Theory of Mind and Science Fiction (PDF)

Nicholas O. Pagan is Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the University of Malaya in Malaysia. He has published in journals that include Philological Quarterly, Mosaic, and Foundations of Science. His latest article, 'The Evolution of Literary Theory and of the Literary Mind' appears in Interdisciplinary Literary Studies 15:2 (2013).

“Nicholas Pagan provides an introduction to ‘Theoryof Mind’ – a concept apparently first named as such in 1978 when researchersinto primates investigated whether chimpanzees were able to intuit that theyand other chimps were minds that were self-aware. … Pagan writes clearly andaccessibly and this book would be an excellent choice for an introduction tothe idea of the way sf can act as an exploration of ideas about the mind, or consciousness.”(Andy Sawyer, Foundation, Issue 122, 2015)

"Nicholas Pagan's bold, innovative, and unusually interesting book shows that theory of mind gives us a new and powerful way of reading science-fiction (or, really, anything else). As a bonus his introduction sets out what, as far as I know, are all the neuroscientific theories about how and why we intuit the way others' minds are working. This is a book of both scope and penetration." - Norman Holland, author of Literature and the Brain, USA

"Theory of Mind began in biology and psychology, comparing what humans feel and know of other human minds and what other animals know of minds of their own kind. We now think of Theory of Mind as an essential ground of fiction, and of fiction in turn as a training ground for Theory of Mind. Nicholas Pagan ventures into a new dimension by showing us that science fiction again and again makes or confronts us with or takes us to or allows us to enter (or not to enter) new kinds of minds.' - Brian Boyd, Distinguished Professor of English, University of Auckland, New Zealand