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I really enjoyed the small group dynamic on Thursday- the ideas that emerged among the discussion propelled my thoughts into a myriad of different discussions. I was very interested in the idea of the “suspension of disbelief” that was brought up as one of the main reasons that students could not read the Darwin’s book as a novel. The “suspension of disbelief” is a concept, outlined by Wikipedia, is a theory that explores the relationship that individuals have with art. It “refers to a willingness of the audience to overlook the limitations of a medium, so that these do not interfere with the acceptance of those premises” (Wikipedia). There were many students that had a difficult time reading Darwin’s work because of they were unable to utilize this concept as many of us do with several different types of mediums including books, movies, television shows, among others. Is this concept of suspended disbelief one that preventing the parallels between science and literature to be seen?

When I tried to read Darwin again I made the conscious effort to read it like a novel and failed to do so, yet again. Is our mind preventing us from looking and reading things at face value? The parallels between literature are many when we talk about them but when trying to put them into practice it seems like all the similarities vanish.