The Story of Evolution and the Evolution of Stories: EvoLit

 This weekend I came across an article in the New York Times that introduces another interesting story of evolution.  The article, titled, "Nonfiction: Nabokov Theory on Butterfly Evolution is Vindicated" talks about Vladamir Nabokov's (the author of Lolita and much more) work with butterflies and his theory of how the Polymmatus blues evolved.  He published his theory in a paper using "a few literary flourishes", proposing that millions of years ago the butterflies migrated to the New World from Asia in five different waves, and claiming that species that were thought to be closely related were in fact distantly related species.

     In class we discussed how people believe something to be true when it is generally agreed on by society. “Truth” and understanding can only be possible when it is put into a common context. Darwin’s story of evolution is convincing because he describes evolution in the context of domestication. He makes the abstract idea of natural selection concrete by demonstrating how selection and change is something the general public can observe. People have made these observations themselves, and they therefore can believe it, or at least begin the process to believing it. 

On Thursday, we talked about what we though Darwin's intentions might be in writing the origin of species. Was he trying to change our beliefs about how species have come to be? Or was he telling us to be open to different ideas? We don't know what his intentions were, or if he had any at all. But if he did, most of us agree with the latter. We discussed how it is almost impossible to change a person's beliefs because we all have different life experiences, and have been raised in different environments. We may be open to different views and arguments, but we often take those views and try to use them to support are arguments. Basically "I'm right and you're wrong," even if we know that we in fact are wrong. We go with our gut instincts.

On Thursday we argued about which was more important: a shared societal context, a personal self context, or a static/invariable context. There seemed to be points for and against every different view, which made it difficult for us to come to an agreed conclusion as a group. However I think all of these ideas are really the same thing just in different stages of its development.

After last class's discussion, as I read Origin of Species, I looked for how he chose to communicate with the audience.  I found that he made an effort to reach out to everyone, not just to others of his profession and area of research.  He makes an effort to facilitate discussion.  As an author, he cannot directly interact with his audience, so he often responds to perceived comments or questions they might have as best as he could.  However, he does not write to entertain but to inform.  His writing is of course meant to be though provoking, but ultimately he believes in his conclusions based on his findings and desires for his audience to agree with him.  His writing may seem "wordy" or "dense," but ultimately most everything he includes is necessary.

Did Darwin want a particular response from his readers? The point to publishing a work is to have the author's voice reach the audience and in Darwin's case, his voice was heard far and wide. What makes his story so compelling is its controversy. Both Darwin's supporters and challengers contribute to his fame and to the story of evolution. As briefly mentioned during class, the Scopes Trial occurred nearly 70 years after Darwin's publication and has heightened the controversy between creation and evolution. I sat in class wondering... will there ever be a story told that can reconcile these differences - say the story of stories where the resolution brings the two together in harmony. If such a story exists, is this the story that Darwin never finished? 

When talking about “Organs of extreme perfection and complication,” Darwin states that “His reason ought to conquer his imagination; though I have felt the difficulty far too keenly to be surprised at any degree of hesitation in extending the principle of natural selection to startling lengths” (212). He seems to say that, if we let ourselves trust reason and let it carry our thoughts, reason can take us places where even our imaginations don’t have the power to take us. I think this is particularly interesting because literature sometimes seems to imply the opposite; that imagination can take us where reason cannot. Doesn’t science then become a sort of literature if it is asking us to trust in something that we can never know, and to imagine what then might be possible?

During Tuesday's class, Prof. Grobstein asked for positive retellings of the story of evolution. It struck me as interesting that, when asked to justify our retellings, many members of the class described the positive aspects from an entirely human perspective; it also struck me as interesting that, in denouncing these retellings, many members of the class continued to react from an entirely human perspective. As far as we had read in "On the Origin of Species," Darwin had not directly discussed the consequences of the theory of evolution on our species' development. Yet there we were, squabbling about the morality of selective evolution, about the vestigial characteristics of the human body, about the destructive progress of mankind.

I was reading a poem called "Darwin" by Lorine Niedecker (I'm in a poetry course that includes an anthology of American poetry).  For some reason, I can't find it online.  Google has rarely let me down like this.  But I think the poem was really interesting in relation to the course and to this week's reading in particular.  One of the things the poem brings up (it quotes Darwin's letters home during his voyage at points) how the process of coming up with the theory of evolution and natural selection was so incredibly difficult and time consuming.  People think of the theory as a stroke of brilliance, like an idea that popped fully formed into Darwin's head.  But reading Origins, as well as this poem, opened my eyes to how intense the work was that