TITLE: Recent Connections: Narrative and Computation
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: February 10, 2010  6:43 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
Reader Clint Wrede sent me a link to
<A HREF="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/10/books/10mason.htm">
   A Calculus of Writing, Applied to a Classic</A>,
another article about author Zachary Mason and his novel
<EM>The Lost Books of the Odyssey</EM>.  I mentioned Mason
and his book in a recent entry,
<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2010-01.html#e2010-01-29T19_01_23.htm">
   Diverse Thinking, Narrative, Journalism, and Software</A>,
which considered the effect of Mason's CS background on
his approach to narrative.  In "A Calculus of Writing",
makes that connection explicit:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
"What I'm interested in scientifically is understanding
thought with computational precision," he explained.
"I mean, the romantic idea that poetry comes from this
deep inarticulable ur-stuff is a nice idea, but I think
it is essentially false.  I think the mind is articulable
and the heart probably knowable.  Unless you're a mystic
and believe in a soul, which I don't, you really don't
have any other conclusion you can reach besides that the
mind is literally a computer."
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

I'm not certain whether the mind <B>is</B> or <B>is
not</B> a computer, but I share Mason's interest in
"understanding thought with computational precision".
Whether poets and novelists create through a computational
process or not, building ever-more faithful computational
models of what they do interests to people like Mason
and me.  It also seems potentially valuable as a way to
understand what it means to be human, a goal scientists
and humanists share.
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