The Greatest Author of Fiction of the Past 200 Years: Who?

[Extollager]

J. D., the scientific method may show that certain behaviors correlate with personal or with group survival, but that one ought to do such and such, or ought to refrain from such and such, to promote survival, is another matter.

Let's suppose an industrialist devises a method of production that he knows will inflict lasting harm on the people and other living things of his region, but is unlikely to be detected (and so get him in trouble) in his lifetime. It will certainly enhance his profits and lead to the enhancement of his physical comforts. Why, he might even be better able to afford medical care that will increase his lifespan. The scientific method cannot tell him that he ought to refrain from implementing the production innovation that will harm living things that he will never live to see.

One could make arguments to the effect that he should be shown (!) that it is more reasonable for him to refrain from implementing the process than to go ahead with it, etc. But that involves reason guided by sound morality, which it discerns but does not invent.

The scientific method is a great invention of reason, but it is a far lesser thing than reason.

 

[Extollager]

Let me just add a couple of real-world examples.

Here are a couple of historical items to consider.

1.Review this article

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731

on Unit 731.

The experimenters were practicing “good science,” i.e. they were carefully gathering observed data under controlled conditions to extend knowledge. Some of the experiments could be justified by appeal to J. D.’s attempt to base ethics on “science,” by referring to promotion of survival, since data derived from the experimenters’ observations could be useful in saving lives in the future. I assume everyone will agree that, nevertheless, what happened here was wrong, was evil. But it was “good science.”

2.Here’s another article –

http://www.smh.com.au/world/chinas-...t-exposed-in-documentary-20150407-1mgabb.html

Productive lives will be prolonged, survival enhanced, by the extraction of these organs from unwilling “donors” (who, as prisoners, are not productive). The ethic that J. D. derives from science will approve these practices; indeed, by that criterion, such practices “ought” to be increased.

The scientific method cannot tell anyone that practices such as those documented above are wrong. Rather, such horrendous evil has indeed been enabled by appeals to "science."

 

[anivid]

Gentlemen, let's not go there - this thread is about Greatest Authors.
Being a scientist myself, I can assure you that the western notion of science cannot catch all we want to catch/know on this planet - not everything can be measured or weighed as we used to say - not even with the quantum physics.
It's fine some believe in science - but it surely has its limitations !!

 

[hitmouse]

It's fine some believe in science - but it surely has its limitations !!

Prove it.

 

[Extollager]

That has just been done. Science (=the scientific method + the findings of science) can't tell us how to make moral choices. It provides us, Heaven knows, with plenty of material that needs moral consideration. But we must find moral guidance elsewhere. Did you read message #62 above?

Is your default position: Trust the scientists themselves to make ethical decisions when it comes to science? (1) That leaves a lot of decisions other than ones relating to science. (2) Do you perhaps wish to rehabilitate the Tuskegee scientists?

Science has its limitations. Q.E.D.

 

[anivid]

Here’s some quotes about what constitute a ‘Classic’:

“A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.” -Italo Calvino (from The Uses of Literature)

“Classic' - a book which people praise and don't read.” –Mark Twain (from his travelogue, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World)


- and a Reader:

“When the Day of Judgment dawns and people, great and small, come marching in to receive their heavenly rewards, the Almighty will gaze upon the mere bookworms and say to Peter, “Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them. They have loved reading.” –Virginia Woolf

I can only agree

 

[galanx]

Put me down for Dostoevsky too- but then I haven't read Balzac.

A lot is dependent on individual taste, though- I liked (but no more) Anna Karenina, struggled through War and Peace, love Joyce, Faulkner, and Jane Austen, can't read Dickens these days....

 

[Extollager]

....can't read Dickens these days....

Reading again Orwell's essay on Dickens might encourage you. But aside from that, let me suggest that you read some of Dickens's essays and journalism, where the flat characters you objected to elsewhere are not much of an issue. There's a nice Penguin Classic edition of 1850-1870 essays from The Uncommercial Traveller etc. that has some pieces on taking nocturnal long walks around London, etc. Highly recommended.