School of Distance Education

Consciousness and the Two Cultures
by David Lodge 
Known for his satiric works, David Lodge has 
been one of Britain’s most loved and widely read 
versatile novelist, playwright and an academician. 
Lodge's creativity, and his wonderful sense of humor, 
have made his work popular in translation in numerous 
countries.Lodge's suburban upbringing in a traditional 
Catholic family in the austere conditions of postwar 
England is reflected in his early fiction. The works 
The 

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School of Distance Education
English Literature in the 21
st
 century
51 
Picture goers
(1960),
The British Museum is Falling 
Down
(1965) are a clear example of this. Several of 
Lodge’s novels satirize academic life and share the same 
setting and recurring characters; these include 
Changing 
Places: A Tale of Two Campuses
(1975), 
Small World: 
An Academic Romance 
(1984), and 
Nice Work
(1988). 
The latter two were short-listed for the Booker Prize. 
Human consciousness has always baffled 
scientists as well as philosophers. While scientists 
attempted to understand consciousness by rational, 
empirical standards, Philosophy took a different turn. 
Developments in Artificial Intelligence, Neuroscience 
and evolutionary biology paved way for the better 
understanding of this dark continent. Lodge, in his work 
is examining how, our evolved consciousness find its 
expression in British fiction. In essays on Charles
Dickens, E. M. Forster, Evelyn Waugh, Kingsley and 
Martin Amis, Henry James, John Updike, and Philip 
Roth, and in reflections on his own practice as a novelist, 
Lodge is able to bring to light to the mysterious working 
of the creative mind.
Lodge starts his essay by alerting the readers on 
the intellectual debate on the nature of human 
consciousness. He mentions two books: 
Consciousness 
Explained
by Daniel Dennet and 
The Astonishing 
Hypothesis
by Francis Crick. A scientific view of 
Consciousness is presented before the reader before 
moving on to the novel called Fugitive Pieces by Anne 
Michaels. The narrator Jacob Greer, a holocaust survivor 
is obsessed with the history of holocaust. When he is 
looking a premature baby, it brings back terrible 

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School of Distance Education
English Literature in the 21
st
 century
52 
memories of his past. Lodge finds that this passage 
invokes the religious idea of the soul, which is 
scientifically impossible. He finds that western culture 
seems to rely heavily on distinguishing between flesh 
and spirit material and immaterial, body and soul and in 
turn commits the fallacy of dualism.
Consciousness has not been studied much by 
natural sciences. It was primarily considered as a 
province 
of 
philosophy.. 
Psychology 
perceived 
consciousness as ‘a black box'. Stuart Sutherland in 
International Dictionary of Psychology
, wrote “ 
consciousness is a fascinating but an elusive 
phenomenon “. Psychoanalysis, which has been 
dismissed 
as 
unscientific 
tried 
to 
understand 
consciousness. But it was fruitless. The current interest 
in the study of Consciousness can be traced back to 
Francis Crick and Crist of Koch. An empirical study and 
analysis of human consciousness was proposed by these 
two scientists. The scientific urge to know human brain 
was the result of several other scientific innovations, 
such as: the discovery of quantum physics, discovery of 
DNA, new brain scanning techniques, neo Darwinian 
evolutionary 
theory, 
developments 
in 
Artificial 
Intelligence and scientists like Richard Dawkins. 
Researches and the innovations in the field of AI made 
people realize that human brain and consciousness is like 
a software, with multitude of connections capable of 
evolving.
Some philosophers began to ask, the catchphrase 
'Ghost in the Machine' really disposed of all the question 
raised by the phenomenon of consciousness. Joseph 

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