Conclusion: A Call to Literature

Abstract

Abstract This chapter looks again at what literature does, this time in the light of the controversy between the humanities and science, where the former mostly comes out thoroughly battered or heavily defensive in other accounts. While staying focussed on literature, it argues that the humanities deal with highly mutable realities, and hence cannot offer the predictability of the sciences. This, and related matters, are essential to understanding what literature does, and why the agnostic reading demanded by literature is not a choice or a fad, but a necessity. This final chapter also ties together the loose ends of the larger argument and stresses that the ability to read literature as literature is crucial to our survival as a distinctive species of sentient beings.