Nicholas Laughlin's blog etc.

The UK Guardian publishes an excerpt from David Lodge's new book, Consciousness and the Novel. Lodge argues that the nature of human consciousness, which science finds utterly baffling, has long been the province of imaginative literature:

"In a world where nothing is certain, in which transcendental belief has been undermined by scientific materialism, and even the objectivity of science is qualified by relativity and uncertainty, the single human voice, telling its own story, can seem the only authentic way of rendering consciousness."

We can perceive the universe only through the filter of our own consciousnesses, our selves; literature allows us to share the universe with each other. C.S. Lewis put this another way "We read to know we are not alone."