alt Hacker Newsnot who you are replying to - but: Shakespeare was limited by the number of interactions he had with humans. He did not have the internet.
We also have neurology as a science now. So that's one bit of evidence for the claim.
Of course Shakespeare had a profound understanding of human nature. And of course he did not have the working vocabulary and knowledge base of modern psychology which has been built up over time by many humans working together. Two things can be true.
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Hard disagree. I made an analogy in another reply to Monet not knowing quantum physics. Lacking that information didn’t deter his famous explorations of light effects.
Humans are great at figuring out how things behave before we have a great model of why they do it. And by Shakespeare’s time, we had a pretty good grasp on practical human psychology, even if we had less understanding of the mechanisms behind it.
> Of course Shakespeare had a profound understanding of human nature. And of course he did not have the working vocabulary and knowledge base of modern psychology which has been built up over time by many humans working together. Two things can be true.
Yes, but this doesn't prove that a modern author could produce a better text than a historically great author, which was the original line of thought. Or is there a specific modern text that you have in mind that proves the point?
> not who you are replying to - but: Shakespeare was limited by the number of interactions he had with humans. He did not have the internet.
The internet may increase the number of interactions, but decreases their quality.
Looking at most online interactions it looks to me that people show less empathy and understanding than they do IRL.
> Of course Shakespeare had a profound understanding of human nature. And of course he did not have the working vocabulary and knowledge base of modern psychology which has been built up over time by many humans working together. Two things can be true.
Does that help write better books. If the claim was true the best fiction would be written by psychologists and neurologists. Is it?
I think that knowledge is on the wrong side (for writing fiction) of Chesterton's distinction (in a work of fiction - I cannot remember which Fr Brown story) between understanding someone from the inside with empathy and from the outside with analysis.