Michael,
Quite frankly I have no idea what you are talking about.
What does a disagreement over Faulkner and Dostoevsky (between myself and the divine Nabokov) have to do with theoretical explanations about the universe? You have committed a category mistake and then somehow attributed that category mistake to me.
I think you misunderstand the nature and limits of scientific explanation and theoretical models. In fact, you seem to conflate the difference between scientific explanation and rational argument. Scientific explanation is a very special and limited case of rational argument. All scientific explanations and theoretical models imply rational argument but not all rational arguments are scientific explanations or theoretical models. Thus if you notice in the quote above I imply we can have rational arguments about art but I also say that there can be no positive proofs derived from either a-priori principals or theoretical conclusions that can show that some art must be the way it is or some other way.
I also think you are making an is/ought mistake. Science for the most part can tell us what "is" and (in certain very limited cases) can provide us with some implications for what "ought" to be but beyond that we are left to our own rational arguments, good guesses, thoughts, feelings and intuitions. Fiction and our judgments of fiction are for the most part in the "ought" category and theoretical explanations for such things are at the moment beyond us. I stick with Hume in this distinction, no matter how unfashionable Hume may be.
Some how you have come to the conclusion that because I believe there can be no scientific explanation of art that we can't have rational arguments about what is good and bad art. Sure we can have rational arguments but such arguments are never going to show what is good or bad art in the way that astrophysics can show me the evolution of a star. The fact that you can't seem to tell the difference between what rational argument and thought can help us to understand and what scientific explanation and theoretical models can "show" and help us to "know" leads me to think that you are falling into the sin of "scientism" as Ravi would define it. So forgive me but I think should drive a detour around your opening gambit in order to understand what in the world you are thinking.
Astrology is a bad theoretical explanation of the human psyche. Astronomy does not substitute for astrology because what astrology is trying to explain is why humans act the way they do. Astronomy and astrology may have same historical origins in common but there is nothing else that we can say to compare the two. About all that you can say is that current models in astrophysics ( physics was the subject where I began my travail through the academy ) make the psychological explanations of astrology highly unlikely and in all probability not possible. This is all that a decent scientific explanation or theoretical model can tell you. Scientific explanations and theoretical objects never provide complete certainty and any good scientist will tell you that. All good scientists should also recognize both the limits of theory and the limits of certainty. There are no sure answers in science and no matter how frustrating you find this, you misunderstand science if you don't understand this.
If there are no sure answers that can be derived from good physical theories I am not sure why you think that you can derive sure answers about the "goodness" of the artistic experience of William Faulkner's _Absalom, Absalom_
Outside of some very limited theories as part of the so-called cognitive revolution (mostly in Chomskyian linguistics) there are very few scientific projects that even propose to describe the human experience. Outside of perception and linguistics there are practically no scientific models and absolutely no complete theories of the mind/brain. There is absolutely nothing that even approaches a good theory that accounts for individual psyches or how individuals experience art, music, or other individuals etc. There are some decent hypotheses and a few incomplete scientific hints or guesses about such experiences but no more.
This relates to your choice of comparison between astrology and astronomy. Astronomy is descriptive and non-theoretical in its origins. It did not become "scientific" until the revolutions in physics when we began to develop our first approximate models. Astronomy did not develop a theoretical base until long after Newton, in the early 20th century, after the revolutions of Einstein and quantum mechanics. Even your cliche choice of a comparison between astrology and astronomy show a lack of knowledge of the problems of science. In Copernicus's day it was possible (though given the social-world of superstitious beliefs, unlikely) to have a good rational argument about astronomical features and structures and to propose models of the solar the system but there were no theories or anything but good guesses. If you can show me that we have even approached this level of rational thought in relation to human experiences such as reading Faulkner I would be interested, but we have not even reached the rational level of rejecting astrological equivalents in are discussion of such topics as far as I can see. Why impute knowledge, especially scientific knowledge, when there is none.
As far as I am concerned astrology is a superstition. It is bad psychology which finds no basis in what we know. But there are many other superstitions and quite a few of them believed by intellectuals. Among them I would include all literary _theories_ (i.e. theories of literature that claim to be "scientific" or "theoretical" models or act as if they are such) and also psychoanalysis, deconstruction, phenomenology, sociology, economics, much of Marxism, philosophy, etc. As far as I am concerned, anyone who believes they can give a "scientific" or "theoretical" account of a human experience of reading (Faulkner or Nabokov) that approaches the exactitude of a physical or biological explanation, model or theory is severely deluded and knows very little about science. An important part of defending scientific explanations is defending it from people who try to over-apply the pattern of making theoretical models into areas where we do not know enough to make models or reach certainty. Much of what we call the "experiential" or the "intrinsic" are currently beyond the certainty of the theoretical.
Personally I think you are suffering from what Gregory Bateson once jokingly called (in reference to Jung and borrowing from Bert Russell) a problem in logical typing. (My apologies to Bateson and Russell and you for the misuse of a misuse of incomplete philosophical categories and for this bad philosophical joke.)
The fact that you believe that the model of psychological and astronomical confluence which is the superstition of astrology can be dismissed as the superstition that it is because of what we know about astronomy; and that such a dismissal of a pseudo-scientific model is an affirmation of your favored argument about objectivity simply shows me that you don't know the difference between rational explanation and theoretical explanation. Human experience, even of art, may be "objective" (_and as far as I am concerned what we call "subjectivity" is just a special aspect of what we call "material reality" and thus subjectivity is an "objective" phenomena_) and we may be able to discuss human experience, and that special human experience we call "art", with the use of rational arguments but that does not mean that there is anything like a scientific model or theoretical structure that can comprehend the human experience of art. This is what your above comparison implies. But I suspect that you really have not thought it through. You attributed to me some kind post-modern attitude where-as my main thrust is to try to defend science from both the deprecations of the superstition of post modernism and the over-extensions of theoretical modeling (over-patterning) by people who think that they have a scientific explanation for everything.
So, I agree with Nabokov about most of Dostoevsky and dissent from him about most of what he says about Faulkner. From my point of view I think I can show you that Dostoevsky is objectively a lousy artist, no matter how interesting of a personality he may be. I think that a lot of Euripides is deeply flawed art and practically everything that survives of Sophocles is touched by fire and partakes of the sun and stars. What "objective" view of art is going to show me that I am wrong except by way of further experience, explication, and explanation?
Jerry Monaco
there are, without question, objective factors in determining not only
> "what is art" but also "what is good art." the history of forms and
> techniques, various ways artists wrestle with materials ( aesthetic,
> social, spiritual) and how works grapple with and resolve (or fail to
> resolve) internal and external contradictions are among the most
> important objective and measurable features of art. as far as the
> reception of artworks goes, taste itself has an objective dimension and
> history as well.
>
> when an artist dismisses or criticizes a precursor (e.g. Nabokov on
> Faulkner) it is not a subjective reaction. it is one way that an artist
> deals with the problems s/he must come to terms with in the context of
> creation. to go back to the science analogy, Einstein wasn't dismissing
> the Newtonian universe because he found it subjectively "tasteless."
> the problems he was facing required a new set of ideas to overcome the
> impasse and objective contradictions of past ideas. it is the same with
> works of art and literature.
>
>
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