiment 50 years ago to test whether Germans had a special weakness for authority, or whether everyone was willing to inflict pain and suffering merely on the basis that an authority figure told them to do it. This is a very well known study, and you would think over the past 50 years all our discussions about the horrors of fascism, etc. would have led people to think a bit more critically about these kinds of situations.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/01/07/racism.study/

Another example, where people are more racist than they think. You can tell people that racism is bad all you want, and talk about how great equality is, but it seems to be impossible for humans to internalize these lessons when all you do is tell them that overtly. Worse, people can't even tell they aren't internalizing these lessons. Here is an excellent quote from the end of the above article

See above.

The purpose of literature at a high level is to allow you to experience the story of another person, and the purpose of literary analysis is to hlep find out what the lessons we could have learned from that story are. We are apparently quite incapable of internalizing things we know are morally and ethically correct without going through the experience ourselves, which is quite often impossible or highly impractical, so literature can play a key role in shaping our moral and ethical viewpoint. Literary analysis is a tool which examines the kinds of lessons that are being taught by a story which is important if we need to rely on literature to deliver lessons that shape our society to be a better and more equitable one.

http://ucb-cluj.org/2013/02/22/why-reading-makes-you-less-racist/

Near the bottom are links to articles showing all the benefits of reading for increasing human empathy, just to give some additional examples of how reading literature is important for changing people.

I agree with all of this. The issue isn't with literature. It's with literature research. If everyone reads (majority of people), that is great because it has a huge impact since it is >5% of the population. Literature research done by researchers (<5% of the population) is pointless because it has no impact.

To go back to the original comic book, Persepolis. A lot of Western society has a very poor understanding of the human situation in the middle east, and there is a general lack of empathy for Muslims and Arabs. Persepolis is a book which may or may not be an excellent tool for combating that, describing how an average person grows up in Iran during the overthrowing of the Shah. I say may or may not because without doing some kind of analysis to figure out what kind of symbolism the book contains, and what kind of lessons it can potentially teach its readers, it's impossible to say.

I agree with all of this. If everyone read books like Persepolis and thought critically, that is awesome.

Do you believe that doing research to figure out whether it could be an effective tool at combating this problem in society is not worthwhile?

No, because only the researchers are doing the critical thinking and therefore it is pointless because it has no impact (<5% of the population).

 

[ainster31]

The term "useful" carries with it a lot of complexities; furthermore, your definition of "value" is not a universal one.

I've given you a definition of value. My definition of value may not be a universal one but I would love to hear your definition of value that would allow literature research to be valuable.

That being said, sure one could argue that a collection of research over a long period of time that amounts to nothing of "value" in your sense of the word is a waste of time. Why do you think this is unique to fields like literature however? Axiomatic set theory, algebraic topology, algebraic/topological/functorial quantum field theory, and the conventionality of simultaneity are all topics that arguably suffer more from this than does literature.

Because it has been demonstrated that research in science, technology, and engineering gives you tools that have applications to the real world just as long as enough time is given and therefore these applications are expected in the long-term. I've already given an example of how pure mathematics is used in cryptography engineering and how relativity went from zero applications when Einstein developed the theory to some (still growing) applications. Quantum mechanics has applications to electrical circuits.

As soon as we realize that a model does not represent the real world, we either drop it or we continue to research it in hopes that it truly does represent the real world and therefore is expected to have long-term applications.

I've read physically insightful and instructive papers on the foundations of GR (e.g. http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~dmalamen/bio/papers/RotationNoGo.pdf) but it's obvious that they don't have "value" within the utilitarian framework that you have established.

Are you saying that relativity is not valuable? Or just that specific paper?

The only point I can make out of the entire post:
No one cares except those who care.
Okay... So?

The same applies to STEM research: no ones care except those who care. The point is that research is valuable when it fits the definition I have provided earlier: it has an impact to a noticeable amount of the population. English research doesn't have an impact on a noticeable amount of the population. Whereas technology affects everyone regardless if they care or not about the research, the same cannot be said for English research.

 

[ainster31]

I think people are confusing psychology and other fields with literature. I know I said "like English" in the title, but what I meant was research in fields that are equally pointless (pointless in terms of research - not the field itself) but you cannot read my mind so I should've just said English research.

 

[jgens]

My argument however, is that literature research specifically is pointless for anyone other than the researchers themselves. The researchers think critically but no one else cares other than the few academic peers they have.

Research has an important role in shaping literature and identifying which works are worthy of close reading. This is just one important function the academic community serves.

I disagree. I'd say that pretty much 100% of all research in mathematics, science, and engineering is useful because it fills the definition of valuable that I provided. The research either has a positive impact on >5% of the population (or is eventually expected to have a positive impact on >5% of the population) or in the case of Mathematics, it provides tools that allows further research to have a positive impact on >5% of the population. Actually, with Mathematics, it even has direct applications to the real world mainly via computer science.

Sorry to tell you this but the vast majority of mathematical research will never see application.

Authors are not putting the symbols in intentionally. Check out this survey: http://mentalfloss.com/article/3093...ism-their-work-and-whether-it-was-intentional

I was just having this argument with someone in chat the other day. Intention is not the only relevant thing when analyzing a literary work. We all say things / do things with meanings we do not intend and these often give great insight into our personal world-views.

 

[leroyjenkens]

I was just having this argument with someone in chat the other day. Intention is not the only relevant thing when analyzing a literary work. We all say things / do things with meanings we do not intend and these often give great insight into our personal world-views.

This is why I like ambiguity in music. It allows for everyone to come up with their own interpretation and how it matches with what's going on in their lives. And maybe it can give them hope or inspiration or something, even though the artist may have thought of something totally different when they were writing those lyrics.

 

[Pythagorean]

I think people are confusing psychology and other fields with literature. I know I said "like English" in the title, but what I meant was research in fields that are equally pointless (pointless in terms of research - not the field itself) but you cannot read my mind so I should've just said English research.

English researchers study anything from prose to effective sentence structures to writing devices. Here's an example of how an English researcher might go through literature and classify particular literature techniques:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_technique

This helps to determine what's effective for communication and persuasion (you have to be able to classify things before you can attach an efficacy to them). The applications are numerous: from increasing entertainment value to utilizing effective propaganda and/or public relations, to informing the public in an easily consumable way.

 

[WannabeNewton]

My definition of value may not be a universal one but I would love to hear your definition of value that would allow literature research to be valuable.

I would consider a piece of research to be valuable if it promotes a deeper understanding of the subject area (no matter how specialized) that it tackles, to the target audience that it intends to encapsulate.

Because it has been demonstrated that research in science, technology, and engineering gives you tools that have applications to the real world just as long as enough time is given and therefore these applications are expected in the long-term. I've already given an example of how pure mathematics is used in cryptography engineering and how relativity went from zero applications when Einstein developed the theory to some (still growing) applications. Quantum mechanics has applications to electrical circuits.

Don't take this the wrong way but you are quite ignorant as to the breadth of mathematics and physics research. There's a lot more out there that is useless according to your criterion of value than is useful.

Are you saying that relativity is not valuable? Or just that specific paper?

I never said relativity isn't valuable in any sense of the term "value". I said that papers regarding the conceptual foundations of general relativity have no value within the utilitarian framework that you have established. However according to my conception of value, the linked paper would be of great value because it has greatly enhanced my understanding of global rotation in general relativity. It is purely academic in value; there is no pragmatic benefactor whatsoever associated with this paper and as such it would fail to hold up to your standards of value. This is true for a vast amount of academic resarch not only in the foundations of general relativity but physics and math in general.

Again, don't take this the wrong way but you shouldn't argue when you are ignorant of academic research in math and physics.

 

[MarneMath]

Is there anything inherently wrong with writing a research paper solely intended for other academics to read? I imagine if I spent my life writing and reviewing literally works I would want a place where I could express my ideas and have them critiqued. I imagine an English journal gives researchers that place and an opportunity to see where the community census on a topic may be. So therefore, I conclude that the existence of any English journal is mostly the by product of the demand for its existence within its designated community.

Not everything everyone does is going to save a person's life or improve the general human condition. It doesn't mean there isn't value in the action. I have no interest in car shows, and I'm sure they add no value to the human race as a whole, but to the people who do enjoy them and actively participate, it adds happiness and that's enough.

 

[-Dragoon-]

I've already provided the example for cryptography engineering. If you want an example for physics: when the theory of relativity was developed, it had no practical application to the real world. Relativity now has some applications and humans will continue to find applications of relativity. Quantum mechanics is expected to have real world application in the long-term.

Name one application of relativity that isn't just minor corrections that could be adjusted for without knowing the actual theory. While quantum mechanics in it's established forms still lead to other interesting applications, any new developments beyond low-energy quantum mechanics will almost certainly not lead to anything practical.

I think it's a pretty safe bet that the cutting-edge of physics research today is just about as "practically" useless using your definition as is English research.

 

[Monsterboy]

What do you mean by "useful applications" and "many applications", as these are subjective terms?


How is this going to help to save the world?

The whole problem is that the OP is only talking about tangible or materialistic gains ,which may not be possible to get from literary research but that doesn't mean it's useless ,just because some thing doesn't help you get bread on your table or travel faster in a car or do some everyday things in a more refined way etc doesn't mean it's useless.

 

[ZombieFeynman]

While quantum mechanics in it's established forms still lead to other interesting applications, any new developments beyond low-energy quantum mechanics will almost certainly not lead to anything practical.

I think it's a pretty safe bet that the cutting-edge of physics research today is just about as "practically" useless using your definition as is English research.

The majority of research is in "low energy" physics. There is a massive amount of research in condensed matter physics and AMO that has promising applicability.