Darwin Loves You (eBook)

Natural Selection and the Re-enchantment of the World

George Levine (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2008
336 Seiten
Princeton University Press (Verlag)
978-1-4008-2733-6 (ISBN)

Infos

Jesus and Darwin do battle on car bumpers across America. Medallions of fish symbolizing Jesus are answered by ones of amphibians stamped "e;Darwin,"e; and stickers proclaiming "e;Jesus Loves You"e; are countered by "e;Darwin Loves You."e; The bumper sticker debate might be trivial and the pronouncement that "e;Darwin Loves You"e; may seem merely ironic, but George Levine insists that the message contains an unintended truth. In fact, he argues, we can read it straight. Darwin, Levine shows, saw a world from which his theory had banished transcendence as still lovable and enchanted, and we can see it like that too--if we look at his writings and life in a new way. Although Darwin could find sublimity even in ants or worms, the word "e;Darwinian"e; has largely been taken to signify a disenchanted world driven by chance and heartless competition. Countering the pervasive view that the facts of Darwin's world must lead to a disenchanting vision of it, Levine shows that Darwin's ideas and the language of his books offer an alternative form of enchantment, a world rich with meaning and value, and more wonderful and beautiful than ever before. Without minimizing or sentimentalizing the harsh qualities of life governed by natural selection, and without deifying Darwin, Levine makes a moving case for an enchanted secularism--a commitment to the value of the natural world and the human striving to understand it.

Autor

George Levine is Professor Emeritus of English at Rutgers University. His books include Darwin and the Novelists; Dying to Know: Narrative and Scientific Epistemology in Victorian England; The Realistic Imagination: English Fiction from Frankenstein to Lady Chatterley; The Boundaries of Fiction; and a memoir about birdwatching, Lifebirds.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 10.3.2008
• Verlagsort: Princeton
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Essays / Feuilleton
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie ► Evolution
• Themenwelt: Technik
• Schlagworte: agnosticism • Altruism • Analogy • Anthropocentrism • Anthropomorphism • Biological Determinism • Biology • Charles Darwin • Consciousness • Consilience • Consilience (book) • Contingency (Philosophy) • Criticism • Daniel Dennett • Darwinism • Darwin's World • Determination • Development of Darwin's theory • dichotomy • Disenchantment • distrust • encyclopedic knowledge • E. O. Wilson • ethics • Eugenics • Evolution • evolutionary biology • Evolutionary Psychology • Explanation • Freethought • group selection • Human • human behavior • Human Intelligence • human science • humility • Ideology • inference • Intelligent Design • janet browne • John Herschel • John Stuart Mill • Literature • Loren Eiseley • Mammal • Modernity • Morality • narrative • Natural selection • Natural Theology • Nature • Objections to evolution • On the Origin of Species • organism • Philosopher • Philosophy • philosophy of science • Poetry • Positivism • Postmodernism • Prejudice • Prose • Racism • Rationality • reason • Rebecca Stott • reductionism • Religion • rhetoric • Richard Dawkins • Richard Lewontin • Science • Scientific Method • Scientism • Scientist • Secularism • Secularization • Selfishness • Sense of Wonder • sensibility • Sexism • Sexual Selection • Social Darwinism • Social Science • Social Theory • Sociobiology • Speciation • Stephen Jay Gould • Steven Pinker • Struggle for Existence • Suggestion • Symptom • Teleology • The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex • theory • the selfish gene • Thomas Henry Huxley • Thought • william paley • Writing
• ISBN-10: 1-4008-2733-7 / 1400827337
• ISBN-13: 978-1-4008-2733-6 / 9781400827336