Jerry Coyne’s post at Why Evolution is True on E. L. Doctorow’s argument for fiction as an “other way of knowing” is worth reading:
“Other,” of course, means “ways other than science,” and here I construe “science” as “using empirical methods that rely on reason, observation, and verification or nonverification by independent observers.” Now it’s clear that disciplines like history, archaeology, and even sociology have the capacity to tell us true things about the world, but I have my doubts about the arts.
English majors like to believe that fiction can tell us truths about the world. Coyne’s post provides a convincing argument that fiction is an art, not a science.