I appreciate these kinds of exposés, and students should know these things, but I'm not sure why one would ever assume otherwise. (That is not to say, I know t

I appreciate these kinds of exposés, and students should know these things, but I'm not sure why one would ever assume otherwise. (That is not to say, I know that people do, but I don't know why.) Novels are presented to us in tidy, precise, packaged form—well, there are some novels that experiment with the form, but certainly it's the norm—but no-one feels the need to explain that a novelist is making it up as they go along. What's different between math and English—well, a lot, obviously, but specifically, what's the difference that causes non-practitioners to assume that the former is eternal and fixed, whereas the latter is a product of human creativity?