Candice,
I wasn't sure from your post whether it was David, myself, or both of us
you thought were perpetrating a breakdown of logic. But I'm not sure
that there is a breakdown.
I entirely agree that scientific theories don't predict what will happen
in science; they predict what will happen in whatever is the subject of
the science. Now, if literary theories were the same sort of thing as
scientific theories, we would expect them a) to be about something, and
b) to be able to predict what would happen in the future to whatever
they were about.
I would have thought that literary theories were about literature,
though I may be wrong here. If I'm right then you're incorrect to
parallel up science and literature; any equivalence would be between
science and literary theory. You seem to be suggesting that literary
theory is part of literature. If so, then either literary theory is
self-referential, or it isn't about literature at all.
In any case, I just said that literary theories didn't seem to predict
much; I didn't specify what sort of thing they would predict if they
did.
Also, I wasn't intending to criticise literary theory for not being the
same as scientific theory. It's hardly a surprise if the methodologies
of studying the subjects of science and literary theory are different,
since those subjects themselves are so very different from one another.
Best,
--
Peter
http://www.hphoward.demon.co.uk/poetry/
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