Studying Russian Literature with Gary Saul Morrison

What are the benefits of interdisciplinary research for educators in terms of gaining a deeper understanding of the larger issues that affect their field? The noted literary critic Gary Saul Morson and leading economist Morton Schapiro discuss how humanities, especially literature, offer economists ways to make their models more human, their predictions more accurate, and their policies more effective and fair. 

Their book Cents And Sensibility provided critical insights and lessons during this episode. The discussion explored ways the study of literature helps people gain new insights into truth, right and wrong through literary characters. In addition, they provide some insights into how economists and other scientific disciplines can express the context of their work more effectively by following the same approach.

Listen to the exciting conversations they have with host Greg LaBlanc about why students aren't exposed to literature in meaningful ways before entering a university. An even more captivating discussion was held on funding humanities as a discipline and its effect on students' career prospects.

You won't want to miss the remainder of the episode as they explore how economics is evolving, how science co-exists with the humanities, and what makes literature so special that it helps develop empathy.

Episode Quotes:

Does interdisciplinary work really require understanding where one discipline ends and begins?

"If you look at the paperback of Cents and Sensibility, we lead off with the results of a survey that we hadn't been aware of until one of the reviews came out, and it had asked people in different disciplines. These are professors in the United States. Is there anything to learn from fields other than your own? And you know, 79% of psychology professors said, sure, there is. I'm shocked that it wasn't 95. But anyway, 73% of sociologists and, you know, as soon as generally among the social scientists, 70 to 80% said, yes. There was one notable outlier, and that was only 42% of economists said there was anything they can learn from other fields [...] And it really is about intellectual humility, dialogue, and getting out of your, away from your echo chambers and doing better work by being more open to what you can learn from other fields." —Morton Schapiro

"Yeah, we were trying to distinguish real interdisciplinarity from something that is sometimes mistaken for it. That a discipline is not just a subject matter, it's a way of seeing the world, defining certain questions as interesting and specifying, what kind of evidence would count and what assumptions are made when you start out. That's a whole different worldview. And what we're trying to suggest is that something can be learned when two different disciplines and needs of two different ways of seeing things examine the same subject matter and can profit from each other's shortcomings." —Gary Saul Morson

Is economics too watered down to a point where it's no longer objectionable and is applied to all human behavior? Or is it necessary to make claims that are challenging?

"What I'm saying is that what I love about the field of economics is we do our analysis, and we do our mathematical models, and we see how it comes out. We don't write the conclusion before we do our analysis. There's always a temptation to do that.." —Morton Schapiro

"To contrast that with the limitations of my own field, I have never seen an article in literary criticism that reported I had this hypothesis, but I investigated, and the evidence didn't bear it out. You have an idea, and you don't test it; you illustrate it. What's always struck me as very familiar. Any theory, any idiotic theory, can be illustrated. The test of a theory is not the evidence, but the counter-evidence" —Gary Saul Morson

Why aren't students exposed to literature in meaningful ways, even before they're at university?

"I asked them (the students) how they've taught literature in secondary school. I always get three answers in descending frequency. The most frequent is that they've been taught as a kind of technical exercise. The second most common way is to start with the presumption that our values of our social class today. You can't learn that you're correct. And everyone else is wrong.

So again, there's no reason to read it. So each of these methods leaves the student with a sense that reading literature is uninteresting, none of them." —Gary Saul Morson

Why should the government invest in education, faculty, research, and literature when it's not going to produce people who can go out and get jobs?

I'll tell you, and it's really overblown in the media that people with humanities degrees are lost in the labor force. I think if done right. They learn how to learn. They learn how to communicate, and that's probably why their earnings are much higher than people would expect, but it takes a number of years. —Morton Schapiro

"Why should the state legislature support pure mathematics, which has no application? Areas of physics that will never be used? That's an equivalent question. If knowledge is valuable in itself, it will have an indirect effect. A culture where people understand each other, empathize with each other, see things from different points of view, which is what literature would teach. It's not going to wind up with people hating anybody who differs from them. That's what literature should do, and we badly need it right now." —Gary Saul Morson

What is so special about literature it helps build empathy?

"We mentioned something similar in the book, trying to get out of your own self, trying to truly understand what it's like to be a different gender, sexuality, sexual expression, race, ethnicity. And I think I would say, most importantly, a different sense of right and wrong. I happened to be observant too. There's a certain view that's informed by my weekly study of the Hebrew Bible, but I love reading great fiction. Where somebody has a very different view of morality from mine, and it helps me understand why I believe certain things, and maybe I should believe other things. And I don't think anything is better than fiction." —Morton Schapiro

"People think of what you do when you read a great novel, you identify with a character. The author gets you to see the world from the heroine's perspective. You understand how she's making the decision, what she's thinking, what you can't do with people in real life. You can't trace their thoughts and feelings. You understand all the things that are not said. The person is thinking [...], and you do this for hundreds and hundreds of pages, and you make a habit when you do it with several different people with different points of view." —Gary Saul Morson

Show Links:

About Gary Saul Morson

• Gary's Profile at Northwestern University
• Gary's Profile on the American Scholar
• Gary on LinkedIn

About Morton Schapiro

• Morton's Profile at Northwestern University

Their Work:

• Minds Wide Shut: How the New Fundamentalisms Divide Us
• Cents and Sensibility: What Economics Can Learn from the Humanities
• The Fabulous Future?: America and the World in 2040