I did not write comments for a long time but this post made me write a serious comment first time ever. As a person who has devoted my life to education - PhD in one of the top schools in the US - I will make a comment about subjectivity from the perspective of science. A scientific fact is observable for all people and using experiments you can get the same result again and again over time. Only those ideas can be claimed as absolute true, and neither your fancy language nor your overly offensive comments cannot make the point you claim true. If and only if there is one contradicting case which is let's say my opinion asserting "this is a good writing", your definition of good writing cannot be universally correct and becomes subjective. I believe the definition of your good writing is false and further I propose a discrete claim that no one can define a criteria for all good writings accepted by everyone. If you can come up with a scientific, namely mathematical proof falsifying this, I would appreciate it and invite you to write a research paper on this ground breaking fact you have newly found. Else, your claims would not be perceived as absolute true by the community that is using science and objectivity as their primary tool. Meaning that you are just bullshitting according to some people and there is no way that you can claim otherwise. Speaking of narcism, you should check some psychology books or even wikipedia to learn more. I do not want to offend anyone but Cecile had some serious points in this discussion worth talking about science more.
You know a lot about science, supposedly, but you know nothing about literary theory. This puerile rigid binary between “objectivity” and “subjectivity” is irrelevant to the discussion. I have spent my life studying literature and narrative art, and this ponderous intervention of yours is typical of scientists who venture into an area where some terms are apparently similar to those of science but are deployed quite differently.
You and cecile have effectively refuted the claim that standards of craft in narrative are scientifically objective, a preposterous claim I never made, and one that would be perceived as “not even wrong” by people who know what they’re talking about.
We have ventured far afield from this series and its barely competent writing, so I’m done with this.
EDIT: Speaking of “narcissism,” scientists may know its definition, but people in the humanities know how to spell it.
last edited at May 27, 2020 7:33AM