Evolution and Literature Web Paper 3

Roots of Sky-EvolvingFrom Walt Whitman

            Thereis a very small portion of formal education that focuses on the unconscious.  I have studied Walt Whitman in high school, under the label of transcendentalist.  However, through this class, I now understand Whitman’s writing style much better.  While most novels or literary pieces we read are reflective of the conscious mind, “Leaves of Grass” uses metonymy, specifically unconscious associations. 

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Frames of mind and ideas about existence are probably not truly transmitted or passed down in an evolutionary manner, however they seem to be passed down culturally, and sometimes become apparent in a way that is parallel to reemergence in biological evolution.  Both Walt Whitman, or his narrator, in his poem Leaves of Grass, and Erik in Siri Hustvedt’s The Sorrows of an American express transcendental ideas.  Although these books were written more than a century apart, Whitman’s ideas about universality and oneness reemerge at the end of Hustvedt’s novel.  In biological evolution, physiological elements may reemerge after having lost use, especially if they were kept in an organism after not truly being successful when they originally emerged.  Similarly, in cultu

Old and New

-by Katie Randall

 

When you sink deeply into sleep it has you,

And pulls you through dreams you remember for moments... or years... or not at all.

April 19, 2009

 

Evelyn White

Biology of Evolution

Paper #3

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     Human beings are perhaps the greatest, most sophisticated storytellers that have yet roamed the earth. Sure, creatures of other levels of complexity can survey their environment, summarize their observations, and live their lives according to their own stories of reality. In fact, these stories of reality have proven to be, in the Darwinian sense, quite an essential mechanism for the survival, continuation, and modification (biological evolution) of all forms of life, especially humans. What distinguishes humans as ‘special’ storytellers, however, is our capacity for language, a cognitive development that biological evolution has