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Change.orgThe Science of Writing
I just read an article about physicists in Sweden who have developed a formula to find an author’s “literary fingerprint.” Here’s the gist of what they found:
As the researchers write, “These findings lead us towards the meta book concept — the writing of a text can be described by a process where the author pulls a piece of text out of a large mother book (the meta book) and puts it down on paper. This meta book is an imaginary infinite book which gives a representation of the word frequency characteristics of everything that a certain author could ever think of writing.”
Apparently this is an alternative to a 75 year old linguistic theory that has something to do with a universal pattern of word usage.
To those who could care less about linguistics (probably most of you reading this), this is gibberish. To those of you who are authors, you’re probably bristling like I am at the concept of what we do being reduced to a research paper hypothesis.
On the one hand, I suppose it’s flattering that the writing process is mysterious and exciting enough to warrant decoding, like DNA. On the other hand, where’s the magic in that? People (except research scientists) don’t interact with DNA because they like it or relate to it on an emotional level. But when you strip writing down to its elements you take away the personal connection, the power of the story, and the human experience that went into crafting it … all the things that make reading enjoyable.
I guess it’s a step in the right direction that at least this latest development in science is allowing writers individual creativity, but maybe some things are better left out of the lab altogether.
Posted in the writing life | 3 Comments »
December 31st, 1969 at 7:00 pm
December 15th, 2009 at 5:08 am
You could look at it as a variation on the concept of Mind in the religious traditions of India. For example, the Meta Book is more like the overarching universal Mind. The universe itself was born from the single vibrating syllable Om, from which everything else arose. We're all individual manifestations of that vibrating universe (hence the 'word frequency characteristics' of individual authors?). So it's not an knock on individual creativity, it's more like Michaelangelo saying that he chipped away at the marble until it revealed the sculpture of David. A writer plucks a page out of the Meta Book–through the unconscious, unless she happens to be very enlightened– and chips away at it until a novel/story/poem appears. Makes as much sense to me as anything. Or as Philip Pullman says, "I don't know where the words come from, but I know where they go. On the page."Now, back to chipping away at my story!
December 16th, 2009 at 11:45 am
Stephanie, as someone who enjoys science, I take issue with a few of your assumptions. DNA can be affected by human intention. This has been verified clinically. Also the linguistic theory of which you speak, fostered by Ludwig Wiggenstein, some British analytical philosophers of the early 20th Century and Immanuel Kant, an 18th Century German Enlightenment philosopher, speaks more of the human need to use words, and in the act of using them, to convey meaning. Certainly we as writers both need to express and need to convey words in a way that readers are able to construct meaning. There is no rift between science and the mission of writers, in my view.