Novel Contributions? /In Response to Avery

Novel Contributions? /In Response to Avery

In Avery’s recent post, the primary topic is literature’s ability to contribute to other forms of human understanding. I find this topic to be particularly important because, in recent class discussions, we have continued to address this contentious issue. Many believe that literature can only support ideas that have come up previously in scientific disciplines. Even further, some theorists maintain that, although literature may be able to first discover a certain idea, since it would have been discovered anyways by science, literatures discovery is surpassed by science.

What I find interesting about this view is the fact that I previously identified with it. Before are class discussion I thought is was veracious to claim that any idea that literature could possibly discover already existed in the great world; therefore, literature was not able to bring new ideas to light, but only support previously existing ideas. Now looking at it, it seems trivial to state that any idea discovered in literature previously existed in the so-called “great world”. Of course it did; but, this does not discount the fact that literature can discover these issues antecedently to scientific disciplines. Accepted prima facie, it seems certainly possible that literature has discovered certain ideas prior to science. I truly doubt that science is first with every discovery if it constantly discover new insights and fixes old ones.