Monday, April 18, 2011

Steven J. Brams's "Game Theory and the Humanities"

Steven J. Brams is Professor of Politics at New York University.

He applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, Game Theory and the Humanities: Bridging Two Worlds, and reported the following:
The page 99 test, I'm afraid, wouldn't work so well for my book--at least, I think, for your readers. It puts you in the Philosophy chapter, wherein I discuss a rather abstract question relating to the fair division of indivisible goods.

If you lop off the second digit and go to page 9, you're in the Literature chapter. I think my discussion of a strategic situation in Faulkner's Light in August, wherein Faulkner introduces a fictitious "Player" who directs Percy Grimm's moves, is more enlightening about what game theory has to say in literary exegesis.
Learn more about Game Theory and the Humanities at the MIT University Press website.

--Marshal Zeringue