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Seshendra
Sharma has submitted the following article to us for your
enjoyment.
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“Is
Literature a Science”
by Seshendra Sharma
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Can literature be treated slightingly? My
friend relegated literature to the position of a pastime and
considered it with no more value. This was done in contrast
to the great material sciences, which alone are held by him
in high esteem as products of intellect and objects worthy
of man's pursuit.
I have to think that this mistake arises out
of an erroneous attitude towards literature or failure to
have come across correct and ideal forms of literature or
not having sufficiently exercised his mind in the matter of
proper appreciation of its purposes and functions.
Looked at from the correct perspective, literature
has a high place in the general scheme of human knowledge.
It can only be ranked with the great sciences, because all
of the various sciences explain so many species of living
and non-living matter or so many stages of evolution, as for
instance, inorganic matter is explained by inorganic chemistry,
plants explained by botany, animals by biology and finally
man by physiologist and so on and so forth.
After creation reached the stage of man, a
new chapter had opened and an unprecedented course rose in
the line of creation. That is, as seen never before in nature,
man began to change environments to suit his life unlike his
preceding species, which changed themselves to suit the changing
environment and life around them. So, after the augury of
the new chapter, the latest species, namely man, undergoing
physical change by any environmental change, and thereby perpetuating
the lines of evolution in such terms, was elated once and
for all. However, it is difficult to say as to how long this
history of man will continue without the evolution of a new
and more advanced species of life higher than man from the
physical point of view.
Nevertheless it is now possible to presage
on the available data of historical, archaeological, and scientific
material rather than just on man's evolution, or to be more
precise; the furtherance of the evolution of creation is not
hereafter going to be towards the formation of new physical
forms but it could be only towards the attainment of new intellectual
and spiritual heights.
But what does this new stage of evolution
consist of? In fact we are now witnessing, the ever expanding
horizons of the mind and its immense potentialities. In the
wake of this development, the pursuit of further human knowledge
has finally culminated in endeavors to understand the inscrutable
and mysterious behavior and phenomenon of the human mind.
To unravel the tangled fabric of the mental process, its reaction,
its effects, its vagaries etc., and to delve deep into the
dark recesses of its abysmal bowels and cull out its treasured
secrets, has become the final and most interesting enterprise
of man.
In the wake of this glorious enterprise arose
the phantoms of psychology, occult sciences, yoga, philosophy,
literature and ever so many other activities of superb inexactitude.
Literature explains the emotional and the
intellectual stage of the evolving man. For a more precise
expression, I should say it endeavors to explain the latest
stage of man's evolution or creation's evolution, for that
matter. The extent of knowledge that mankind has so far acquired,
of the internal and external universes, only indicates the
history of our mind and its evolution. But literature, particularly
that form of it, dealing with the intricate fibers of human
feelings and sentiments, explains to us, of what the mind
has come to be, that is, its ways, its capacities and caprices.
The role has not been played by any science or any branch
or form of human pursuit except literature.
My friend of course raises the contention
that psychology is exactly the department of knowledge which
fulfils this purpose, but I feel it is only as much as to
say that organic chemistry reveals the secret of sugar's taste.
The said science, at best, can only explain the composition
and the texture of the chemical compound sugar, but by no
means it can pretend to explain its effect on human tongue,
similarly psychology can evolve certain principles and indicate
by certain symbols, the broad outlines of the forces at work
behind the mental processes, as for instance the principles
underlying its behavior in the case of the 'Oedipus' complex.
So this aspect of mind is best explained only by literature
and never adequately by psychology because this part of human
personality or being can never be clearly grappled by a system
of knowledge, which tends to postulate and reduce itself into
mere symbols and principles, which are called science. This
aspect of mind that our very language fails very often to
hold it in its grip. How then, can a narrow symbolical and
inflexible system achieve the purpose? It needs a very comprehensive
and elusive subject in an extensive and grand sweep: and that
is done by literature alone. Psychology is the dynamics of
mind; we can say literature is its science of properties of
matter. That appears to be broadly speaking, their relationship
to each other.
Yet another comparison may be given, if psychology
is the grammar of mind, then literature is its prosody.
Finally I would even go to the extent of saying,
that the place of literature cannot be taken by any science-form
to achieve the same purpose. The system, with which you have
to understand
this particular aspect of man's mind, has got to be only an
art form. Thus literature may be said to be performing the
role of science though not in its exact garb. So literature
demands to be elevated to a revered and indispensable position
in the grand gallery of human knowledge.
Homepage: www.geocities.com/saatyaki2001
Seshendra
Shasrma© 2003
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In
This Issue:
- Intro
Page
- VoicesNet
Anthology 5 Contest Winning Poems
- A
Little About Georgian Poetry
- Is
Literature a Science?
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