Chapter VI

I found this chapter to be interesting and I like the principles that Elgin is proposing. The idea that both science and art bring forth different and important aspects of our lives based on vital works of fiction made a lot of sense. It's true that fiction has founds in fact in say, literature and physics, but that extrapolating fiction out is creating an example that people can understand and digest. I wholeheartedly agree that understanding based on principle alone is almost impossible. Anyone who's taken chemistry knows that learning facts in the classroom is useful, but connecting it to an example helps it stick.
I did have a concern about a few things in the reading. Elgin explains that secondary extensions can be leading, and uses the example of a sheep herder and a cowboy to illustrate the point. She explains that, "The residues of fiction thus infuse the findings of fact." While I understand what she's trying to say, some of that could be taken in a very negative context. I thought of the negative stereotypes say for "red necks." Is it true that people from the South like Nascar and are missing teeth and hate gays? Well, statistics might back some of that up, meaning that it technically is residing in fact, but to say that "Red necks hate gays" is definitely far too assumptive. In this context, just because something is ground in fact, it doesn't mean that using it as such is helpful.
The other question that arose while I was reading was with Elgin's idea that we deal with fiction in art and science all day, but it is useful to us none the less. While I agree that knowing things such as fuel economy are important for a car, and having this idea tells us a lot about what people value in a vehicle and about sales techniques, I think that deciphering the extent of the fiction gets a tad hazy. Understanding a piece of work like "The Jungle" tells us about the hardships of the industrial revolution in America, but at the same time, just how much of that work is reflective on the real world can lend credibility or take it away. An example from the sciences might be with current fMRI studies. Some psychologists have been accused of using fMRI to try and explain not just blood flow in the brain, but how blood flow can explain things like racism and sexism in humans. In this case, is the fiction really helping our understanding? I would argue that it isn't, it is in fact doing quite the opposite.