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Sophacles. The scientific method, (1) Hypothesis (2) Theory (3)
Principle/Law[1], permeates Western Ideology. One might say that ...
... In Sophacles’ Oedipus Rex, Oedipus longed to retract the curse that he brought upon
himself but what he did could not be undone. ... Work Cited Sophacles. ...
Submitted by cielarski on September 27, 2005
Category: English
Words: 1335 | Pages: 6
Views: 195
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The scientific method, (1) Hypothesis (2) Theory (3) Principle/Law[1], permeates Western Ideology. One might say that which exists, exists only insofar as it is proved to exist -- in the Western World. "To be or not to be," as it were, is contingent upon what is calculable by the scientific method. That is to say, methodology within the Humanities is structured according to its counterparts in the "hard sciences," the scientific method. This relationship exists even in such seemingly polar ends of academia as Physics and English.
When a literary critic advances a theory, s/he does so in accordance with the aforementioned scientific method; the mathematical "proof" thus arrived is, for all intents and purposes, proved. It is not a controversial assertion to state that scientific methodology, itself based on mathematical principles, forms the underlying structure of literary analysis. Any attempt at "theory" outside of this structure, in Western Ideology, is universally dismissed as "faulty logic" and deemed inadmissible. The irony, however, is that the scientific method can and has been utilized by literary scholars to disprove itself. In fact, these same disproving theories have been systematically analyzed, tested, and disproved by other such theories.
The history of literary criticism is a seemingly endless cycle of incongruence highlighted by incongruence and so forth down the line -- if it is a line to which we must refer at all. The longer a work remains in the public consciousness, the more controversial it seems to become in regards to how it should be interpreted because proofs and disproves are levied, one upon another, by succeeding generations, cultures, etc. The dramas of Sophocles provide an excellent example of such a paradigm. Here, we have a body of work that has survived in the public and, more importantly, critical consciousness for approximately two and a half millennia. In that span of time, there has been no lack...
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