On the Canon

It is argued that normal science grows incrementally, each development building on that which came before. Indeed, we would have no science without attention to the accumulated wisdom of our predecessors (leaps of imagination notwithstanding) leading to paradigmatic changes. No one wants to have to reinvent the wheel, the engine or the computer. The humanities do not “grow” in the same way. The “classics” have fueled our imagination, but they have probably also led us astray. Freud, after all, led generations of psychoanalysts into using Greek myth as model and metaphor for human development and experience, and though many people still subscribe to the idea that “Oedipal” attachments govern children...