an analytics that’s barely analyticalI might try to get my hands on a copy of Katherine L. Milkman’s senior thesis, described by the NY Times as an application of “rigorous mathematical analytics” to the “442 stories printed in The New Yorker from Oct. 5, 1992, to Sept. 17, 2001.” On one hand, I find this type of analysis, depending on my mood, amusing or frustrating; Milkman picked what aspects of NYer stories she wanted to track, but the NY Times pays no attention to how those choices, which formed the study’s context, came about. On the other hand, this type of analysis may be capable of revealing broad literary trends, useful information for discussions about culture and literature. Milkman’s focus was “how a change in the head of the fiction department — from Charles McGrath to Bill Buford — affected the stories published in The New Yorker,” so it’s hard to tell how much her findings document individual taste instead of cultural tendencies; but, her project may pave the way for larger, future, studies that are capable of crunching cultural data and spitting out trends that, at the very least, prompt historical analysis and an inquiry into the forces that affect taste.
So, unlike TEV’s Mark, my final impression of Milkman’s thesis wasn’t so negative. Mark writes,
Every year or so, some pencil neck somewhere loads a bunch of Henry James or Gertrude Stein into a Cray somewhere and starts it churning and, when the smoke clears, we’re left with some utterly random and generally useless observation about fiction. It’s yet another way, it seems, that those with a scientific bent seem to grasp covetously at the one thing that eludes scientific explanation - the creative process.But I don’t think Milkman, despite her mildly annoying egotism (“Students tend to come up with a thesis that will trigger the interest of interviewers, but since Princeton grads don’t have trouble getting jobs, that seemed sort of silly to me.”), is claiming to understand, or explain, the creative process. And, while a statistical analysis of one writer’s story may reveal nothing more than favorite words and punctuation, an analysis of how popular fiction has changed over time can give scholars and commentators some starting points for thinking about literary conventions and preferences. Where these types of studies usually go wrong is when the mathematican or scientist tries to interpret the greater implications of his data by himself; and, to that effect, I was glad to read the observation that Milkman’s “study was long on statistics and short on epiphanies.”
On a slightly different note, I’d like to better understand why so many people dislike the idea of science grasping or explaining the creative process. Personally, I don’t assign any special value to mysteries, and I don’t think the creative process will, if ever adaquately explained,* lose its thrill or yield less startling output. In some sense, I take psychology’s fascination with artistic creativity as a compliment to the arts, and not as an attempt to construct a hierarchy of knowledge in which science trumps literature.
*A lot of work already has been done on this subject, so I don’t know if this assumption holds. In the next couple months, though, I’ll be discussing some of the more popular theories about creativity on my other blog.
Update: In case you haven’t read the comments, John Ranbow offered this, which I agree with:
I was most bugged by the tone of the article, which managed to be both overexcited about the very idea of statistics being used on THE New Yorker and also condescending: condescending in that it didn’t even try to explain just what tests Milkman applied to the stories. If the thesis’s cross-disciplinary approach is what makes it so great,, why not give the public a taste of the statistics, rather than just describing it with loaded words like “rococo”?Stephany Aulenback’s thoughts are also worth taking a look at.
I’m currently reading Digital Mantras by Steven Holtzman, an inquiry into the creative process and the language of abstract worlds.
Holtzman explores the ‘science’ of defining grammars for visual, musical and written language.
Touched on:
- Panini’s grammar for Sanskrit
- Chomsky’s generative grammars
- The musical language of the postwar Serialist
- Kandinsky’s search for a grammar for form and colour.
- More… Including the use of computers to explore the human creative process.
Although the explanations are often lacking in detail, the book is a fascinating read.
Posted by Wally Glutton at June 2, 2004 03:17 PMQuantifying the creative process is perilously close to quantifying existence itself. Apparetly, for some, it can be disturbing or at least disorienting to contemplate the notion that every moment is merely the inevitable result of a process that produced all previous moments.
Posted by Modesty Verve at June 3, 2004 07:00 AMI was most bugged by the tone of the article, which managed to be both overexcited about the very idea of statistics being used on THE New Yorker and also condescending: condescending in that it didn’t even try to explain just what tests Milkman applied to the stories. If the thesis’s cross-disciplinary approach is what makes it so great,, why not give the public a taste of the statistics, rather than just describing it with loaded words like “rococo”?
Posted by John Rambow at June 3, 2004 12:14 PMWally,
Thanks for the reading rec. I’ll check it out ASAP.
MV,
Perhaps you’re right and that’s why people balk at scientific inquiries into creativity. I always forget how powerful the idea of “free will” is to other people; for me, the idea is so crude and absolute (black/white) that I find it irrelevent. (What’s your opinion?)
John,
I totally agree. If you don’t mind, I’ll quote your comment in an update on the post.
1. Can anyone know whether free will exists? No.
2. Is it possible to demonstrate free will? No.
3. Is the concept of “free will” therefore irrelevant? Yes.
Sorry to be terse, but the ‘n’ key on this laptop is maimed and I’m trying to wind up online comms before re-entering the NNZ in a couple of hours. (See http://sacredsexuality.blogspot.com for details.)
Very interesting blog, Nathalie; thanks.
Posted by Modesty Verve at June 4, 2004 03:51 AMFor those of you with an interest in seeing what I actually wrote rather than a simplified explanation of it printed in the Times, check out my thesis at www.princeton.edu/~kmilkman/THESIS/ktthesis.pdf . Also, for those offended by the arrogant comment—I didn’t actually make that statement about Princeton grads. Sadly, many of my friends are unemployed.
Posted by Katy Milkman at June 14, 2004 09:59 PMIt’s just one data point and may not be representative of the whole field, but I was shocked a while back to learn that when one of the best-known cognitive scientists, Steven Pinker, undertook to examine the cognition of aesthetic processes, all he did was reveal himself to be an utter philistine who swallowed whole the plainly satirical projects of people like Komar and Melamid.
Also relevant from a different direction is the kind of statistical studies long practiced by critics of journalism. Which makes the New York Times’ response even sillier — having been on the receiving end of such analysis for decades now, they should have had at least a little insight into it.
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