ABSTRACT
Scientific method is basically a procedure for deciding what evidence is valid. Legal rules of evidence exclude, for instance, hearsay and accounts of similar past bad actions. Literature has historically borrowed from the legal system of evidence for its own understanding of how one arrives at the truth. Literature often resorts to the same categories of evidence dealt with by the law: circumstantial evidence, hearsay, similar fact, physical evidence, expert testimony, and so forth. In literature, perhaps even more than in life, people are liars. They give false testimony, they forge evidence, they generally attempt to mislead and often succeed. In human dishonesty more than anywhere the pitfalls of finding the truth behind the evidence are most acute. All the complexities of evidence in law and literature lead ultimately to the question of truth. Truth in literature is more problematic. Literature often embraces things are impossible: magic realism, fantasy fiction, space travel faster than the speed of light.
