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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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English Literature in the 21
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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