Edwin Frank, the literary critic, 'Stranger than fiction: Lives of the Twentieth Century Novel, believes that Dostoyevsky's Notes From Underground introduced a new conception of reality....different to the reality present before. In the novel this reality was pursued by Gide, Wells and Kafka, the latter's demonstration of public disappearance through creativity. Although these are novelists, others presented the changed reality. Auden's scaffolding poetry, long bars to hold up his bare words. Distinctive buildings, creating new perspectives of work. But more importantly changes in relationships between people, private and public, and then, the final brief stroke, the democratizing force of photographs and film and with it the temporary destruction of elites.
Why bring "reality" into it at all? Why not just talk about changes? Reality is nothing but changes, great and small. Every tick of the clock is a change.
Karl, bur wholesale ways of looking at the world and understanding it occur, with the involvement of literature and indeed other art forms.
Without going into too much, the concentration on the London poor of Dickens created, if not by itself, an emphasis on character and action away from the emphasis on aristocratic personalities, and to change tack the introduction of photography gave not aristocratic faces but those of everyone, and their animation before the camera. The emphasis of reality, a narrow but emphatic condition, moved away from the privileged but towards other understandings of reality, that is human reality within a multitude of human actions. This gave us psychology but not psychiatry which remains a top down process, with its own internal reality.
Change occurs through shifts in reality which are sometimes not recorded.
Karl Pfeifer
"Why bring "reality" into it at all?"
You need somethin/kin/g stable in time to relate the word "changing" to.
In short the famous and misunderstood quest for a "relation" - a relative for the sake of comparison!
Don't tell the physicist - they will just go into war!
Karl, Arne
A change in reality?
Distance!!!! Comparisons can be made with populations in the past who would not have had our sense of distance and all it implies, but change is perhaps clearly understood through project management (I taught these courses for a few years). Technical processes emerged from even slight changes in reality. Change is usually connected to similar thinking not long term cultural or perspective differences even if calculated incrementally.
Change is bracketed by itself in incremental processes. The result is then used to create and classify further change. Each process, once accomplished, represents a change in reality, which may be only in the thinking processes. That is enough.
While change by its nature can effect further change it does not necessarily create a line of processes. Interestingly, change in the past was often simply cultural, which by itself affected at best generational change. A dynasty effected changes in ceremony but not necessarily in thinking. To change thinking longer lasting change is required that by itself morphs into changes in reality-in the ancient world this was too incremental to affect reality change.
My point has been misunderstood. Stanley’s question was “Does reality change?”. Answer: of course it does, all the time, from zeptosecond to zeptosecond, whenever an electron moves a Planck length, etc. etc. “Reality changes” is a trivial metaphysical truth that has no purpose in historical explanations. Here is one basic schema for historical explanations:
Phenomenon P existed (occurred, was prevalent, was typical of the Zeitgeist, etc.) at time t. And later, at t*, as a result of contingencies C1, …, Cn it changed into (was modified as, morphed into, was replaced by, etc.) Phenomenon P*.
Nothing of significance is gained by prefacing such a schema with “Reality changed because” or by suffixing it with "and thus reality was changed". Those would just be empty stylistic flourishes.
Karl, answering the question above detracts from the question itself which is specifically about literature and, although you are right in your reaction, you do not say anything about reality but a means of establishing change. Also the kind of reality you posit is just that, a kind, change going on from one molecule to another. I cannot see the meaning, but only the mechanics on a certain level. Clearly, there are different levels or aspects of both change and reality and different ways of recognising it.
Basic forms of reality through change are simply that!
Arne's response is legitimate as he employs reality to achieve a certain point in change.
Going back to my project management example. Incremental change avoids the question of change as it is part of purpose that leads on to the reality already proposed. A new building perhaps that takes up a measure of ground, filled with purpose as well as design. A building that did not predate but was the subject of purposeless change. (Each change up to that point is transactional and does not represent a reality beyond its transactional nature)
It contains its own reality which is not 'change.'
Stanley Wilkin
You wrote: "Also the kind of reality you posit is just that, a kind, change going on from one molecule to another. I cannot see the meaning"
That was just an example to illustrate the essential triviality of "reality changes". If you look at the schema I gave, you can get "the meaning" in the phenomena you choose to substitute for P, P*, and the various conditions C. Those phenomena can involve social and economic conditions, Zeitgeist, public and private perception, artists' temperaments, literary and artistic movements, etc., i.e. the usual meaningful phenomena in the remit of Geisteswissenschaften. Sure, you can say literature changed perceptions and led to new types of works in other domains, but adding that that's also changing reality seems trivially tautological, since (trivially) any change whatsoever is a change in reality.
Although Iliver twist, Dickens' early novel, works on many levels and is not the only book to examine a different understanding of society and its structure it is possibly the most powerful before Dostoievski. In summary, It advances Christian myths of salvation through the central figure if Oliver, and his suffering, the opposing figure of Monks out to destroy Oliver, good and evil, and his saving by Mary Magdalene (?) divine prostitute connecting in effect these to the Brownlow family. Middle class and Lowest, indeed criminal class, are connected through shared humanity. They inhabit the same world, the same city, and are interconnected. These strands connect through Oliver. Monks and Oliver share a role, Monks is middle class but delves into the criminal class, Oliver although originally middle class (translating into the fantasy of Jesus as king )connects to upper class, both are bridges.
Socialism,
Social working,
Humanistic ideas of others
Each of these expanded throughout the 19th century into the 20th where they met other ideas that supplemented these or opposed them. Society was manifestly changed, a new reality born, where the very poor obtained rights to material happiness, and became thereby part of a greater economy. In Diocken's life Christian Socialism was an active ideology drawing from writers and versions of Christianity.
Karl,
You can say as you put it, but the personal lies here. You do appear to move from one description of knowledge to another, choosing where your loyalty lies, using one vocabulary set to describe another.
The use of your chosen vocabulary sits unbalanced on the subjects you critique. I would say, and do, that change cannot become change, although you may feel, as I feel, that my/your argument does not apply.
To quote, or not quote Einstein, its all in the observation or where the observer is. Which your reasoning I suspect will also deny.
In Project management any change is merely that, although it contributes to the next change, but until a certain point does not have genuine purpose, that of building something for example. The reality of purpose is the end result not the changes that may or may not be part of the purpose. While I understand where you are coming from, there are other options. The changes are temporary and never go beyond change, a point in the greater picture, while the accumulation of changes represents reality. The idea of change to change cannot fit as each change is both temporary and conditional.
Karl,
I belatedly noted your dismissive approach to a host of activities that to me have a structural application to human society and personality, imposing instead another possibly less applicable devise and wondering thereby why I do not accept your approach, at least not here. I suggest you view all the above as perhaps entertainment only.
Insubstantial rather then central to human existence.
Deepak,
The religious books, specific forms of literature, changed the societies they influenced
In Notes from Underground, Dostoyevsky presents a fragmented, subjective view of reality through the monologue of the unnamed narrator, often called the Underground Man. This character embodies a deeply introspective and often irrational perspective, emphasizing individual consciousness, irrationality, and the complexity of human motives. Rather than portraying a straightforward, objective reality, the text explores the idea that human experience is often chaotic, contradictory, and resistant to rational explanation.
The work challenges the Enlightenment notion of a single, knowable, and rational reality by highlighting the importance of individual subjective experience, free will, and the inner conflicts of human nature. It suggests that reality is not simply an external, objective truth but is deeply intertwined with personal perception, internal struggles, and existential dilemmas:
Notes from Underground introduced a conception of reality rooted in individual subjectivity, irrationality, and existential complexity, marking a significant shift in literary and philosophical approaches to understanding human existence.
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