That's a new theory? I thought it had been neurological fact for years. Just look at how often our brains tend to see patterns even where patterns don't really exist. "The face of the Virgin Mary appeared in my bowl of mashed potatoes!"

That's a new theory? I thought it had been neurological fact for years. Just look at how often our brains tend to see patterns even where patterns don't really exist. "The face of the Virgin Mary appeared in my bowl of mashed potatoes!"

It's not really new, but psychology has been out of vogue in the discipline for a good few years (25+) and is only just "coming back" as it were. I wrote a book on cognition last year.

 

A lot of academics are still beholden to the paradigms of anti-humanist theory.

 

There was a really interesting book written a few years back called "On the Origin of Stories": http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674057111&content=reviews

 

But a lot of people are resistant to the ideas and think evolutionary theory is crude and reductive.

 

I've pointed out in the past that left-wing literary theorists ironically share the same evolution-denying ground as nut-job right-wing fundamentalist Christian groups.

That's a new theory? I thought it had been neurological fact for years. Just look at how often our brains tend to see patterns even where patterns don't really exist. "The face of the Virgin Mary appeared in my bowl of mashed potatoes!"

When I was getting my English degree I was taught the ideas of charlatans like Freud and Lacan as if they were still considered respectable theories and that was it as far what I learned about psychology/neuroscience and how it influences stories.

 

I think English academia's slow reception of science and welcoming environment for pseudoscience comes down from the heavy influence of post modernist philosophy and its claim that there are no concrete truths. Given the huge presence of third wave feminism at most colleges, that jells pretty well with finding female oppression or arguing for whatever bizarre theories you might need to get a paper out in academia's publish-or-perish field.

 

That's a new theory? I thought it had been neurological fact for years. Just look at how often our brains tend to see patterns even where patterns don't really exist. "The face of the Virgin Mary appeared in my bowl of mashed potatoes!"

When I was getting my English degree I was taught the ideas of charlatans like Freud and Lacan as if they were still considered respectable theories and that was it as far what I learned about psychology/neuroscience and how it influences stories.

 

I think English academia's slow reception of science and welcoming environment for pseudoscience comes down from the heavy influence of post modernist philosophy and its claim that there are no concrete truths. Given the huge presence of third wave feminism at most colleges, that jells pretty well with finding female oppression or arguing for whatever bizarre theories you might need to get a paper out in academia's publish-or-perish field.

 

I wish I could disagree with this, but I can't.

 

I'd even co-sign it.

 

That's a new theory? I thought it had been neurological fact for years. Just look at how often our brains tend to see patterns even where patterns don't really exist. "The face of the Virgin Mary appeared in my bowl of mashed potatoes!"

When I was getting my English degree I was taught the ideas of charlatans like Freud and Lacan as if they were still considered respectable theories and that was it as far what I learned about psychology/neuroscience and how it influences stories.

 

Lacan might have been a fun midcard heel with the "R-S-I" gimmick. Him constantly coming up new bullshit acronyms that when pronounced make words that are supposed to be really deep but are of course just nonsense. Use him sort of like an intentionally goofier Raven.